The Mummy, Part Fin

Where was I? Oh yes, poor Sir Joseph had just died, and Imhotep has stolen back the scroll with the assistance of Sir Joseph's Nubian servant, another victim of Imhotep's magical control. The portrayal of the Nubian fellow is one of the squickier aspects of this movie. Dr. Muller implies that there is some kind of ancient and entrenched master-servant dynamic between the Egyptians and the Nubians, which is really not the case at all.

Anyway, Dr. Muller is certain that Frank is next on Imhotep's hit list, so he urges him to protect himself with an amulet of Isis.


Okay, well, strictly speaking, that looks a lot more like Hathor. But the two goddesses were closely linked, and Isis was sometimes depicted with Hathor-like iconography, so that's really not a huge problem.

But Frank is not particularly interested in any of this. He's a lot more concerned about whether Helen likes him or just likes him. Sigh.

Helen, meanwhile, is under Imhotep's spell again. I just want to mention here that the portrayal of ancient Egyptian magic in this movie is not that far off the mark. The idea of magic (heqa) is found in all periods of ancient Egyptian history, and performative speech (i.e. the recitation of spells, with the idea that the act of stating that the desired result has happened/will happen will magically cause that thing to happen) was a common form of magical practice. The story of Setna and the mummies, which is the major inspiration for The Mummy, contains several of the elements present here: in particular, the reanimation of corpses and the use of controlling "love spells".

Anyway, Helen, under the influence of Imhotep's magic, goes out and finds her way to Imhotep's bachelor pad.

That's a statue of Bastet back there. There's also an unfriendly white cat on the premises. Apparently Imhotep is exercising his death magic with the assistance of "Bast, the goddess of evil sendings." I think they're confusing poor Bastet with her more ferocious aspect, the lioness Sekhmet. Sekhmet is the kind of goddess you want to sic on your enemies. Bastet is more of a motherly, protective sort.

With the help of his magic jacuzzi, Imhotep shows Helen a lengthy flashback to the events that led up to his mummification. This is one of the most fun sequences in the movie, and the urge to take a million screencaps was overwhelming. I'm going to have to restrain myself here. The whole thing is filmed in the style of a classic silent film, only with sparse voice-over narration instead of title cards. There are some lovely funerary procession scenes that were clearly well researched. There is also some hilarious period costume:

Hahaha! Actually, that's not too bad, although it strikes me as more Ramesside than 18th Dynasty. And I don't know what's going on with the cape or his hair (?) sticking out from under the crown. I think that's the double crown, although it's hard to tell in this picture. What's that stuff all around the crown? Is that supposed to be a band of uraei? Also, those scenes and fake glyphs on the wall behind him are pretty goofy.

You're probably familiar with the basic premise here: Imhotep (apparently a priest of Ptah, from the look of his garb) was in love with Ankhesenamun. Ankhesenamun was a daughter of the king and also a priestess of Isis (one of those "vestal virgins" that was mentioned back at the beginning of the movie). Imhotep stole the Scroll of Thoth and tried to resurrect Ankhesenamun with it when she died, presumably from some sort of illness. He was caught and sentenced to "the nameless death" (i.e., being buried alive), and the scroll was buried with him to prevent further misuse.

By the way, I don't know of any examples of live mummification as a form of execution in ancient Egypt. They had plenty of gruesome ways of killing people, but that wasn't one of them as far as I know. Unfortunately, these mummy movies have created a modern misconception of mummification as a form of punishment, which it wasn't.

Helen eventually goes home, dazed, disturbed and frightened, and finds Frank waiting for her.

Helen: "Oh god, I'm terrified and I'm losing my grip on reality! Help me!"

Frank: *silent fist pump*

Dr. Muller has figured out what's going on by now and decides it's best to let things run their course. Next time Imhotep calls, Helen must go to him. Naturally, Frank ignores everything that Dr. Muller has told him and tries to protect Helen by taking off the Isis amulet and hanging it on her door. I'm sure you can guess how well that works out.

Oh, Frank.

So Helen goes back to the museum, where Imhotep has broken in and killed the guards. He's set up an impromptu embalming workshop and sacrificial altar in the Ankhesenamun exhibit.

He destroys Ankhesenamun's mummy (guess she won't be needing that old thing anymore) and tells her that he's going to, uh . . . kill her, so that she can live forever. Well, okay. I guess. Understandably, Helen/Ankhesenamun freaks out at this point. Imhotep manages to temporarily subdue her, but she eventually gets off the altar and begins praying to Isis for assistance.

Meanwhile, Frank has revived, and he and Dr. Muller rush to the museum, where they see all the mummy smoke billowing out of the chimney. Ew. PS, why is there a fireplace in the middle of the gallery?

Anyway, our two heroes arrive just in the nick of time . . .


. . . to stand there helplessly while Ankhesenamun invokes the protective magic of Isis. Luckily for (almost) everyone involved, Imhotep moves really, really slowly. Isis zaps Imhotep and he crumbles into a pile of dust and bones, and Frank rushes to Helen's side.

"Thank God I saved you!"

The End! Let's see if they repeat the credits. Yep, here we go:

Ah, that was a good cast, and actually a darn good movie. I only had a few major compla--

Hey, wait a minute. Go back. "The Saxon Warrior"? What Saxon warrior? Do they mean this kind of Saxon? I don't remember any Saxons in this movie. Why would there be any Saxons in this movie? Is this from some scene that got cut out? If so, what the hell would the context have been?

Huh.

The Mummy, Part III

Oh, man, have I ever neglected this blog. I guess I really needed some time to recover from Jack Hunter. For those of you waiting with bated breath to hear more about that particular atrocity, don't worry -- I’ll get back to it. Eventually. I may have to get totally soused first, but I will do it. Meanwhile, let’s return to some relatively good (and infinitely more palatable) Egyptology.

Aaaah, that's better.

When I left off, we had just been introduced to Helen Grosvenor. Thanks to a couple of convenient plot point dispensing Englishmen, we know that she’s half Egyptian and that her father (“English, of course!”) is the governor of Sudan. She’s a patient of Dr. Muller (Is he an MD? A psychologist? What is he treating her for, anyway? Why does he also have all this knowledge of ancient Egyptian magical practice? What’s this guy’s deal?). She’s obsessed with ancient Egypt and scornful of all things modern. She's conveniently living with Dr. Muller and his wife in Cairo.

Meanwhile, Imhotep is still hanging out at the museum, where he meets Sir Joseph for the first time. Sir Joseph is delighted to meet the man who led the BRITISH MUSEUM FIELD FORCE (aka Frank) to the tomb of Ankhesenamun, and is eager to show him some hospitality.

But Imhotep does not appreciate Sir Joseph getting all up in his personal space. "I dislike to be touched. An eastern prejudice," he explains. Which . . . really doesn't make a lot of sense. The real reason, of course, is that he's still kind of crumbly.

They hang out for a few minutes in Sir Joseph's office, but Imhotep isn't feeling especially sociable. It doesn't help when Frank comes in and mopes at him. Imhotep takes off, and Frank continues to mope.

"Friggin' Cairo Museum, man! What's the point of finding all that treasure and shit if they won't let us keep it?"

Sir Joseph reminds his son that archaeology is about "science, not looting." Once again, thank you, Sir Joseph.

Meanwhile, Imhotep camps out in the museum with the Scroll of Thoth and starts reciting the spells, presumably with the idea of resurrecting the mummy of Ankhesenamun. Instead, he ends up summoning Helen, who is (of course) Ankhesenamun reincarnated. She wanders off in a daze, catches a cab to the museum, and ends up passing out at the front door when she can't get in. Fortunately, Frank is on the scene, and he scoops her up and carries her home. She tosses and turns on the Whemples' couch, "speaking ancient Egyptian."

And by "speaking ancient Egyptian", I mean listing off the names of various pharaohs. Seriously.

Then she wakes up to Frank, the smooth operator.

"Durr, hi, I'm Frank! I'm an Egyptologist, but I don't really like it!"

"Did you know I found a girl mummy? She was really hot. You look just like her!"

"Let's do it."

Meanwhile, Dr. Muller is trying to convince Sir Joseph that Ardath Bey is the missing mummy, and that he should burn the Scroll of Thoth. Sir Joseph is not keen on the idea of burning a rare Egyptian magical text (thank you, Sir Joseph!). They call Frank in for a consult, but he's too busy moping about being cockblocked by the old farts to contribute much to the discussion.

Then Imhotep shows up and immediately starts putting the moves on Helen.

Frank, sensing that another dude is moving in on his love interest, springs into action.

Wait a minute, WTF is that?! Is that a giant canopic jar? I think it is! Ahahaha, that's awesome! That must be one hell of a liver in there. And while we're on the subject of WTFery:

WTF is this? It looks like Taweret with a lion head and . . . hooves?

Anyway, Dr. Muller confronts Imhotep and shows him the partial transcription of the scroll that Goofy Assistant made ten years earlier:

Those are real Egyptian words. They just . . . don't particularly make sense strung together like that. Imhotep claims he can't read the glyphs because they are "predynastic". Um, no. No, they are not.

Imhotep pretty quickly admits to being the mummy, and then takes off after dropping a few threats. Sir Joseph decides it would probably be best to burn the scroll after all, and is in the process of putting it in the fireplace when Imhotep uses his magic jacuzzi of evil sendings to give the poor old fellow a heart attack.

Aw, Sir Joseph. You were the closest thing to a legit Egyptologist in this movie. *takes hat off*

That's it for tonight. I'll be back with the fourth (and final?) part tomorrow!

A Little Perspective

Okay. So you remember how I lovingly called Frank Whemple a doofus and an asshat in the last segment of my Mummy review? How I suggested that he was a less-than-ideal representation of an Egyptologist, and maybe a bit shallow? Well, I hereby offer my humblest apologies, Frank Whemple. Things have been put in perspective for me. I just watched . . . Jack Hunter: The Quest for Akhenaten's Tomb.

I . . . I am honestly struggling to put this into words.

I already let on that The Mummy actually has fairly decent Egyptology in it, in addition to just being a good movie. Well, in comparison to the movie I just watched, it is a towering exemplar of meticulous scholarly research. Frank Whemple may be a bit vapid, but I can at least honestly say he is charming. Compared to the . . . . uh . . . "protagonist" of JH:TQFAT, he is a paragon of scholarly integrity and dashing heroism.

Is The Mummy sometimes less than tasteful in its portrayal of the modern Egyptian people and their culture? Yes. No, the time period in which The Mummy was made does not really excuse this. But compared to JH:TQFAT, the portrayal of Egyptians in The Mummy seems downright progressive.

How about the portrayal of women? Helen Grosvenor/Ankhesenamun was decidedly her own person. In fact, this is one of her defining characteristics. She doesn't let anyone push her around . . . including, in the end, Imhotep, who is controlling her with fucking magic. The women in JH:TQFAT are completely driven by their desire for the . . . no. I can't use the word "hero". The "protagonist".

I . . . I have no words.

I'm not ready to tackle this one fully yet. I have to go back to The Mummy first. I need to cleanse my brain with its soothing awesomeness and the sometimes misguided, but often surprisingly well-executed attempts at Egyptological authenticity. I LOVE YOU, THE MUMMY!

*sobs quietly in a corner*

The Mummy (1932), Part II

It's 1932. The British Museum is at it again. Apparently their operation has gotten a little swankier since 1921. The sign on their dig house is way more pimped out. Enter our blandly handsome hero, Frank!

Frank, as it turns out, is actually Sir Joseph's son. He's following in his father's footsteps, but he doesn't really seem to share his father's enthusiasm for the scholarly aspects of Egyptology. As we'll soon see, he's a lot more interested in finding cool stuff and scoring chicks.

Frank and his buddy Dr. Pearson are just wrapping up their field season. They are disappointed. Apparently they didn't find many shiny things. Just a bunch of stupid potsherds and stuff. Not like in the good old days, when there was less competition for the good looting spo-- er, excavation sites.

The doc starts talking about that strange case ten years ago, when that Oxford kid on Sir Joseph's dig died. Frank is pretty sure he died of boredom. Archaeology, man. What a drag.

We're just hearing about how poor old Goofy Assistant "died laughing -- in a straight jacket!" and Sir Joseph Whemple swore never to dig in Egypt again, when a knock sounds on the door. Enter one of the most awesome villains in monster movie history:

Whoa, he's looking a lot better than he did last time we saw him. Apparently he's been moisturizing.

It's immediately clear that this is not one of those stereotypical horror-movie mummies of the groaning and bandage-dragging variety. Why is that the image that everyone thinks of, anyway? It's like how Boris Karloff's subtle and tragic Frankenstein's monster has not impressed himself on the collective consciousness the same way as his stiff-limbed, expressionless successors have. Weird.

Anyway, this mummy is erudite, quietly dignified, and patient. He's been biding his time for the last ten years, adopting a new identity, learning English (and presumably Arabic as well), and getting less crusty-looking. He's come bearing a clue for these two bored and desperate doofuses that will lead them to "the most sensational find since the tomb of Tutankhamun" -- the tomb of the princess Ankhesenamun. (That's the daughter of Akhenaten and wife of Tutankhamun, by the way. She's also the granddaughter of Amenhotep III, who has apparently been conflated with his son. Hey, at least they're all from the same general time period!)

Frank is surprised that Ardath Bey (as Imhotep is calling himself) is so eager to give up this sensational find to someone else. The mummy explains that Egyptians are not allowed to excavate the tombs of their ancient forbears -- "only foreign museums" have that privilege. Hmmm. I'm sure that would come as a surprise to the various Egyptian archaeologists who were active at the time. To name just one, Selim Hassan was, that very year, busy excavating 32 newly discovered mastaba tombs at Giza. Whoops!

But Frank and his colleague buy Imhotep's story. The next day, they're hanging out under an umbrella, smoking pipes and watching their team of Egyptian workmen do clearance at the spot Imhotep indicated to them. No wonder you two asshats are so bored. You're not doing anything!

(The scenery here looks fairly convincing, by the way, but apparently it's all shot in California. I guess those awesome shots of Deir el Bahri were stock footage, after all. Ah well.)

But wait, someone has found something! Dr. Pearson's going to have to peel his sweaty ass off of that stool and go take a closer look. It's a hard life, I tell ya.

They've uncovered a step! Dr. Pearson promises the workers "double baksheesh" if they'll dig even faster. Groan.

In no time, the workmen have cleared away the debris and revealed the still-sealed door of the intact tomb:

We're told it's sealed with the name of Ankhesenamun, but it looks suspiciously like Tutankhamun, from what I can see of it in the next shot. The other one has the four sons of Horus and some . . . stuff under them that I can't make out. Frank calls it the "seal of the Seven Jackals." Well, the official necropolis seal had a jackal on it, and nine bound captives. They are awestruck! This tomb hasn't been opened since the priests sealed it "3700 years ago." Hmm. That's a few centuries early for the late 18th Dynasty, but okay. They're in the right millennium. I'll take what I can get.

The news is sensational! Sir Joseph Whemple even decides to come back to Egypt to supervise the operation. Note that the "princess" pictured here is King Tut. Ooh, now we get more interesting stock footage. This time, it's the Cairo Museum. Then we get this, which is not stock footage:

Oh dear. Now I see where they got the "3700 years ago" thing. Someone swapped a three and a seven when they were looking up dates. D'oh! I also like that Frank and Dr. Pearson are the BRITISH MUSEUM FIELD FORCE.

We get a quick look at some of Ankhesenamun (or should I say Anck-es-en-Amon)'s funerary equipment. It's not awful, I guess, although this sarcophagus is pretty odd looking:

And now we get our first major clue to what this is all about:

Awww.

Now we see the princess's actual coffin, which is not, thankfully, a copy of King Tut:

That's . . . not too terrible, I guess, although it doesn't scream 18th Dynasty royal coffin to me. We get a quick pan across a stylized landscape of modern Cairo, and then:

Enter our babe du jour. GEE, I WONDER WHAT IS BEING HINTED AT HERE.

Actually, one of the things I love about this movie is how much information it manages to convey in a few simple, dialogue-free shots. I think that was an art left over from the silent era that many filmmakers forgot in the decades that followed.

Whew, time to take a break. Part III coming soon!

Not So Bad Egyptology: The Mummy (1932), Part I

Okay, I have plenty of atrocious material to work with here, so let's start with a classic to cleanse the palette before we move on to the really hardcore stuff. I present to you Carl Laemmle's The Mummy, starring Boris Karloff (billed as "KARLOFF THE UNCANNY" in some of the promotional materials -- how awesome is that?) and Zita Johann, along with David Manners, Edward Van Sloan (best known for his role as Van Helsing in Universal Studios' Dracula), and Arthur Byron.

Let me say this right off the bat -- I love this movie. Like most of the classic Universal monster movies, it's dripping with atmosphere. The "monster" of this film is a delightfully complex character. The level of camp is perfect. The musical score is haunting. And you know what? All things considered, the Egyptology is not that bad.

We're already off to a good start with the title cards:

We see lovingly detailed little model of the Giza plateau, with pyramids and sphinx -- one of the most instantly recognizable images of Ancient Egypt. At the time this movie came out, work was underway to excavate the sphinx, which had been partially buried under sand for thousands of years. The model shows the sphinx still shrouded in sand up to the chest. The camera pans around behind the pyramids to reveal the punchline to the text in the image above:

Now, that's just awesome. But then!

Do you see what's wrong with this picture? No? Take a closer look. The hieroglyphs are upside-down. I have seen this movie far more times than I can count. How did I not notice this until now? For bonus hilarity, check out the cartouche in the second register there. It's flat on both ends, which is admittedly kind of adorable, but they're supposed to look like this. You may notice that the example I just linked has one of the same symbols in it as our double-ended cartouche. That's the sign ms (as in Ra-mes-ses, or, in the case of the linked example, Thoth-mes). I'm not sure what the other sign in there is supposed to be. A heqa scepter? Who knows. I've already spent way too much time analyzing this one frame, and there's still a whole movie to watch.

Okay, I'll let the rest of the credits pass in peace. They're playing that beautiful eerie music from Swan Lake, which was also the opening music for Dracula. Man, I love that.

Back-story time! That's actually a pretty nice copy of a scene from the Book of the Dead, probably the Papyrus of Ani, specifically. Although this is not the "Scroll of Thoth", it is a magical/religious text that has to do with death, rebirth, and negotiating the afterlife, so they were at least in the right genre. And they didn't totally pull the Scroll of Thoth out of their asses, either. The Scroll of Thoth (and many of the story elements of this movie) comes from a Demotic literary text that also inspired Mika Waltari's The Egyptian (don't worry, you'll hear more about that one later). It's one of the stories of Setna Khaemwaset, a son of Ramesses II who became a legendary figure in the centuries after his death. Anyway, I'm off on another tangent. Let's see what happens next!

Next we get a supposed excerpt from the scroll, telling us that "Death is but the doorway to new life -- We live today, we shall live again (. . .)" Okay, that's not entirely at odds with Egyptian beliefs, although they didn't really believe in reincarnation in the way that it's presented in this movie.

We start with some gorgeous establishing shots of Deir el Bahri. I don't know how much of this is stock footage and how much of this movie was actually shot in Egypt, but it's really cool to see some footage of actual locations. A lot of the movies I'm going to talk about here won't have that.

It's 1921, and the British Museum has a field expedition going . . . presumably on the west bank of Luxor. They've made an interesting find: a mummy buried in an intentionally damaged coffin, with a mysterious chest. Our stuffy, scientific-minded scholar, Sir Joseph Whemple (Arthur Byron), is trying to explain to his goofy young assistant (Bramwell Fletcher, in a performance worthy of Universal's usual go-to demented character actor, Dwight Frye) that the little finds are often actually the most important, and that archeology is not about sensation and treasure hunting. Thank you, Sir Joseph Whemple!

But this is actually good Egyptology. I'm getting off-topic here! They establish that the mummy was buried alive, and that his coffin was defaced to remove the protective spells that would help him enter the afterlife. Okay, sure. Of course, if the Ancient Egyptians really had it in for someone, they probably wouldn't have bothered to wrap him up and stick him in a nice coffin. But then we wouldn't have a mummy, so I guess I'll give them that one. The mummy himself looks fantastic -- he actually bears a striking resemblance to the mummy of Ramesses III. Amazingly, the bit of text in his coffin that they read off actually says something (and it's not that far off from what Goofy Assistant tells us it says):

He reads "Imhotep, high priest of the temple of the sun at Karnak." It actually says "Imhotep, high priest of the temple (Hwt-nTr)" before it gets cut off. Not bad at all! But the hieroglyphs are backwards. Oops. Can't have everything, I suppose. Also, anyone trying to screw this guy over in the afterlife would not have left that information intact. Destruction of the name was one of the most damning things you could do to a person, along with destruction of the body.

Goofy Assistant speculates that he "got too gay with the vestal virgins in the temple". Van Hels-- er, Professor Muller agrees that this is a possibility. He explains that the virginal priestesses of Isis were daughters of the reigning pharaoh, and any hanky-panky would indeed have been frowned upon. This is . . . a somewhat garbled representation of what was going on in the late New Kingdom and especially in the Third Intermediate Period, when daughters of the king were in fact routinely installed as high priestesses of Amun at Karnak. Their celibacy is disputed by Egyptologists to this day. But our Imhotep, despite being named after a famous figure from the Old Kingdom, is supposed to hail from the 18th Dynasty (early New Kingdom), which is a little early for the situation that they are getting at here.

But Goofy Assistant has had enough of this historical background stuff. He wants to get into that box! It probably has shiny things in it!

That's right, fellas. You just tear apart that ancient linen like it's wrapping paper on Christmas morning. DON'T CHECK IT FOR DOCKETS OR TRY TO CONSERVE IT OR ANYTHING. *sobs*

Okay, the next part will cheer me up. This right here is my favorite.

"The unbroken seals of the pharaoh Amenophis!" exclaims Sir Joseph. (It becomes clear later in the movie the Amenophis in question is Amenhotep III.) Close, Sir Joseph, but no cigar! That top cartouche says "Akhenaten". You know, Amenophis' son. The one who changed his name and ran off and started a crazy new pseudo-monotheistic religion. The cartouche underneath says Nefer-kheper . . . something. I don't know what those last two signs are supposed to be. It should be Neferkheperure, if they were going to commit to this Akhenaten thing.

There's another box inside, with a curse on it (surprise!) that promises "eternal punishment" to anyone who opens the box. They show us a pretty nice shot of the glyphs as they read them, but I'm sad to report that these ones don't actually seem to say anything. Anyway, the cursed nesting boxes containing the magical scroll are an element right out of the story of Setna. For that matter, so is the living mummy. That's pretty cool.

Of course the wise and experienced older guys are completely freaked out by this curse, but Goofy Assistant is all raring to go. Sir Joseph doesn't really believe in the curse, but Dr. Muller, the resident occult expert, is all of a twitter. The older two issue a strict "don't touch" and head outside to talk it over, leaving G. A. alone with the box. I'm sure you can't imagine what happens next.

Yup.

This is actually, without a doubt, one of the most delicious scenes in early horror movie history. It's totally silent except for the soft hiss of the old film and the quiet sounds that G. A. makes as he goes about his work. No dialogue except for his almost inaudible murmuring as he translates the spell. And then, of course, his hysterical laughter when the mummy walks away with the scroll, trailing his dusty bandages behind him. The mummy himself is off-screen for most of this scene, although we see him open his eyes and we see his hand on the scroll.

The others hear the shrieks of laughter and come to see what's happened:

"H-he-he . . . went for a little walk! You should've seen his face! AHAHAHAHAHA!"

Man, I love Goofy Assistant. I kind of wish he was the main character.

The mummy and scroll are missing, the assistant has gone completely batshit, and there is a single dusty hand-print on the work table. A look of horror dawns on Sir Joseph's face, and we fade to black.

End of Act I, and Part I of this review. Stay tuned!

Introduction

Ah, Egyptology. For historical and aesthetic reasons, it's one of the most glamorous, romanticized, and commonly misunderstood fields in the humanities. Ancient Egypt has long been a fixture in Western pop culture. And when Egyptology and pop culture collide, as they so often do, the results are often hilarious. Sometimes this hilarity is intentional (see Bubba Ho-Tep). Other times . . . not so much.

This blog is about Bad Egyptology in popular culture: hilarious or just plain painful misconceptions and misrepresentations of Ancient Egypt and the practice of Egyptology in popular film, art, and literature. I won't be talking about bad scholarly Egyptology here. Sure, it happens, but that's not what this blog is about. So sit back and enjoy . . . this should be fun.