The chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is a domesticated fowl. Recent evidence suggests that domestication of the chicken was under way in Vietnam over 10,000 years ago. Until this discovery, conventional wisdom held that the chicken was domesticated in India. From India the domesticated fowl made its way to Persia. From the Persianized kingdom of Lydia in western Asia Minor, domestic fowl were imported to Greece perhaps as late as the fifth century BCE. Fowl had been known in Egypt since the 18th Dynasty, the "bird that lays every day" having come to Egypt, according to the annals of Tutmose III, as tribute from from the land between Syria and Shinar, that is Babylonia. Fowl make no appearance in the Old Testament.
