The script for Episode 1 of Season 2 (of vampire drama True Blood) called for “a primitive piece of art; like a dancing girl” to be placed on the character Maryann’s coffee table. Suzuki and Cat Smith, Art Director, went to Google to look for images that fit these requirements, hoping to find something that inspired them. They looked at many different types of ancient images including Mycenaean, Etruscan, and Minoan examples. Entering search terms something like “Egyptian female statues,” they came across our very own “Bird Lady.” They printed out a selection of appropriate images and presented them to Alan Ball, the show’s creator.

He was immediately drawn to the “Bird Lady,” seeing something so elegant, beautiful and perfect in her form that she became the obvious choice. As Suzuki pointed out, though she is not the first to do so, this ancient figure looks both modern and primitive at the same time. In terms of the show, she said using it helped to emphasize that Maryann’s character is timeless.

We also found it interesting that Suzuki said they looked at a lot of Egyptian images and chose this one precisely because it is not a “typical” ancient Egyptian representation. This was precisely the thinking behind curator James F. Romano’s choice of the “Bird Lady” as the signature image for the reinstalled Egyptian galleries, which opened in April 2003. As usual, he wanted to get people to stop, look and think twice.

The New York Observer

Recent discoveries by a Polish archaeological mission at Tel Al-Farkha (literally “the chicken hill”) in the north-eastern Delta about 120 kilometerss north-east of Cairo are remarkable and sensational. Remarkable in that they reveal that the “Two Lands” of Upper and Lower Egypt were not rivals in predynastic times but culturally united. Sensational in the material objects discovered. They include numerous statuettes and amulets carved of hippopotamus tusk, and several dozen golden plate fragments came to light, the latter arduously reconstructed into figurines of exceptional beauty. Although a mere 60 centimetres in height, these naked standing men have eyes made of lapis lazuli, while various details such as sticking out ears, large phalluses, and detailed fingers and toes reveal characteristics of later Pharaonic art.

Until relatively recently it was believed that the predynastic communities in Upper and Lower Egypt gradually coalesced until two independent kingdoms emerged, Nekhen in Upper Egypt and Pe [Buto] in Lower Egypt, and that the formation of these federations was a step towards unification.

Subsequent discoveries changed this concept, and scholars in the latter part of the 20th century hypothesized that the two “kingdoms” were actually parallel institutions, artificially created by the early kings who wanted to establish a single, unified state in a country that did not easily lend itself to unification. Consequently they gave each part of the country a distinctive name, thereafter treating Nekhen in Upper Egypt, and Pe in the Delta, as though they were once independent kingdoms. The learned pre-historians admitted that the period just before the crucial political unification was still clouded in mystery because unification was accompanied by the establishment of a strong centralized government, a new approach to the perennial problems of river-control and irrigation, and Egyptian artists developing new ways of depicting things — all apparently appearing out of the blue.

Now, thanks to the Polish discoveries, it is fairly certain that there were indeed two predynastic capitals of Upper and Lower Egypt, but that far from being rival and hostile regions as suggested in mythological tradition they may have been culturally and politically united for a long period of time. Also significant is that the incentive behind unification may have been trade.

Excerpted from an article by Jill Kamil for Al-Ahram