Penis in a bottle. That's the most prominent memory I have of putting together this segment. Of course, I can't just leave it at that. The phrase, "penis in a bottle," demands an explanation. Allow me to explain. When I read that Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum was doing a lecture series, entitled "Love and Lust in the Dust," discussing sexual life in ancient Egypt, I figured it might make an interesting segment for our show. There's lots of different interpretations about the sexual attitudes and behaviour of ancient Egyptians.

It's also interesting that out of all the ancient civilizations, Egypt is the one that people seem to find the most fascinating. That's probably because there's so many artifacts, writings and decorated tombs that provide so much insight into a civilization that existed more than 3,000 years ago. There's no shortage of topics for discussion, but this is television and we need pictures, so the challenge was coming up with visually interesting ways to tell the story. There's lots of paintings, sculptures, but I was trying to think of something different or out of the ordinary that people would never have seen before. One of the PR people at the ROM suggested to me that I might be interested in getting access to a mummy that was currently being studied there. It's a young man with certain parts of his body perfectly preserved, including his penis. Since the other mummies were under glass, there would be no reflection when we were shooting. I decided to make inquiries, but I learned that his male member had been separated from the rest of his perfectly preserved body and was now sitting in a jar on a shelf. "Penis in a bottle!" I exclaimed to the person on the other end of the phone. At that moment, someone walked into the Sextv offices and just caught that bit of the conversation and gave me the strangest look. It's funny the things people sometimes hear when they walk into our office and just catch a fragment of a conversation. It's also kind of amazing the things that are done for the sake of research and higher education.

Karen Murray
Associate Producer, SEXTV