THEBES - 2,134 B.C
Thebes. City of the Living. Crown jewel of Pharaoh Seti the First.Setting down in an open plaza. An Arabian horse-drawn chariot comes barreling through the sands, driven by the Pharaoh Seti, an aristocratic, virile old man.
Glaring out over the city at the setting sun is a handsome, muscular man with intense, evil eyes. This is Imhotep. Who is the High Priest of Osiris, Keeper of the Dead. A gorgeous, olive-skinned goddess enters the outer foyer. It takes us a moment to realise that the skin-tight dress she's wearing isn't a dress at all, but rather, her entire naked body has been painted in the ancient Egyptian manner. She's a stunning sight to behold. This is Anck-su-Namun, Pharaoh's Mistress. No other man was allowed to touch her. As She makes her way through the ornate statuary. A strange-looking, tattooed man appears in front. Several more hideous, bald men stand nearby, watching Anck-su-namun vanish through the bedroom curtains.
Anck-su-namun embraces Imhotep as they kiss passionately, feverishly. Imhotep's hands roam her perfect body, smearing the paint upon it. As for their love, they were willing to risk life itself. On the other side of the curtains, the bald Priests rush over and close the doors. But just as they do, the doors suddenly burst open with a strong might. With the Pharaoh angrily striding in, he looks at the Priests and exclaims, "What are you doing here?"
With his exclamation, the priests backed away slowly, scared, as his arrival was unexpected. The Pharaoh strides through them, throwing them away from the hidden bodies behind the curtains. Walking through, he spots Anck-su-namun standing alone. She gives him a sexy smile in an attempt to scare him away from Imhotep. Closely, Pharaoh sees the smeared body paint made by someone, points his finger to her, and says, "Who has touched you?!."
Hidden behind him, his sword is ripped out of its scabbard. The Pharaoh spins around and finds his Priest, Imhotep. The Pharaoh shocked questions, "Imhotep? .... My Priest."
Shocked by the betrayal of Imhotep, forgotten Anck-su-Namum, who's behind him, lifts a dagger and plunges it into the Pharaoh's back.
Pharaoh screams in pain of the dagger plunged into his back. Imhotep raises Pharaoh's sword to finish the Pharaoh. During this time, the hideous bald Priests slam the doors shut and bolt them tight. Through the sheer curtains, they see the shadows of Anck-su-namun and Imhotep stab away at Pharaoh. Suddenly, the doors rammed from the other side. "WHAM!."
Imhotep and Anck-su-namun turned and looked towards the door. "BANG!"
The doors are rammed again. The two lovers share desperate looks. "WHAM!"
The bald Priests run up to the couple, grab Imhotep, and try pulling him towards the balcony. Scared as the priests were, they wanted to move him. "Medjay!" They exclaimed to him.
Imhotep tries to break free, but Anck-su-namun rips Pharaoh's sword out of his hand and pushes him towards the balcony. She tells him, "You must go. Save yourself. Only you can resurrect me." With this being said, Imhotep's face fills with despair.
The doors explode open. Men with blue-tinted skin and strange puzzle tattoos over their bodies stride in, armed to the teeth. These are the Medjay. As the priests try to push Imhotep towards the balcony, "I won't leave you! Get away from me," Imhotep shouts; the Priests hustle Imhotep onto the dark balcony.
"You shall live again!... I will resurrect you!" he shouts to her just as the Medjay rip through the curtains.
Anck-su-namun turns to the Medjay, points at Pharaoh, and hisses, "My body is no longer his temple!" She plunges the sword into her own heart and falls to the ground with a thud. Out on the balcony, Imhotep's mouth opens into a horrible silent scream after seeing the sight in front of him.
For murdering Pharaoh, Anck-su-namun's body was to be cursed. And it was the High Priest, Imhotep, whose duty was to condemn it. In the dark over the sand dunes lies Imhotep, who leads a torch-lit procession across the dunes. Anck-su-namun's mummy is carried by Nubian slaves. They put her down in the sand along with five jewel-encrusted jars. Her body was mummified, her vital organs removed and placed in sacred canopic jars. Imhotep, filled with dread, reads from a book made out of pure gold. This is the BOOK OF THE LIVING! The Book of The Living contained sacred incantations that would send the evil dead on a journey into the dark underworld. A strange light suddenly flashes across the faces of the slaves and the Egyptian soldiers. Abruptly, everyone's fear-filled eyes rose, watching Anck-su-namun's body increase. The one last huge flash, accompanied by a blast of wind, is over. Anck-su-namun's body now lies twisted on the ground. Imhotep's priests move to place anck-su-namun's body in her stone sarcophagus. The Nubian slaves lower it into a hole and bury it with the sand that lies around them. Imhotep then signals to the Soldiers, who throw their spears at the Nubians. Killing them. Imhotep says, "The slaves were killed...."
Imhotep's knife-wielding Priests attack the now unarmed Soldiers, hacking at them in the flickering darkness as Imhotep and the Medjay solemnly watch.".... and the soldiers who killed them were also slain so that no unholy person should ever know the exact location of the burial site."
The Medjay walk off across the sand, and then, one by one, the Priests stop their frenzied stabbing and stare off at the vanishing Medjay. Imhotep nods as the last Medjay disappears over a distant dune, and the Priests leap onto Anck-su-namun 's grave and begin digging it back up with their hands.
In the Sahara desert with the midnight moonlight shining over them. Chariots race out. Imhotep leads the way. A "hearse" carries Anck-su-namun's mummy. The chariots race across the Egyptian sands. To where they were heading was to be a wonder. To find a different book? But this book was other; unlike the Book of Life, this was the BOOK OF THE DEAD! Which was NEVER to be opened, never to be read, for it contained the incantations that could bring a dead body back to life, a most unholy thing. The chariots arrive at a place marked on the map in hieratic. They race up the stone ramp and in through the city gates.
The book was hidden at Hamunaptra, City of the Dead, inside the statue of Anubis so that no such sacrilege might ever disgrace Egypt. With the room lit with torches, Imhotep pulls an ornate chest out of a secret compartment inside the giant statue of Anubis. He opens the chest and lifts out the Book of the Dead, which is made of black stone. Looking at the book, Imhotep's mind returns to his love, Anck-su-namun. Realising that this man was willing to defy the gods.
In an underground necropolis, giant hairy rats scurry through the mausoleums and over the headstones of this vast, scary, underground cemetery. A detritus moat surrounds the cemetery, muck made out of filthy water and human remains. Skulls bob in the goop. The priests have gathered in a circle. Their hooded, lifeless eyes seem dead to the world. Their bold heads rock back and forth as they chant a quiet, eerie hum, "Mmmmmm." heinous creatures.
In the middle of the circle appears a strange, twisted alter. Imhotep unwrapped Anck-su-namun's gorgeous, lifeless body and placed her five sacred canonic jars around her. As her vital organs were still fresh, a human sacrifice would have needed to be made. As Imhotep begins to read from the Book of the Dead, a large swirling hole opens in the detritus bog. Several priests looked over at it, frightened, then quickly looked back down and resumed chanting. A strange mist wafts up out of the swirling hole and over to the jars; it passes through them and into Anck-su-namun's body. One of the jars shudders, and its heart begins to beat. The chanting priests, swirling holes, wafting mist, pounding heart, and Imhotep's readings are reaching a crescendo. Anck-su-namun's eyes suddenly fly open. Anck-su-namun's soul has come back from the dead! Now, all that was needed was to return her organs to their rightful place within her body. Imhotep lifts a sacrificial knife above Anck-su-namun's breast, about to plunge it down. The chanting, swirling and beating heart climax. And that's when the Medjay burst in and stormed through the startled Priests. The head Medjay smashes the jar with the beating heart. The mist instantly sucks back out of Anck-su-namun's body and implodes back into the swirling hole. Anck-su-namun's eyes close. Dying once again. Imhotep SCREAMS in rage. The Medjay grab him and his Priests. For this treason, Imhotep's Priests were condemned to be mummified alive.
Inside a torch-lit chamber, Imhotep is held by Anubis-headed embalmers. He cringes at the flickering, impressionistic glimpses of his Priests being embalmed and mummified alive. The horrid-looking Embalmers, using knives, needles and thread, calmly perform their ghastly surgery on the screaming Priests, who are going insane from the procedure. A red-hot poker is pulled out of a pit of burning coals. A Priest's head is wedged between two strong boards. His eyes widen in terror as an Embalmer moves to insert the red-hot poker up his nose. But just before he does, we see Imhotep's face, horrified, as one of his Priest screams from the excruciating pain bestowed upon him. All twenty-one of Imhotep's Priests squirm inside their wrappings.
Imhotep is forced to his knees with his arms held back, and his mouth pried open. Unlike his priests, Imhotep was condemned to endure the Hom-dai. The worst of all ancient curses. one so horrible, it had never before been bestowed. Using a pair of tongs, an Embalmer slowly pulls Imhotep's tongue out of his mouth, then places a sharp knife on top of it. Imhotep's eyes widen as his tongue is apparently cut out. The Embalmer flings Imhotep's tongue onto the floor. The Mumia's dogs attack and quickly eat it. Imhotep is wrapped up. Only his mouth, nostrils, and fear-filled eyes are free of the slimy bandages. Detritus muck boils inside a black cauldron. Embalmers scoop out the fetid muck and apply it to Imhotep's wrappings as he squirms. He's laid in a wooden coffin inside a stone sarcophagus, just like Anck-su-namun originally was. An Embalmer with a bucket steps up and looks into the coffin. Imhotep's wild eyes stare back. The Embalmer empties the bucket over Imhotep's chest: dozens of scarabs, disgusting dung beetles. They scurry across Imhotep's screaming face. Some vanish into his tongue-less mouth and up his nostrils. Imhotep would be cursed to stay alive forever by eating the sacred scarabs. And by eating him, the scarabs were cursed just the same.
The lid to the coffin is slammed shut with a loud "BANG!".
Then, using a strange four-sided ycey, the Head Mumia locks the coffin lid tight. The heavy sarcophagus lid is shoved into place, and with a loud "WHOOSH," it seals itself airtight. Once again, the head Medjay uses the strange key, locking the sarcophagus lid tight. Imhotep was to remain sealed inside his sarcophagus, the undead, for all of eternity. The blue-skinned, strangely tattooed man carefully collapses the sides of the key, --turning it into a little puzzle box. They would never allow Imhotep to be released. For he would arise a walking disease, a plague upon mankind, an unholy flesh-eater with the strength of ages, power over the sands, and the glory of invincibility.
Imhotep's sarcophagus is dropped into a detritus pit. The disgusting muck splashes up and drools down. It's mysteriously sucked into the sides and then the seams, vanishing clean. And if he could raise his beloved Anck-su-namun from her place in hell, we would be an unstoppable infection upon this world. The Apocalypse. The End!. You can hear Imhotep's horrifying tongue-less screams coming from inside his sarcophagus as grave diggers shovel dirt onto it. The heavily armed Medjay stand guard around Imhotep's grave. Looking down on the burial site is the massive statue of Anubis, the jackal-headed god. It stares at us. Then, it begins to decay, ageing 4,159 years in only seconds. And then we find ourselves and the decrepit, half-buried Anubis statue out in the desert.