Introduction
Public perception of archaeology and what archaeologists do can be traced in popular culture — books and more specifically movies. Examining three versions of the same film, The Mummy, can give us a glimpse of how the public’s view of archaeologists and their activities has changed over the course of the last century. We also get a glimpse of some of the anxieties that our recent ancestors had about their relationship with a changing world when we look at these films.
The film we’re looking at, The Mummy, has been made three times since the original film was made in 1932. Has the depiction of archaeology as an art and a science become more or less accurate as time has gone by? Archaeology has gone through many changes in that time, can the same be said of the depiction of archaeology in film?
All three films share a basic plot. An ancient Egyptian priest is buried alive as punishment for a crime that combines forbidden love and sacrilege. Millenia later the priest’s mummy is discovered, and he is revived by the reading of a sacred text. What happens next is different in each of the films as is each films depiction of the people involved the resurrection of the mummy.
The Mummy (1932)
This film is one of the classics of American cinema. It opens in Egypt in 1921 at an archaeological excavation that is labeled as belonging to the British Museum. Inside a tent two men work at a table while another man is examining a mummy in a coffin. The men examine a box that they believe may contain “The Scroll of Thoth.” Doctor Muller, an occultist, encourages the other men, Sir Joseph Whemple and Ralph Norton, who are archaeologists, to rebury the box because it is inscribed with a curse. When Wemple and Muller step outside to discuss the issue, Norton opens the box and opens the scroll. He reads the scroll aloud, but so quietly the viewer can not hear the words. The mummy opens his eyes.
Ten years later a mysterious stranger approaches two different archaeologists, one of whom is Frank, the son of Joseph Whemple, and offers to lead them to the lost tomb of Princess Ankhesenamun. This leads to the discovery of a fantastic tomb filled with treasure. The mysterious stranger, Ardath Bey, is actually the resurrected mummy, Imhotep, and he is seeking to resurrect his lost love, Ankhesenamun, who is currently reincarnated as Helen Grosvenor. Helen is a patient of Doctor Muller, the occultist from the opening scene of the film. Imhotep uses magic to awaken Helen to her past life and plans to kill her so he can resurrect her as one of the living dead like he is. Frank and Doctor Muller are unable to stop Imhotep, but Helene prays to the goddess Isis, who destroys the scroll of Thoth and Imhotep.
The Archaeology and History
The Mummy does a good, but not perfect, job of depicting the archaeology, folklore and history of Egypt. The archaeologists are depicted as sincere seekers of knowledge rather than treasure hunters and looters. The discoveries that they make are displayed in the Cairo Museum rather than being stolen away to England, although one character complains about not being able to take the artifacts back to England.
The names of the Egyptians are names of known ancient Egyptians (though definitely different characters from the ancient Egyptians who we know had those names!) and the gods named in the movie are actual Egyptian gods, Isis, Osiris, Anubis and Thoth (British Museum). The magic scroll, The Scroll of Thoth, appears to be a stand-in for The Egyptian Book of the Dead, though The Book of the Dead was not a secret book of magic for a sorcerers, but a guidebook to the afterlife that was published in scrolls, on the walls of tombs and even on coffins (Parsons).
The first scene of the movie demonstrates archaeological practice as Sir Joseph Whemple and Ralph Norton are engaged in cataloging the days finds, and when Ralph Norton complains that the artifacts they are cataloguing won’t win them any medals from the British Museum, Sir Joseph communicates the modern ethos of archaeology to Ralph and the audience quickly and effectively by chiding, “Much more is learned by studying brown bits of pottery than from all the sensational finds.” Sir Joseph’s insistence on using a method to catalog their finds seems to have been taken right from Flinders Petrie (Renfrew 21).
The Mummy misses accurately depicting archaeology in the excavation scenes that follow Imhotep’s revelation of the tomb of Ankhesenamun. The digging process seems hurried and careless — workmen are moving baskets of earth hurriedly away from the site. There doesn’t seem to be any effort to sift the dirt for small artifacts or ecofacts, only a rush too discover the tomb as quickly as possible. This depiction may have been the result of a lack of knowledge of archaeology on the filmmaker’s part or even just a lack of budget to show the actual complexity of a large scale excavation.
The Mummy (1959)
In the 1950s Hammer Films in England licensed the rights to remake Universal Pictures classic horror films, beginning with Frankenstein and Dracula in 1957 and 1958, finally remaking The Mummy in 1959.
The film opens in 1895 at an archaeological dig at a site that appears to be at an oasis in the desert. Stephen Banning and Joseph Whemple are leading the excavation at what they hope is the tomb of Princess Ananka, high priestess of the god Karnak. Stephen’s son John is restricted to his bed because of a broken leg. The archaeologists find the tomb, but before they can enter an Egyptian named Mehemet Bey approaches them and asks them to abandon the dig rather than commit sacrilege by disturbing the dead. Stephen Banning arrogantly dismisses Bey telling him that they have all the permits they need to open the tomb. Bey tells the archaeologists that they should remember the Egyptian curse, “He who robs the tombs of Egypt dies.”
Banning and Whemple enter the tomb which is filled with burial goods and contains a large sarcophagus. After confirming that the burial is that of Ananka, Whemple leaves to tell John Banning the good news. Stephen Banning opens a jar and finds a scroll, “The Scroll of Life,” inside. Banning reads the scroll and a moment later begins babbling and screaming.
Three years later in England Mehemet Bey arrives with the living mummy, Kharis, who was restored to life when the scroll was read by Stephen Banning. At Bey’s command, Kharis begins killing the archaeologists who opened Ananka’s tomb. Bey’s plans go awry when John Banning’s wife, Isobel turns out to be the double/reincarnation of Ananka. Kharis is more interested in taking Ananka than fulfilling the curse and kills Bey after he tells Kharis to kill Isobel. Isobel tells Kharis to release her and he does just before sinking into a swamp while clutching the Scroll of Life.
The Archaeology and History
This version of The Mummy does not do as good a job of depicting archaeology as the 1932 version did, but there are some good things. The first that is being removed from the dig site is being sifted by the excavators and the archaeologists are shown using surveying equipment so they can track where the artifacts they find are located.
Problems appear after the tomb is breached. The archaeologists enter the tomb and begin moving items without any attempt to sketch or photograph the scene. Artifacts are removed from the tomb and transported to England for display there. The archaeologists in this film are much less sympathetic than the archaeologists in the 1932 film — they are much closer to despoilers of the past than they are to serious scientific researchers — given the time when this set is set this may be a realistic depiction. The reputation of the British Museum and its Egyptology Director, Wallace Budge, was not good. Forward thinking archaeologists like Flinders Petrie were horrified by the acquisitiveness of the British Museum (Luckhurst 262).
The real folklore, religion and mythology of Ancient Egypt is nowhere to be found in this film. The real gods are replaced with a reference to a god named Karnak, a name that is a place name in Ancient Egypt but definitely not the name of one of the gods. Authentic Egyptian names like Imhotep are gone from this version and replaced by names from another series of Universal mummy films from the 1940s.
You have to wonder what reason Hammer had for that choice.
The Mummy (1999)
And so we come to the most recent remake of the movie, Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy starring Brendan Frasier. This film opens in Ancient Egypt where Imhotep, a priest, and Anck-as-namun, concubine of the pharaoh, conspire to murder the king so they can live freely. Anck-as-namun is captured and executed for the crime. When Imhotep attempts to restore life to his dead lover using magic from The Black Book of the Dead, he is captured and buried alive covered by scarab beetles that will consume him. He is cursed to living death and the curse is that if he is released from his grave he will be a flesh eater and carrier of the ten plagues of Egypt.
Now the story moves three thousand years into the future where a battle rages among ruins in the desert. A mercenary, Rick O’Connell, is fighting an unknown (but presumably) Bedouin army there. While the battle rages an unknown group of horsemen watch from the bluffs above. The battle ends when the Bedouins flee for no reason and O’Connell finds himself in the center some kind of supernatural event that causes a man’s screaming face to appear in the desert sands.
Next we move to Cairo. There Evelyn Carnahan, a librarian, works in the stacks of a museum library and dreams of finding the legendary Golden Book of the Living. Her wastrel brother, Jonathan, is a drunk and a looter of antiquities. The two decide to hunt for the book in a storied ruin, Hamunaptra. They bribe a prison warden to release Rick O’Connell who escaped the ruins (Hamunaptra) and desert only to be imprisoned under a sentence of death.
On the way to the ruins the trio meet another group looking to find treasure in the same area. This group is made up of Americans accompanied by an English archaeologist. Both groups are attacked by the mysterious horsemen from earlier in the film but eventually they reach the lost ruin.
Evelyn and her group find the body of Imhotep while the Americans read the incantation that restores life to Imhotep and activates his curse. Both groups flee to Cairo with Imhotep in pursuit. He takes the flesh from the Americans to restore his own withered flesh to life and then takes Evelyn back to the ruins so that Anck-as-namun can be restored to life in Evelyn’s body. Evelyn’s party follows and battles Imhotep until they defeat him using magic from The Golden Book of Life. The ruin collapses around them as Evelyn and her group barely manage to escape. As they ride away on camelback we see that O’Connell’s saddlebags are filled with the fantastic golden artifacts of Hamunaptra.
The Archaeology and History
Archaeology is barely present in this version of The Mummy. There is only one character who is referred to as an archaeologist or Egyptologist and he is a minor character accompanying the American treasure hunters. This movie is a straight forward treasure hunt adventure story set in Egypt with the Mummy story grafted on to add a taste of horror as the frosting on the cake. There is much more of Indiana Jones / Tomb Raider / Pulp adventure tale in this version of the story than in any other mummy film.
We see the return of authentic Egyptian names and gods in this version of The Mummy, and that at least is an improvement. You may also notice the last name of Evelyn and her brother, Carnahan is at least superficially similar to the name of Lord Carnarvan — the sponsor of the excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb.
Conclusions
All three movies share one major flaw from the perspective of archaeology and egyptology (or biology for that matter):
If Imhotep (or Kharis) was buried alive then it is very unlikely that there would be anything left of his body after 3000 years.
The Ancient Egyptians developed the process of mummification to preserve the bodies of the dead (Gashe 31). Without that process Imhotep or Kharis would have likely decomposed to skeleton or dust after that time.
All three movies are based on the idea of a curse as well. While the Egyptians probably did have curses (it seems that all people like to have a way to curse their enemies) it seems likely that the lore of the curse has it’s origin in English anxieties of the Victorian and Edwardian periods. In the Archaeological Fantasies podcast titled “Unlucky Mummies and Wonderful Things,” archaeologist Jeb Card speculates that the mummy’s curse has its origin in English anxiety about a collapsing empire and guilt over an an empire that was built on the backs of other people. When your world wide empire is collapsing, what kind of revenge will the people whose heritage and land you stole want?
This year Universal Pictures announced yet another remake of The Mummy, this time starring Tom Cruise, coming in 2017. How will archaeology fare in this latest remake?
Like any archaeology story only time will tell.