99 Fun Facts About The Mummy

Who plays adventurer Rick O'Connell in the 1999 film The Mummy?

Brendan Fraser. The director had written Rick as 'a young swashbuckling Errol Flynn kind of hero', and George of the Jungle had just made Fraser a star with younger audiences.

Who plays librarian Evelyn Carnahan in the 1999 film The Mummy?

Rachel Weisz. The studio kept putting forward American actresses, and Weisz had to audition several times before the part was hers.

Which actor plays the cursed high priest Imhotep in the 1999 film The Mummy?

Arnold Vosloo. He told the director the film would be stronger if the Mummy were played straight, as a man in love, and he had the part after that single meeting.

In the 1999 film The Mummy, what is the City of the Dead called?

Hamunaptra. Its ruins were raised inside a natural horseshoe of rock in the Sahara, and the crew had to lay a concrete ramp through a breach in the old wall across its mouth just to get in.

In the 1999 film The Mummy, Rick first finds the lost city as what?

Legionnaire. His French Foreign Legion garrison marched across Libya into Egypt without orders to find the city, and three years later, in 1926, he agrees to lead the way back.

In the prologue of the 1999 film The Mummy, how is Imhotep punished?

Buried alive with flesh-eating scarabs. The curse was thought so terrible that it had never been used before; his priests, who were merely mummified alive, got off lightly.

In the 1999 film The Mummy, which text does Evelyn read aloud, accidentally waking Imhotep?

The Book of the Dead. It was not even the book she came for: Evelyn wanted the golden Book of Amun-Ra, and 'borrowed' this black one from the rival camp while its finders slept.

In the 1999 film The Mummy, who is Rick's cowardly old comrade who guides the Americans and later serves Imhotep?

Beni Gabor. Imhotep spares him on hearing him pray in Hebrew and pays him in gold, and greed finishes him: he is still looting the treasure room when the city seals him inside.

In the 1999 film The Mummy, which desert warriors, descended from Pharaoh's bodyguards, keep watch over Imhotep's tomb?

The Medjai. Their leader first rides against the treasure hunters to drive them off the site, then ends up fighting beside them once the creature is loose.

In the 1999 film The Mummy, what does Imhotep unleash on Cairo?

The biblical Plagues of Egypt. While they torment the city he hunts down the men who opened the cursed chest, growing more whole with every one he kills.

Where was the 1999 film The Mummy mainly shot, standing in for Egypt?

Morocco. Egypt itself was judged too politically risky for the shoot, and Marrakesh, far less modern than Cairo, was easier to dress as a city of the 1920s.

During which scene of the 1999 film The Mummy did its star black out for real?

The hanging. By his own account the rope was pulled tighter for a second take and he blacked out, coming round on the ground with a medic saying his name.

In the 1999 film The Mummy, what does Jonathan steal from Rick that sets the whole expedition in motion?

A puzzle box holding a map. Rick had found it in the lost city itself, and he is sitting in a Cairo prison when Jonathan and his sister come to ask him where that was.

Which composer scored the 1999 film The Mummy?

Jerry Goldsmith. He wrote a single love theme and gave it to both couples: the Mummy and his lost love as well as Rick and Evelyn.

The 1999 film The Mummy cost about $80 million; roughly how much did it gross worldwide?

$420 million, more than five times its cost. The studio's boss rang the director early on the morning after it opened, and Universal set a sequel in motion straight away.

Which horror director was once lined up to make a low-budget, modern-day version of The Mummy that Universal abandoned?

George A. Romero. The studio then wanted a cheap present-day horror film with an unstoppable monster, and he was one of several directors who came and went before it changed its mind.

Who plays Evelyn's roguish brother Jonathan in the 1999 film The Mummy?

John Hannah. His agent had sold him to the studio as a hilarious comic actor; when the director met him, Hannah said he had never been funny in his life.

Stephen Sommers sold Universal his 1999 version of The Mummy as an adventure in the vein of which screen hero?

Indiana Jones. The studio had first wanted a low-budget horror film set in the present; Sommers pitched a 1920s romantic adventure with the mummy as the creature giving the hero a hard time.

Which wrestler made his film debut as the Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns?

Dwayne Johnson. Billed as The Rock, he has only a brief part in the film, yet it was enough to win him a spin-off of his own a year later.

In The Mummy Returns, which relic does young Alex O'Connell put on, starting a seven-day countdown?

The Bracelet of Anubis. It shows Alex the way to a lost oasis in visions, but unless he is inside its pyramid before sunrise on the seventh day, it will take his life.

In The Mummy Returns, the villainess Meela Nais is the reincarnation of which ancient Egyptian?

Anck-su-namun. Imhotep's lost love comes back in a modern body, then fails him: when he begs her to pull him from the pit, as Evelyn has just done for Rick, she runs.

In The Mummy Returns, how do the O'Connells cross the desert to rescue their son?

Dirigible. Its pilot Izzy declares that aeroplanes are a thing of the past, not long before Imhotep's magic brings his airship down in the jungle of the oasis.

In The Scorpion King, the hero Mathayus is one of the last survivors of which ancient people?

Akkadians. The film makes them a dying people of assassins for hire: Mathayus and two companions are paid to kill a warlord's sorcerer, a job that goes wrong when they are betrayed.

The Scorpion King's star set a Guinness record for a first leading role with roughly what fee?

$5.5 million. Guinness logged it as the most ever paid to an actor in his first starring part, and it came a year after his few minutes on screen in The Mummy Returns.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor moved the series to which country?

China. Its mummy is a tyrant emperor cursed into clay along with his whole army, so the walking dead this time are terracotta warriors.

Who took over the role of Evelyn in Tomb of the Dragon Emperor?

Maria Bello. The film winks at the change of face: asked at a reading whether the heroine of her adventure novels is based on her, the new Evelyn says she is 'a completely different person'.

Who stars as Sergeant Nick Morton in the 2017 reboot of The Mummy?

Tom Cruise. For the plane-crash scene the cast were filmed in real weightlessness aboard a 'vomit comet' aircraft, 64 times over, while crew members were sick around them.

What is the name of the Egyptian princess played by Sofia Boutella in the 2017 film The Mummy?

Ahmanet. Raised as sole heir until her father had a son, she made a pact with the god Set, murdered her family and was mummified alive for it.

The 2017 film The Mummy was meant to launch which shared cinematic franchise?

The Dark Universe. More monster films had been announced with stars attached, but this opener lost the studio tens of millions and the shared series was dropped after one entry.

In the 2017 film The Mummy, Russell Crowe plays which doctor of classic fiction?

Dr. Jekyll, whose other self, Eddie Hyde, breaks loose mid-film. He welcomes the hero to Prodigium, a secret society that hunts monsters, but the film lost the studio tens of millions and the planned series stopped there.

Who starred as Imhotep in the original 1932 The Mummy?

Boris Karloff. A year after Frankenstein he was famous enough to be billed by surname alone: the posters read 'Karloff the Uncanny'.

Which real event inspired producer Carl Laemmle Jr. to commission the 1932 film The Mummy?

The opening of Tutankhamun's tomb. Several of the excavators had died in the years since, and talk of a pharaoh's curse was at its height when the studio decided to cash in.

The 1932 Mummy's eight-hour bandaged make-up is seen in which part of the film?

The opening. For the rest of the film the revived priest passes as a wrinkled modern Egyptian in less elaborate make-up, so the famous bandaged look is barely on screen.

In the 1932 film The Mummy, which ancient text brings Imhotep back to life?

The Scroll of Thoth. A young archaeologist reads it aloud despite a warning, watches the mummy shuffle off with it and is left laughing helplessly: 'He went for a little walk.'

Which studio made the 1959 The Mummy with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee?

Hammer. Its mummy does not stay in Egypt: three years after a princess's tomb is opened, he is brought to England to kill, one by one, the men who desecrated it.

What is the name of the mummy played by Christopher Lee in the 1959 film The Mummy?

Kharis. He was a high priest who tried to raise the princess he secretly loved from the dead, and for that he was entombed alive to guard her grave for ever.

In Egyptian mummification, which natural salt was packed around the body to dry it out?

Natron. Packed inside the body and heaped over it, the salt drew out every trace of moisture; Herodotus wrote that a body must never be left in it beyond seventy days.

Through which part of the body did Egyptian embalmers remove the brain?

The nose. Herodotus describes a crooked iron hook worked up through the nostrils to draw the brain out; it was delicate work, since one slip could disfigure the face.

Which natural mummy was found by two hikers in 1991, emerging from the ice of the Alps?

Ötzi. The couple who found him, and the police, took him for a modern climbing casualty; he proved to be a Copper Age man with an arrowhead lodged in his shoulder.

In Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, which legendary creatures does Lin summon to fight off the general's soldiers?

Yetis. Lin calls for them in their own language at a mountain shrine, to the astonishment of the O'Connells, and they tear into the troops chasing the family.

On the 1999 film The Mummy's desert shoot, which hazard had its own team of guards and its own warning memo?

Snakes. The call sheet listed 'snake men' to keep them off the set at night, and the star recalls a memo warning that the bite of one species would, at best, cost a limb.

In the 1999 film The Mummy, which animals terrify Imhotep until he is fully regenerated?

Cats. They are guardians of the underworld, the heroes are told, so a single white cat in Evelyn's room is enough to send the half-made creature fleeing.

Which organ did Egyptian embalmers leave inside the body?

The heart. It was held to be the seat of thought and feeling, still needed in the afterlife; the liver, lungs, stomach and intestines were taken out, dried and stored in jars of their own.

In The Mummy Returns, which creatures swarm heroes and villains alike in the oasis jungle?

Pygmy mummies. They kill nearly every one of the cultists escorting Imhotep, and the heroes brush them off afterwards as 'just the local natives'.

What unusual precaution did the producers of the 1999 film The Mummy take for their cast on location?

Kidnapping insurance. The star recalls the producer telling his leads he had taken out policies on them, and their reply that he had, in effect, put a bounty on their heads.

Which 1998 sea-monster film had Stephen Sommers just finished directing when he pitched The Mummy?

Deep Rising. He was finishing it when he heard the Mummy's producers had lost yet another writer-director, and rang them to pitch the version he had wanted to make since he was eight.

In the 2017 film The Mummy, two soldiers uncover an Egyptian princess's tomb in which modern country?

Iraq. She had been mummified alive for her crimes and her sarcophagus carried far from Egypt so that she could never escape, which is why two treasure-hunting soldiers stumble on her there.

Which martial-arts star plays the resurrected ruler in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor?

Jet Li. His emperor is after the pool of eternal life in Shangri-La, and once he has bathed in it he can change shape, flying off as a three-headed dragon.

Besides Hollywood and Orlando, which city's Universal park had a Revenge of the Mummy coaster as of 2025?

Singapore. The ride opened there in 2010 as the centrepiece of a whole park zone themed to ancient Egypt, six years after the two American versions.

The actor who played Rick O'Connell in The Mummy won a Best Actor Oscar for which 2022 drama?

The Whale earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor, and made him the first Canadian ever to receive it.

In what did ancient Egyptian embalmers store the organs they removed from a body during mummification?

Canopic jars came in sets of four, and from the Nineteenth Dynasty each lid showed one of the four sons of Horus, guardians of the organ inside.

In the 1999 film The Mummy, what does Imhotep conjure to bring down the plane carrying Rick and Jonathan?

A sandstorm summoned by Imhotep crashes the biplane and kills its pilot, Winston Havelock, leaving the survivors to finish the journey on foot.

Universal's original Mummy series ended in 1955 when which comedy duo met the monster in Cairo?

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy was the pair's 28th and last film for the studio, and its bandaged mummy goes by the name Klaris.

Which star of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon plays the sorceress Zi Yuan in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor?

Michelle Yeoh plays the immortal who curses the emperor and his army, years before she won the Best Actress Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Ancient Egyptian embalmers wrapped a dried body in many layers of bandages made from which fabric?

Linen wrappings are older than the pharaohs: tests on a 5,600-year-old mummy in Turin found linen and embalming oils made from conifer resin.

In 19th-century London, surgeon Thomas Pettigrew entertained party guests by doing what to Egyptian mummies?

Unrolling them for an audience earned him the nickname "Mummy" Pettigrew, and the physicist Faraday ran chemical analyses on materials found inside.

In The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the revived emperor seeks immortality in the waters of which hidden paradise?

Shangri-La is reached through a stupa in the Himalayas, and its waters have already made Zi Yuan and her daughter Lin immortal.

Stephen Sommers followed his two Mummy films by pitting Hugh Jackman against Dracula in which 2004 monster movie?

Van Helsing sends its vampire hunter after Count Dracula, the Wolf Man and Frankenstein's monster, a trio borrowed from Universal's classic horror films.

The actor who plays Jonathan Carnahan in The Mummy first found fame as Matthew in which 1994 romantic comedy?

Four Weddings and a Funeral made him known around the world and brought a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Which effects house supplied more than 140 shots, including the decayed Imhotep, for the 1999 film The Mummy?

Industrial Light & Magic designed Imhotep in successive stages of decay, and the actor did his own motion capture in front of eight cameras.

Fear of which 1999 blockbuster led Universal to move The Mummy's release two weeks earlier, to May 7?

The Phantom Menace did push The Mummy down to second place, but only after it had set a record for a non-holiday May debut.

The actress who played Evelyn in the 1999 film The Mummy won an Oscar for which 2005 thriller?

The Constant Gardener brought her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, for playing an activist; she later added an Olivier Award as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.

At the climax of the 1999 film The Mummy, what happens to Imhotep when Evelyn reads from the golden text of Amun-Ra?

He becomes mortal, so Rick's sword thrust finally counts, and Imhotep sinks back into a corpse swearing revenge.

Freddie Boath took the part of young Alex in The Mummy Returns after choosing it over an audition for which film series?

Harry Potter was the audition he passed up: Boath tried out for the O'Connells' son Alex instead, and won the part.

At the end of The Mummy Returns, why does Imhotep let go and fall into the underworld?

His lover abandons him moments after Evelyn risks her own life to pull Rick to safety, and the contrast breaks him.

Which star of The Green Mile plays Balthazar, the Nubian king who first fights the hero of The Scorpion King?

Michael Clarke Duncan had just been Oscar-nominated as that film's gentle giant; here his rebel king ends up fighting at the hero's side.

For the 2017 film The Mummy, the cast shot the plane-crash scene in real weightlessness aboard which nicknamed aircraft?

The Vomit Comet lived up to its name: the scene took 64 takes of parabolic flight, and many of the crew were sick to their stomachs.

The 1932 film The Mummy named its villain Imhotep after a real Egyptian official long celebrated as what?

An architect by reputation, the real Imhotep is credited by Egyptologists with designing Djoser's step pyramid at Saqqara.

The Chinchorro mummies, the oldest deliberately preserved bodies known, are a World Heritage Site in which country?

Chile's Chinchorro people were deliberately preserving their dead by about 5050 BCE, more than a thousand years before Egypt's embalmers began.

Tollund Man, a body so well preserved that its finders called the police, lay in a peat bog in which country?

Denmark's Tollund Man still wore a plaited hide noose around his neck, and his stomach held a last meal of barley porridge.

Well into the nineteenth century, the ground-up remains of Egyptian mummies were sold to European painters as what?

A brown pigment called mummy brown was a favourite of the Pre-Raphaelites; Edward Burne-Jones, on learning what it was made of, insisted on burying his only tube.

Which pharaoh's mummy was flown to Paris in 1976 and met at the airport with full military honours?

Ramesses II was sent for treatment after the French president persuaded Egypt to let the decaying mummy travel; it was irradiated to rid it of fungi and insects.

Sokushinbutsu were Buddhist monks who mummified themselves by starvation, a practice found in which country?

Japan's self-mummifying monks were mainly from Yamagata in the north, and the practice ran from the 11th century to the 19th.

In the 1999 film The Mummy, Imhotep spares a cowardly guide's life on learning he can speak which language?

Hebrew saves the guide's skin: Imhotep keeps him on as a translator, and he ends up serving the creature for the rest of the story.

Which Israeli actor plays Ardeth Bay, leader of the desert warriors, in the 1999 film The Mummy?

Oded Fehr, born in Tel Aviv, returned as Ardeth Bay in the sequel and later played Carlos Olivera in the Resident Evil films.

Which British comedian plays Gad Hassan, the greedy prison warden, in the 1999 film The Mummy?

Omid Djalili jokes that his early film career was a run of generic Middle Eastern bit parts, among them a foreman in a James Bond film released the same year.

Which Hellraiser director developed a violent version of The Mummy for Universal, set around a Beverly Hills art museum?

Clive Barker had the museum rebuild an entire Egyptian tomb in Beverly Hills, but he recalled that the concept was too weird for the studio.

In The Mummy Returns, Evelyn unlocks memories of a previous life as which daughter of an Egyptian pharaoh?

Nefertiri's memories surface during one of Imhotep's soul-restoring rituals, and both lead actresses trained in Japanese martial arts for the fights that follow.

In The Mummy Returns, Jonathan's golden sceptre is really which weapon, the only one able to kill the Scorpion King?

The Spear of Osiris is identified by hieroglyphs Rick spots in the middle of the fight, and its strike sends a whole army back to the Underworld.

In The Mummy Returns, what is the name of the desert oasis where the Scorpion King's golden pyramid stands?

Ahm Shere is conjured by a god as payment for the warrior's soul, and it implodes at the end, pyramid and all.

Which Back to the Future composer wrote the score for The Mummy Returns without reusing any themes from the first film?

Alan Silvestri conducted the score himself with the Sinfonia of London, and the soundtrack album adds a song by the rock band Live.

At the end of The Mummy Returns, what does Jonathan swipe from the peak of the golden pyramid as it collapses?

A diamond is Jonathan's consolation prize, grabbed in mid-air during the rescue as the whole oasis implodes beneath him.

The villain of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is based on which real ruler, entombed with clay soldiers?

Qin Shi Huang founded the Qin dynasty, and in the film it is a sorceress's curse that turns him and his men into terracotta.

Which director of The Fast and the Furious took over The Mummy series for Tomb of the Dragon Emperor?

Rob Cohen stepped in when Stephen Sommers opted out, Sommers having decided that third films are simply very hard to get right.

By the start of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the retired Evelyn has swapped library work for which career?

A novelist is what Evelyn has become in retirement, until the British government lures the couple back with a mission to return a gemstone.

In The Scorpion King, the warlord Memnon rules from which stronghold city, a name infamous from Genesis?

Gomorrah is breached twice by Mathayus: first with a street urchin's help, and finally in an assault that blows up the palace foundations.

In the 2017 film The Mummy, archaeologist Jenny Halsey secretly works for which society that hunts supernatural threats?

Prodigium soldiers subdue the revived princess and take her captive, but her crusader zombies later overrun the society's scientists.

Sofia Boutella won the lead in the 2017 film The Mummy after a near-mute turn in which spy film?

Kingsman: The Secret Service convinced the director that her eyes alone could carry a performance under any amount of prosthetics.

Which cinematographer of Dracula and Metropolis made his American directing debut with the 1932 film The Mummy?

Karl Freund later reinvented himself in television, where he was the cinematographer of I Love Lucy, filmed before a live audience.

Which Universal make-up artist, creator of Frankenstein's monster, designed Imhotep for the 1932 film The Mummy?

Jack Pierce studied photographs of a real pharaoh's mummy for the design, then built the face from cotton, collodion and spirit gum.

Which star of The Wolf Man also played Universal's shuffling mummy in three films of the 1940s?

Lon Chaney Jr. is the only actor to have played each of Universal's major monsters: the Wolf Man, Frankenstein's creature, the Mummy and Count Dracula.

Music from which ballet plays over the title credits of the 1932 film The Mummy, as it had for Dracula?

Swan Lake, by Tchaikovsky, was something of a house theme at Universal, which used the same arrangement for Murders in the Rue Morgue.

In the 1940 film The Mummy's Hand, a brew of which sacred leaves sustains the bandaged creature?

Tana leaves are strictly rationed in the story: the fluid from three of them, given during the full moon, is the dose that keeps him going.

At the end of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Jonathan moves to which country, unaware of the mummies there?

Peru is where he heads with the story's magical gemstone, and the film's parting joke is that mummies will soon be found there too.

Vast numbers of mummies of which long-billed bird fill the catacombs of Tuna el-Gebel in Egypt?

Ibis mummies were offerings in a cult devoted to the god of wisdom, and preparing one meant drying the bird and removing its insides.

A molar kept in a chest bearing her name was used to identify the supposed mummy of which female pharaoh?

Hatshepsut's molar seemed to fit a gap in the mummy's jaw, though a later study cast doubt on the match because the tooth came from a lower jaw.

Which Irish author of a famous vampire novel also wrote The Jewel of Seven Stars, about reviving an Egyptian queen?

Bram Stoker published the novel in 1903, and its plot to revive Queen Tera has been filmed several times, once as Blood from the Mummy's Tomb.

The librarian heroine of the 1999 film The Mummy was named in tribute to the daughter of which Egyptology-loving earl?

Lord Carnarvon was the patron of the archaeologist Howard Carter, and his daughter Lady Evelyn was with them at their most famous discovery.

Filming of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor began on studio stages in which Canadian city?

Montreal's stages housed the emperor's mausoleum set, with twenty interchangeable statue heads, before the shoot moved on to Shanghai.