Put a bird on it? Ancient Egypt was way ahead of us.

A century ago, archaeologists unearthed a 3,300-year-old Egyptian palace at Amarna, which was briefly the capital of Egypt during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten. Away from the busy areas of Amarna, the North Palace provided a quiet retreat for the royal family.

On the west wall of an extravagantly decorated room, known today as the Green Room, the excavators discovered a series of painted plaster panels depicting birds in a lush papyrus swamp. The artwork was so detailed and skillfully rendered that it was possible to locate some bird species, including the Pied Kingfisher (Ceryle rudis) and the Rock Pigeon (Columba livia).

Recently, two British researchers, Chris Stimpson, a zoologist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and Barry Kemp, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, set out to identify the rest of the birds on the panels. An attempt to preserve the paintings in 1926 failed, causing some damage and discoloration, so Dr. Stimpson and Dr. Kemp rely on a copy made in 1924 by Nina de Garis Davies, an illustrator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Their findings were published in December in the journal Antiquity. One of the riddles they tried to solve was why two unidentified birds had triangular tail markings when no Egyptian bird known today has them.

For many millennia, large flocks of birds have flown over Egypt on their biennial transit between Europe and Central and Southern Africa. In witnessing these migrations, the ancient Egyptians viewed birds as living symbols of fertility, life and regeneration. With the possible exception of cats, no other animal has been drawn, painted, or sculpted so frequently in Egyptian art.

Perhaps the most notable is the pied kingfisher, commonly referred to as a hero diver, with its black and white plumage, shaggy topknot and slender beak. The bird hunts by soaring above the water like a hummingbird, with its head tilted steeply downwards. In spying moves, the kingfisher folds its wings and becomes a speckled blur, plummeting its head forward below the surface of the water and grabbing prey with its long, pointed beak. The kingfisher is rich in Egyptian art; on the wall of the Green Room it appears among the stems and umbels of a thick thicket of papyrus as it takes its hellish plunge.

Pigeons of course

The wild rock pigeon is the progenitor of the common domestic pigeon, that chubby “rat of the sky” that darts from the park bench to the sidewalk to somewhere dangerously overhead. The painted panels show various rock pigeons, although they are not native to the papyrus swamps of Egypt; rather, they prefer the region’s arid desert cliffs. Dr. Stimpson speculated that the birds were included in the swampy scene to “enhance a sense of a wilder, untamed nature” and that they were drawn to the urban environment near the palace as the citizenry fed a burgeoning feral population. “In his religious doctrine, Akhenaten had strong views on nature, which was supported and kept alive by Aten, the sun god he claimed was the only true deity,” said Manfred Bietak, an archaeologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. . “This could explain why only nature is depicted in Paleis Noord.”

Heavenly fragrance

The Green Room, so named for its dominant color, may have been designed to create a sense of tranquility for Akhenaten’s eldest daughter (and one of his younger wives), Meritaten, who lived there. “The room may have been decorated with perfumed plants and filled with soothing music,” said Dr. Stimpson, adding that “a masterpiece of naturalistic art would have added to the immersive sensory experience.” One particularly soothing painting depicted a perched bird with rich maroon plumage. The researchers have interpreted the creature as either a turtledove (Streptopelia turtur), whose soothing purr has been described by one birdwatcher as “the color of ripening grain made audible,” or a red-backed shrike (Lanius collurio), known as the butcherbird for its habit. to keep a pantry of food impaled on thorns.

A winter tail

Aided by a panoply of previously published taxonomic and ornithological research, Dr. Stimpson and Dr. Kemp to identify the species annotated with triangular tail markings. One of these is the red-backed shrike, a common autumn migratory in Egypt that often nests in acacia trees. The other is the white wagtail (Motacilla alba), an abundant winter visitor. What explains the tail markings? The researchers think they may have been the artist’s way of pinpointing the season when those birds appeared.