An Egyptological Review of 'The Mummy' (1999) - Nile Scribes

The 1999 release of The Mummy directed by Stephen Sommers is yet another instalment in the mummy genre following Boris Karloff’s famous 1932 version The Mummy. The 1999 film stars protagonist Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) as the maverick, streetsmart adventurer, Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz), a book-smart scholar, and Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), the film’s antagonist. Set in the early parts of the twentieth century, the film centres around re-awakening a mummy (what else?!) cursed in antiquity. How does this movie rate in historical accuracy? Did the figure, Imhotep, actually exist?Have a look at our review of 2017’s The Mummy featuring Tom Cruise.Thebes and the Pyramids of GizaThe film opens with a grand, panoramic view of the pyramids in Giza, featuring the Sphinx under construction. Except we are not at Giza; instead, the narrator tells us we are in “Thebes, City of the Living”, several hundred of kilometres to the south!The time is the Nineteenth Dynasty, during the reign of the ph...