ArchaeoBlog

Okay, I found it: Walk Like an Egyptian:

I admit that this isn’t all that “archaeological” save for the basic theme. (And who cares anyway, Susanna Hoffs is h.o.t. hot) I don’t think it ever caught on as a dance although I would wager that whenever it was played at dance clubs people probably did it. Most of the lyrics don’t have anything to do with Egypt although this little bit makes the connection explicit: All the old paintings on the tombs/They do the sand dance don’t you know

I always liked The Bangles more than The GoGos, the other major all-girl-group of that time. This one was from 1986 and I think the GoGos might have been a little earlier? Seems like it anyway. I think this was the song where Hoffs started that looking sideways thing that caused all of us boyz back then to go nuts (well, besides the whole hotness thing anyway) and legend has it she did that to get over stage fright. She (Hoffs) also did a bunch of the music and was one of the producers of the Austin Powers movies and she even shows up in the band during the credits.

Walking like an Egyptian? It was the weird 2-dimensional way Egyptians represented human figures. They didn’t really attempt to create any sort of depth with their painting or show perspective. The men were shown with their torso frontally while the rest of them was in profile, although not always directly, and they put their arms in many different poses:

I used to try to replicate it: plant your feet one in front of the other (knees straight!), twist your upper body to the side, and then twist your head back facing the direction of your feet. Better than Twister!

The typical pose generally represented by the song is the offering pose:

Not really with the hand sticking straight out like the people in the video do, but it’s mostly the shape of the arms and their positions relative to the shoulder. Which is probably way more than anyone wanted to know about this video. . . .

Oh, and Susanna Hoffs is even hotter now:

(Again, for informational purposes only since I would never stoop to posting pics of hot babes just to drive traffic)