- When the scarabs are poured over Imhotep, they appear to begin devouring him gradually, a fact which Evelyn later confirms, stating that the beetles devoured a corpse "very slowly." However, whenever the scarabs devour anyone else later on in the film, they do so almost instantaneously.
- At that point they're not just bugs anymore, they're one of the horrible curses that Imhotep is causing with his existence.
- Also, you have to assume that they've got to chew through his many layers of bandages first...
- When they're eating a corpse, the killer scarabs are free to take their time. When they're making one, they don't bother to swallow, just chew the person up as fast as possible so their prey won't escape.
- Except, Imhotep wasn't quite yet a corpse at that point, but again, they did have to chew through his bandages.
- Also, Imhotep's scarabs could have been fed beforehand thus making them free to take their time, with the rest of them being hungry for fresh meat in the present day. Or maybe a different, more aggressive breed, possibly motivated by Imhotep's curse.
- In relation to the last headscratcher... Why wasn't Imhotep a pile of bones when Evelyn, Rick and Jonathan opened the sarcophagus? He'd been there for 3000 years with many scarabs eating his corpse. They would leave almost nothing but some bones.
- The Hom Dai curse itself gives him immortality, and the novelization had details about the curse. The scarabs ate Imhotep, but he became too hungry that he ate them, but they'd devour him again... Forever.
- Scarabs were not eating his corpse for 3000 years since Evy showed their remains and we see no living scarabs escaping his coffin. Imhotep also killed at least some of them as his habit of chewing them up implies. It is possible that Imhotep would naturally regenerate up to a certain point even without the Book of the Dead, only for the new generation of scarabs to be born/ressurected within his remains to eat him back into his skeleton form; the partial regeneration might also be the in-universe explanation for Imhotep's skeleton change from black to brown.
- Did Imhotep really die in those 3000 years? Ardeth (the narrator) says that he would not die. So, if the curse made him immortal, why he is apparently dead in his sarcophagus? In addition, the scarabs had died as they were simply skeletons in the sarcophagus. And Imhotep awakened due to a spell from the Book of the Dead, an artifact that can resurrect the dead. He was dead, so how does that work exactly?
- Imhotep simply lacked the ability to move under his own power prior to Evy reading from the Book of the Dead. His soul was stuck inside his own body no matter what, but his corpse was eventually damaged to the point that he was unable to do anything with it. The spell Evy read apparently just gave Imhotep the ability to move his body again, since no other mummy became active; in Mummy Returns the resurrection ritual reanimated every mummy in the museum, on the other hand.
- Who was the voice in Anubis's statue at Hamunaptra that threatens Rick in English? Was it Anubis himself or Imhotep?
- Can't be Imhotep because he neither understands English throughout the film nor has any reason to threaten Rick in the first place; he'd probably beg for help instead. It is probably Anubis since Imhotep being deliberately buried at the feet of the statue suggests that the Medjai thought it would provide some kind of divine ward.
- If Imhotep consumed the Americans' organs and fluids, why was he still a mummy under his human appearance? When Rick slashed his arm, he didn't bleed, and the flesh under his human skin was still mummified. No blood, no raw meat. Did he only consume their skin? What about such fluids as blood?
- His body was still warped by the Hom Dai. If Imhotep managed to remove it properly, and not by being made mortal then immediately killed afterwards, his body likely would have been as healthy as it appeared on the surface, since he fulfilled the condition to reconstitute it otherwise.
- Was Anck-su-namun cursed for killing the Pharaoh? In the original script it says that the two mummies fully resurrected (Imhotep and herself) would become the end of all things. Does the novelisation give us more information about this?
- In the film itself nothing suggests that Anck-su-namun was magically cursed (other than the fact that she can be halfway-resurrected as a mummy before Evie was about to be sacrificed, but still). The script and novelisation do promote the idea of her being damned post-mortem, with Imhotep being forced to do the deed to prevent the Medjai's suspicions (he had the knowledge to undo the spells though).
- Didn't the guy Imhotep took his new eyes from wear glasses, because he had ''really bad' eyesight?
- Word of God (the DVD commentary) states that Imhotep took Burns' eyes literally. His resulting imperfect eyesight is what makes him initially believe that Evy is Anck-su-namun.
- It obviously gets better as he regenerates fully, since the next time they meet he seems to be able to tell she's someone else.
- It's also kinda funny, since the entire second half of the movie with Imhotep chasing Evy is because of one guy's myopia.
- Not only that, but it affects his aim as well, hence why his "sand wall" trick doesn't kill the heroes.
- That's more Evy distracting his spell with a kiss, he's fully regenerated by that point.
- Wait a minute... how does Imhotep get control over the 10 plagues that were set on Egypt? Didn't another God from another religion send them?
- I haven't watched it in detail in a while, but I didn't count ten, and not in the biblical order. The Plagues of Moses are 1) water into blood 2) frogs 3) lice 4) wild animals that harm livestock (probably flies) 5) dead livestock 6) boils 7) hail and fire 8) locusts 9) darkness and 10) death of the firstborns. Imhotep brings 1, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9. Now, anything that harms livestock is devastating to the people of Egypt but not to our heroes (a cow dying is not as dramatic to an audience as FIRE FROM THE SKIES) and it would be hard to portray the death of the firstborns since, at this point, none of our characters have children. As for the God of another religion, this is also the God that the Muslims (and therefore the Medjai) believe in. The Medjai have first hand proof that the Egyptian gods exist, so it follows that to believe in Allah they must also have some kind of proof he exists too, which means Allah/YHWH/God/Whatever you want to call them is knocking about simultaneously with Anubis and Ra and the rest of the pantheon and they're probably ALL throwing curses at whoever is stupid enough to let Imhotep loose...
- There were secret arts known to some of the people in Egypt capable of replicating the effects of some of the plagues. In the Book of Exodus Pharaoh's chief priests and advisers were able to replicate some of the plagues (see this, too, in the animated Prince Of Egypt film), but failed when they reached the gnats. That, or God was using the plagues as a big warning sign across Egypt to let people (including the Medjai and the main characters) know Imohtep was reanimated and they needed to put him down.
- Maybe these were originally Egyptian curses, and God used them to add weight to Moses' demands. This way he would say: "You know those huge-ass curses your people are so afraid of? Yeah, my boss can do those. And He doesn't even need to resurrect any dried-up mummy for that - I'll just snap my fingers, and He'll send the entire package your way. Think about that."
- Huh, the difference is that Imhotep can bring back the ten plagues on a global scale. The Hebrew god can do that too, but only punished Egypt.
- There's a theory that the 12 biblical plagues correspond to forces controlled by the ancient Egyptians' twelve most revered gods, as if the Hebrews' tales really were intentionally trolling the Egyptians' beliefs. If so, Imhotep may have come by those same powers as a legitimate product of that mythos.
- Why wouldn't the Medjai kill Rick in the beginnig? It's not like they were ok with him leaving - but Ardeth Bey says: "The desert will kill him." Why is he being so sadistic all of a sudden? Medjai are, at core, good and honorable people, Bey definitely is. Surely he would see fit to cut the guy down quickly rather than letting him wither from thirst and heat, and it's not like they couldn't have run him down easily.
- That would've taken some effort, since they were atop a huge cliff and Rick was down in the desert. They would have had to either ride down to kill him with a sword, or fire an ungodly amount of bullets at him. At the very least they didn't seem to be carrying long arms, so at best they'd have had handguns which would in no way have been capable of a killshot at that distance.
- Considering Ardeth later muses about Rick’s resilience (‘This one is strong...’) and the fact that his Medjai tattoo was there in the first movie, even if no attention was brought up to it, Bey may have believed Fate was at work and he wasn’t in a position to interfere. If Rick survived and made it back to civilization, then destiny clearly demanded it; if he was sincerely going to die in the desert, then Ardeth might’ve given him a mercy bullet.
- It's established early on that Evey speaks Ancient Egyptian. So why is it that later when Imhotep is speaking to her and asking her to come with him in exchange for sparing her friends, does she need Beni to translate Imhotep's speech into English?
- She doesn't — hell, she corrects him later. Beni is doing that because that's his job, and because nobody else there speaks Ancient Egyptian. He's not just speaking to Evey, he's making an ultimatum to her friends.
- Evey and Jonathan are half Egyptian? Evey tells Rick her father was an adventurer who married her mother who was an Egyptian. Presuming Evey and Jonathan are full siblings, that would be his mother too meaning they're half Egyptian.
- So your question is?
- Yes, they are half Egyptian.
- I know it is a religious thing, but why in the name of all things holy, would you ever use the Hom-Dai on anyone? If there's the chance that they were brought back, which happens in this film, and would have happened eventually anyway? Well then they are super strong, immortal and have the power of the 10 plagues, dude is basically a god, this is despite the fact that barring a person from the Egyptian afterlife is super easy in traditional lore. All you need to do is cut off a piece of them, such as a hand, and BAM barred from the afterlife, the Egyptian afterlife only like whole people, why go through the hassle of making a curse that makes the victim superpowered?
- The other Headscratchers page included a theory that the Egyptian gods made the curse that way to make sure it wouldn't get overused. That's a pretty good idea: it doesn't seem to be particularly difficult to perform (just gruesome), so if there wasn't a really good reason for people to stay away, it'd be done to every other criminal or miscreant. He also wasn't just barred from the afterlife - he was specifically said to suffer the entire time. Pretty nasty overall as long as no one woke him up, and even then the guys who used it on him probably figured they'd be long gone to the Field of Reeds.
- The ten plagues and superpowers are side effects of the curse. You want the victim to be barred from the afterlife and suffer for eternity? Well he'll be a demigod if he's ever woken up. And the thing is, we never have any idea how civilisation is going to evolve over the next thousand years. For all we knew, this knowledge was passed down for a while and then forgotten. The sarcophagus was carefully hidden in a sacred place that the average person at the time would know to stay away from.
- And possibly even the grave robbers would know to stay away, too, given the severity of the punishment.
- And maybe the curse was designed in such a way to punish anyone who tried to help the victim? The Americans who removed the sacred jars each got drained by Imhotep, and he specifically targeted Evey (the one who read from the book) as his sacrifice to bring Anuck-su-namun back. So if anyone felt sympathetic towards a victim of the curse and tried to bring them back, they'd have to deal with the consequences.
- And the gold book was kept in the same location. So clearly they had backups and safeguards in place just in case.
- To be fair, it took about 3000 years, collapse of Ancient Egyptian civilisation and an INCREDIBLE amount of luck for Imhotep to be released. The countermeasures were extensive and accounted for things Ancient Egyptians were familiar with. They simply couldn't predict that people way down the line would be so naive as to ignore numerous death curses/traps, written warnings, then deliberately open the ominous sarcophagus and leave a cursed mummy in the open unguarded, while reading the very spell to animate him aloud in the very same city (with all four chest victims also being nearby). Heck, how were they to predict that Imhotep would shamble upon the only victim who couldn't run away from him (then take from him the means of vision and communication)? And meanwhile Imhotep suffered for all that time.
- It still seems like way too much trouble to bother with compared to a simple execution. These people set up all these traps and made their descendants guard the site for all eternity just to make sure Imhotep never awakened. Seems like an awful lot of effort when they could've just regularly killed him and saved everyone the time and ancient government expense.
- Regarding "ancient government expense", if the idea is meant to be that the curse was performed on him in ultra secrecy (albeit with rumours and written warnings circulating thereafter), then you can basically think of the Medjai as performing black ops. Details of black ops missions can eventually come to light in years to come, after all. And even way back then the government of the day probably had an extensive fraction of it's budget apportioned to use for black ops (and also normal, visible operations, to help make an example of what happens to criminals) against severe crimes or even terrorist activities against heads of state (which this basically was, even though it unfolded as a crime of passion in the heat of the moment).
- Remember; to the Ancient Egyptians, the afterlife is absolute fact. Kill him and you are sending him to a glorious reward. If someone from his era wanted him to actually suffer, this is the way they have to do it.
- Yes, it would have been simpler to just torture and kill him through mundane means; Imhotep was unlikely to earn afterlife anyway. However, there are several reasons for the Hom-Dai. 1) He, the High Priest, killed the pharaoh, slept with pharaoh's wife, committed blasphemy by stealing and using the Book of the Dead and was indirectly responsible for the death of Nefertiri. He had to be punished so severely, that no one else would ever dare to do the same. 2) Hamunaptra, as we can see in the beginning, was guarded and filled with traps even before his imprisonment, so the actual effort spent on his containment may not necessarily have been that great. 3) At the time, had he managed to escape he would have been dealt with easily enough; all one needed was a cat and a short trip to the statue of Horus. It is only because of the fall of Ancient Egypt that Imhotep was able to rampage around with impunity. 4) Given the design of Imhotep related traps, perhaps his executioners hoped that whatever allies he still had would try to free him and kill themselves in the process. 5) The sweet, sweet revenge. 6) Guarding the ruins was likely not that horrible, just have a few scouts observe it from the distance, for the most part. Boring, but not quite the curse some assume it to be. Besides, there were other dangerous relics (and his mummified priest friends), so even without Imhotep the generations of Medjai would be observing, only now they had even more reasons to be vigilant. With that in mind, the Hom-Dai decision, as ignorant of the unpredictability of the future as it was, looks reasonable enough, although still not to be taken lightly.
- What is the point of the library scene at the start? Evie never shows such terrible clumsiness elsewhere in the film.
- You could argue that it's an Establishing Character Moment, not for Evie being clumsy, but impulsive. She sees the book that belongs on the other shelf, so rather than safely coming down the ladder and setting it up to put it in the right place, she does something impulsive without thinking it through - and that results in a big mess. Basically it shows that Evie's impatience and lack of forward thinking will sometimes result in disaster. She reads from the book out loud without considering the warnings from the Medjai. So the scene is Foreshadowing a character flaw that will come into play later in the movie.
- Also, clumsy? She balances atop an erect ladder like an acrobat!
- Also also, considering that responsibility for most of the disasters in the movie can be laid right at her feet, 'clumsy' is perhaps not a wholly unfair word to use for her. She's maybe not necessarily clumsy in a Charlie Chaplin sense, but she will go on to cause most of the disasters in the film.
- In the scene where Imhotep realises Beni can speak Hebrew and promises him riches while asking where the rest of the Sacred Jars are, where the heck did he pull them from at that moment? He didn't even have any reason to be carrying gold with him at that moment, and we can't even see him stashing the first jar anywhere on his corpse.
- Perhaps, he teleported them from the nearby treasury or conjured an illusion. He never actually gives the trinkets to Beni, only promises a reward for serving him.
- Or he was hiding both the gold and the shattered jar somewhere inside his body; the man clearly has enough empty space in him as is. As for why, he took some gold trinkets in case he needed to buy someone's loyalty or some items, just like he did with Beni and that "prince" attire. Also, that way he can use both arms to punch and choke people.
- Mr. Burns is one of the four victims Imhotep needs to restore him to his true form. So why does he initially only cut out his eyes and tongue rather than simply absorb him on the spot (which we learn with Henderson is almost instantaneous and takes much less time than cutting out his eyes and tongue.)
- Imhotep probably can't direct his regeneration towards specific body parts of his and seems to regenerate in reverse to the way the damage was done to him by scarabs and time (in other words, skeleton and muscles first). As such, his eyes and almost certainly his tongue (it was cut even before the sarcophagus) would likely be restored last. So he attempted to regain his sight and ability to talk, the latter of which would also allow him to engage in a small, but informative table talk with Mr. Burns (with Burns nodding or shaking his head?) before finishing his meal.
- Where the heck was Beni going at the end when he was trying to carry out a second bag of gold? It's obvious that he had to be the Plot Device to set off the trap mechanism for Hamunaptra to sink into the sand, but it's like after he picked up gold from the treasure room, he chose to go down a random hallway nowhere near the exit. The way out was clearly the stairwell into the treasure room that you see Rick and company escape towards, and it's the path that Beni tries to escape towards in the end anyway.
- The path he originally took was a proper entrance to the underground part of Hamunaptra, whereas the heroes escaped through that mummification hall with a rope to the surface. Gold is heavy, so climbing with it seems rather unlikely but the proper path, once everything came crushing down, would have took too long to escape through.
- Why don't the first scarabs Gad Hassan adds to his bag wake up like the one who falls out of his bag? Later on, when Jonathan takes one as well, the scarab wakes up almost immediately.
- Individual scarab differences? Trap needing time to fully power up after millennia of disuse? Later scarabs being riled up by Imhotep's curses? Take your pick!
- When Hassan drops the one which breaks out and kills him, it's likely because it makes an impact with the ground which wakes up the scarab and make it force its way out of the blue gold container. Notice how he uses a sharp tool to prise them off of the wall, which probably isn't enough pressure to wake them up. But Jonathan squeezes one off with his fingers, which seems to be sufficient pressure to do the trick.
- While it was kind of them to rescue him, why didn't the Medjai simply kill Mr. Burns and torch or otherwise destroy his body when they found him? They've already shown themselves willing to murder innocent people and they know at this point Imhotep is awake and searching for the Americans, so wouldn't it have been better to deny him the bodies he needs to regenerate?
- The Medjai implicitly lost some knowledge about Hamunaptra and Imhotep's curse. For all they knew killing the Americans will free Imhotep to regenerate from anyone he wanted, which is sort of supported by his attempt at draining Rick near the end of the movie. Letting them live and, more importantly, flee for their lives would have bought valuable time to figure out how to kill Imhotep, if not for Beni leading the mummy right to his snacks.
- More on that in general. If the Medjai know that Imhotep needs to drain the American tomb-breakers of their life force and steal their organs in order to regenerate himself, why didn't they just kill Burns and his associates themselves, then and there? Presumably Imhotep can't drain life force from an already-lifeless body, and at one point they do proclaim outright that stopping him is worth killing innocent people.
- Possibly they'd hoped to use Burns's group to lure Imhotep into a position where they could destroy him, or at least trap him again. If they just killed the American tomb-breakers outright, then Imhotep could potentially have gone into hiding and sought some other way to restore himself, leaving the Medjai with no leads to pursue (they didn't yet realise that their adversary had become obsessed with Evie and would seek her out even if Burns's group were all dead).
- And maybe they're not sociopaths who would happily kill innocent people. And what's stopping Imhotep from getting the Book of the Dead and resurrecting them just so he can take their organs?
- Ardeth and his boss straight out admitted that they were willing to kill innocent people to stop Imhotep. "What's stopping Imhotep from getting the Book of the Dead" - presumably also them, it's their one job after all. Hide it with some crazy cat lady and her hundred cats, and we're golden.
- Killing the Americans would free Imhotep to feast on whoever was unlucky enough to be caught by him, just as he tried to do to Rick at the end. Not the smartest thing to do when you are going inside the dark, creepy underground labyrinth to hunt for this immortal creature. By allowing the Americans to escape Hamunaptra they bought some time and prevented Imhotep from powering up from snacking on Medjai themselves. Additionally, if not for Beni's aid, Imhotep may not even been able to track down the group. As for why did Medjai not guard the Americans properly, it would seem that they were unaware that Imhotep left Hamunaptra until after he ate Mr. Burns. Probably they guarded every entrance to the tomb, which explains why Imhotep felt the need to dig his way out of the city instead of simply walking out.
- On the other hand, guarding the ancient city is all well and good, but that doesn't answer the question of why the Americans didn't get a bodyguard detail (until they were down to the last one, but Ardeth and the curator of the library were still not able to defend him from being yanked off of the car by the mob of hypnotised zombies). I guess it comes down to insufficient resources, as unfortunately the Westerners had killed or wounded many of the Medjai between the siege of the barge and the attack on the camp site.
- There was little to no point in bodyguards since Imhotep was unkillable. Presumably, the Medjai did all sorts of things behind the scenes: removed the chest from Hamunaptra, tried to locate Imhotep, looked for a way to kill the mummy... their efforts were simply insufficient to make any difference. Moreover, the Americans ran to Cairo as fast as they could, probably before the Medjai even had time to think about providing them with additional security.
- Well, sure Imhotep himself is immortal. But you can still blast him down with your weapons and buy time to try to move the people he's trying to abduct to a more secure location. Also, as stated the last American was not physically apprehended by Imhotep himself, but by very mortal people under hypnosis. Imhotep himself can only be in one location at one time, so if he wants to abduct multiple people in different locations near-simultaneously, he'd be forced to rely on slaves as he does for the last one. And it doesn't really rely on the Medjai only being able to give them security in Hamunaptra, because surely they have people regularly stationed in Cairo besides just the curator (Cairo is a big damn city, so the more eyes there the better) and it would only be a question of how quickly the local Medjai could link up with Rick and the rest of the Americans (and Evie and Jonathan). Remember, the latter group were all in close proximity, with the greedy faction of Americans waiting to set sail back home the following day with their tails behind their legs. The Medjai's efforts wouldn't be very efficient if they were only stationed around buried-Imhotep, because the beginning of the movie establishes that the map and key (and perhaps other things vital to his containment or resurrection, such as the pillar where Evie learns about the location of the books) are not at Hamunaptra (and the map and key at least, are very much mobile, perhaps being traded and fought over by various groups at various times in history). Thus, they would have to have spread themselves all across Egypt and perhaps parts of the surrounding countries (and hey, the second movie does depict a big army of them which had to be rallied from across the land, so even my idea that their numbers were pretty decimated after their encounters with the adventurers doesn't really stretch so far as to why there's so few of them in the rest of this movie) to do their task effectively, including trying to recover such vital items. So combine a handful of Medjai with a handful of cats per protectee, and they'd be in a stronger fighting position while they figured out how to make him mortal again. Arguably an unassailable position of defence, actually, unless the zombie hordes managed to kill all the cats. Also, I don't think the notion that "they didn't know that he had left Hamnuaptra" holds much water. Just the closing lines of Ardeth Bey's opening narration alone indicates that he (thus doubtlessly all the other Medjai, too) knows that sandy tombs and soldiers wouldn't hold him back there for very long, once he was awake and out of the sarcophagus. "...power over the sands, and the glory of invincibility" more than account for that.
- At first, the Medjai needed every man available to scout the catacombs and locate Imhotep. Imhotep's sneaking through the ceiling might have bought him some time before the Medjai could conclude beyond doubt that he is definitely not anywhere near Hamunaptra, preventing them from annoying him in the meanwhile. Additionally, they likely dedicated the majority of their efforts to quickly finding a way to kill Imhotep. The Americans were evidently deemed as an acceptable loss since the plagues would continue to occur regardless of Imhotep's progression with his breakfast course. Him fully regenerating only removed the weakness to cats, which was unfortunate; still, it was only a half-measure at best. The trio was able to kill him at his strongest, so Imhotep clearly did not get more invincible than he was as a skeleton.
- If anything, killing the Americans straight away would make it easier for Imhotep to drain them, assuming he still needed to; he would just need to find their bodies and consume them one by one. If the Americans are running as far away as fast as possible, however, then Imhotep still needs to follow their trail and kill them, which will take time. They're presumably just assuming the Americans might get further away than Cairo.
- What would have happened had the resurrection spell been read out but with the sarcophagus still sealed (and also throw in not dislodged from where it had been buried, as Jonathan ended up doing)? Would blind, purely-skeletal, but also immortal and supernaturally strong Imhotep have been capable of busting out of that tomb?
- On the one hand, Imhotep apparently had the strength to punch his way through Hamunaptra's ceiling. One then assumes that he might've eventually been able to break the locking mechanisms of his sarcophagus and coffin, unless they were sufficiently reinforced, then dislodge himself from his burial place. Additionally, according to The Mummy Returns he is capable of telekinesis so he could theoretically pick the locks without needing the key. On the other hand, he probably didn't have the necessary knowledge, being a priest, and his jailers seemingly spared no expense, so the sarcophagus might have been capable of enduring his assault.
- Nice thoughts there, and thank you. While we're at it, why did the ancient Medjai (and/or the mummification/curse/burial experts who did the dirty work) bury the sarcophagus effectively underneath a ceiling (this is hard to word but, that means the ceiling is above the main room, but the sarcophagus is suspended within said ceiling presumably in a thin layer of plaster or whatever material they used) which... is kind of minimal for concealment and safety reasons? That's the operative assumption, because it seems very implausible to assume that the main chamber beneath, where the heroes discover the sarcophagus could have been excavated (i.e. tons of sand dug out, if the idea was to just have it be a further layer to suspend the coffin and what would become the ceiling) by previous archaeologists or graverobbers (especially with the Medjai on close watch)... it's easier to assume that the chamber was instead an intended feature of the architecture which the ancient Egyptians had originally devised. But going back to the question. The suspending layer of ceiling is strong enough to hold the load of the object it is bearing (a considerable weight) for thousands of years, and yet weak enough to break apart with a few "golfed" stones lobbed haphazardly at it (yes, also millenia-long erosion is a thing, but if that's the case then you think at that point the coffin would simply have caved down through the ceiling under it's own immense weight). The opening of the movie shows that they had to have gently lowered the sarcophagus into the layer before burying it with sand, indicating also that they'd need a keen understanding of physics to measure the amount of load the ceiling could take (including factoring in the surrounding burial sand... ALSO a considerable weight, and you'd have to measure the full load to the appropriate depth of how far it needs to lie beneath the topmost room, which looks like several metres of sand), along with the strength of the ropes required to carefully lower it down. Wouldn't it have been better to just bury it deep under the sand, within a building in the ancient city, and not have to rely on a ceiling to keep it suspended? Much less hazardous to the fine workers of the day, and more secure too. A slight miscalculation could cause it to cave in on anyone who may be beneath it, and then it's one hell of a pain in the ass to bring it back to the topmost room, replaster the layer and try once again. Even if they had decided to vastly overprovision the strength of the ceiling layer (so not just merely balancing the weight equation, or just slightly overprovisioning for load bearing strength), that's still not as straightforward and efficient as just using a pit dug deep into the ground (and thus, the entire Earth, and they would not be able to harness any structure more strong than that) to bear the load, and again, erosion will gradually ruin the layer over the many centuries to come. And even if no hapless soul(s) happen to be underneath it to be crushed when it eventually (and inevitably) dislodges... the forbidden object you've been trying so hard to hide is still now exposed for prying eyes to see.
- They buried him in-between the two levels of catacombs. The trio hitting the ceiling for some time with pickaxes damaged it enough to give way to the sarcophagus. As for the reason: Imhotep was deliberately buried at the base of that Anubis statue, presumably for some kind of additional divine security. Noticeably, the voice that spooked Rick before the sand face threatened him in English, which Imhotep explicitly did not know.
- When you compare the state of Imhotep's skeleton at the Jump Scare right after they open the sarcophagus (blackened, "still juicy") to the state at the moment Evie reads out the resurrection spell (leading to another Jump Scare as he awakens!) he is now quite different in appearance (lighter, dried-out, the jaw and teeth might even be different). What's with the inconsistency? Out of universe, clearly the first manifestation is a physical prop designed to pop forward from the coffin like a spring-loaded skeleton in a haunted house, and the second is very likely a static CGI render designed to come to life by the animators once the spell has been recited. But, why not pick one of the two and use it for both scenes? As he's specifically noted to be juicy and still-decomposing, with a creepy broken jaw (did he slam it against the sarcophagus in pure insanity while being devoured?) and nasty decaying teeth, why not use that appearance more closely with the CGI render? Ok, maybe the CGI capabilities of the time were limited. You could argue that perhaps the aspect of having the sarcophagus left open led to (relatively more) fresh air from the surrounding room in and having an effect on drying out the corpse, but wouldn't it have been better to give some Hand Wave via dialogue to support this idea?
- Out of universe, the Trivia suggests that there was a minor disagreement on the mummy's design. In-universe, Hand Wave would have been pointless. The trio was a bit preoccupied by the fact that the 3000 year old rotting corpse, in unholy violation of common sense, was actively approaching them with malevolent intent to vocally ponder about comparatively minor changes in its appearance. You could also argue that the tomb was too dark for them to see Imhotep's coloration clearly and by the time they saw him in daylight he was actively undergoing regeneration (and they were also shocked by Burns' death). As for the broken jaw, the scarabs can chew through the bone, as the Warden kindly demonstrated. Therefore, it is possible the the bugs were responsible for it, if only to make Imhotep stop biting on them.
- I'm not saying they should have literally stopped in their tracks as he's about to murder them to comment "huh, his skeleton looks different now". I'm saying, it might have been nice if for some reason (I don't know, Evie wants to draw a sketch for research purposes) they had reason to go back while he was still unresurrected (and thus, harmless and inert, and to boot they could make the room well lit with their torches or even the mirror-reflected sunlight depending on the time of day). Thus giving them an impetus to comment to said effect, and hypothesising that it may be because of the exposure of the air (or something, Evie is the Egyptologist, after all). Or, they could say right when they discover the corpse to begin with "he's probably going to rapidly dry out what with all the relatively more fresh air now flowing over him". And afterwards Evie could resurrect him and events would play out just like the movie as we know it. Also, it could be that the scarab chewed through the Warden's bones, but they also could have just dug through the muscular layer of his face (much as they did with the rest of his body), under his skin, along the bones, to get into his brain underneath/through his eyeball. After all, they'd find that route tastier than bones. Maybe he's part blind before he hits his skull and dies.
- Again, nobody cared enough to comment on the inconsistency, in real life. For all we know, in-universe Eve did make that sketch and noticed the change off-screen. The scarab's bulge doesn't reach the eye before entirely disappearing while making some crunchy noises; the only way the scarab could have gone is straight through the bone.
- Is the idea meant to be that Imhotep lived through the time of the emancipation of the Hebrew slaves, and therefore the biblical plagues? Because, it would be a bit weird if he still had passing familiarity with their language a century or more after they were freed (so before he was even born), and also if he was dead and buried by the original time of the plagues, it may not make sense for his cursed superpowers to involve a second coming of them. Surely the curse would not "predict" said plagues.
- Well, based on Imhotep's reaction towards the Hebrew language, he seems to have predated the Exodus, however it happened in-universe. As for the ten plagues, it still makes sense. God could have been easily inspired by the Hom-Dai, a product of Egyptian pantheon, and just used a supercharged, country-wide version (instead of Imhotep's more localised one) to get his point across. It might even explain the pharaoh's stubbornness; he might have thought that Moses either performed the Hom-Dai on somebody or somehow got Imhotep out of Hamunaptra to use against Egypt.
- Well then I guess it depends on how you interpret the line "The language of the slaves", because he could have meant as in "the slaves who were set free some time before I was punished, but in my lifetime". According to IMDB, he actually switches to Hebrew to communicate with Beni after this line (it's just not super clear that he's switched from Ancient Egyptian because a) they're foreign languages and b) well, his un-regenerated voice makes any language sound like Black Speech), but hopefully someone else can verify that assertion (the website does include the words he speaks, which may help). Regardless of whether or not it's true based on the actual words, I also wonder if an Egyptian high priest such as he would have reason to speak that language over the course of his duties?
- Imhotep had to have switched to Hebrew, since he had no reason to believe that Beni spoke Ancient Egyptian. Some Youtube comments claim/translate that he IS speaking somewhat mangled Hebrew, for what it's worth. As for the reason, he needed to be able communicate with his slaves, at the very least. Knowing their language would stop his slaves from hiding behind the language barrier, and knowledge is power.
- One thing that bugs this troper is the Hebrew thing. Beni is clearly using different prayers as a desperation measure. It implies he might know a couple sentences of Hebrew which he memorized, unless there's something elsewhere in the movie that says he knows hebrew fluently. That very plausibly might be all the Hebrew Beni actually knows and not nearly enough to act as a translator. Also compounding the issue is that Imhotep knows some Hebrew from 3000+ years ago...which is probably not the same language for the most part and it's questionable how much a high ranking Egyptian would know of a "slave language" anyway unless his job was to work with them consistently. So essentially the whole "Hebrew translation" bit is dependent off the idea that Beni who might not know more then a few words of Hebrew is trying to communicate with someone who knows a bit of 3000 year old Archaic Hebrew and....it feels a bit much honestly.
- This one's just Translation Convention, honestly. It's an action-adventure film, not a documentary on the evolution of Hebrew or the linguistic knowledge of the Egyptian high priesthood. As for how much Hebrew Beni actually does know, he's clearly able to communicate with and for Imhotep as evidenced by the fact that Imhotep hasn't killed him for being annoying and useless, so he obviously knows enough to get by and both can clearly speak enough to communicate, QED.
- Why, at 3/4 consumptions of sacrifices, did forced-kissing Evelyn cause Imhotep's mouth to degrade and rot?
- Maybe because he was getting sidetracked and not doing anything at the moment to fulfil the curse of the chest? He was bound by magic to eat the Americans, there might have been penalties for not doing his job properly.
- Also, Rule of It's-Partially-A-Horror-Film.
- How could skeletal Imhotep still hear without stealing Burns' ears, unlike his eyes and tongue?
- Perhaps because Imhotep lost his tongue and eyes before he fully became the unholy undead? The tongue was removed before the burial and the eyes could have been amongst the first things the scarabs ate. In all the likelihood Imhotep lost the rest of his body's functions well after the curse had time to work its magic on him, explaining how he still has them after his awakening.
- Why don't the protagonists take more advantage of the fact that Imhotep can be repelled by cats? They already have a cat in their possession, and it shouldn't have been too hard to get hold of some kind of bag or basket to carry it around in. They persist in shooting at him throughout the film, despite this having little to no effect, but refuse to use the one thing that has actually been shown to work?
- To be fair, both times the cat scared Imhotep away he had no pressing need to stay within the cat's vicinity; he already ate his snacks by the time he saw the white cat. Perhaps they decided that Imhotep would be willing to ignore the cat if he was desperate enough; the fear of supernatural retribution certainly did not stop him from killing the pharaoh and stealing the sacred Book of the Dead. It could also be possible that the cat was left in the hotel in an attempt to mislead Imhotep into thinking that the group was also in the hotel; that could explain the reason he zombified the crowd.
- Also, it works in that he freaks out and runs away from them. It doesn't work in a sense that it, well, stops him from carrying out his evil plan or anything. They can't just chase him around with a cat forever, they need to do something that might actually stop him long-term.
- Imhotep only kills those who stole from the chest, but he attempts to kill Beni presumably by strangling and near the end tries to drain Rick of bodily fluids except neither of them stole from his chest.
- Imhotep MUST kill those who opened the chest; otherwise he has the freedom to decide whether to kill or not.
- Why was Imhotep degenerating when he kissed Evie.
- Presumably a side effect of the chest's curse to keep him hunting the Americans.
Fridge Logic
- When the mummy of Anck-su-namun wakes up on the table near the end of the film, there's a neat little effect where we can see the table through the holes of her eyes and mouth... except we should see the back of her head, since her skull is intact and she has wraps and the remains of hair.
- This was either Special Effects Failure, or perhaps the skull of Anuck-su-namun's mummy was damaged during excavation as mummies are fragile.
- Imhotep's canopic jars which triggers his curse. Given that Imhotep was mummified alive without having his internal organs being removed (which canopic jars are used to store) what significance would those canopic jars actually have?
- Those jars are actually for Anck-su-namun's organs, not Imhotep's. They're significant because he needs them to perform the ritual to resurrect his lady.
