Eggs “were said to be dyed and eaten at the spring festivals in ancient Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome.”​—Celebrations.

Springtime was sacred to the sex worshipers of Phoenicia. Their fertility goddess, Astarte, or Ishtar (Aphrodite to the Greeks), had as her symbols the egg and the hare. She had an insatiable thirst for blood and immoral sex. Her statues variously depicted her as having rudely exaggerated sex organs or with an egg in her hand and a rabbit at her side.