The Mummy

The Mummy (1999)

1 answered question since 15 Jan '25, 09:09

(26 votes)

Question: Is it me, or do all of Ardeth's Egyptian dialogue lines end sounding the same way, despite completely different words being used to make his sentences? Is there a reason for this or something that I'm not picking up on, or is there no reason at all?

Answer: The script writers chose to truncate (shorten) the Egyptian words as they were often quite long which made for slow and clunky dialogue. The familiar sounds from Ardeth are simply due to the truncation limiting the variety of words being spoken.

Answer: He repeats two phrases most often: "yalla" and "imshii", which are modern colloquial Egyptian Arabic. Yalla is "let's go" or "go quickly" or even "let's begin". You hear the prison warden yell it before he jumps into the water during the boat fire, much as one would yell "Geronimo" at one point in American history. Imshi or imshak/ik is the verb "go", so either I go or you/we go.

Continuity mistake: In the scene where Jonathan picks up the scarab, it breaks open and the beetle inside starts to crawl under his skin. We see Brendan Fraser tear Jonathan's shirt and cut the beetle out of him. However, in the very next scene, we see Jonathan walking into the temple, his shirt is intact and there is no blood to be seen. (01:37:05 - 01:38:30)

More mistakes in The Mummy

Evelyn: You were actually at Hamunaptra?
Rick: Yeah, I was there.
Evelyn: You swear?
Rick: Every damn day.

More quotes from The Mummy

Trivia: In the scene where Evie wakes up to find a rat on her chest she screams and rolls over and the rat then lands on the female mummy. According to the commentary on the DVD the rat wasn't meant to land on the girl playing the mummy, who was only the make-up lady. As soon as it landed on her she jumped up screaming.

Kara

More trivia for The Mummy

Chosen answer: The tattoos on his forehead are the Egyptian Hieroglyphs that spell "Underworld", and the ones on his cheeks are the Egyptian Hieroglyphs for the word "truth." All Medjai males get these tattoos as part of the coming-of-age rite, when they turn sixteen, of which the most important is the tattoo on their right wrist (which Rick O'Connell also has) that marks them as "warriors for God." Other tattoos specific to Medjai males are on their arms, forearms, hands, pectorals, shoulder blades and beneath the navel - the tattoos on the nose and chin are no longer used, since the time of Seti I. Medjai females only get the wrist tattoo when they come of age, but are not marked with any of the other symbols that are particular to men. Fun fact: If the Medjai - male and female alike - shows any sign of pain or cries during the tattooing process, it is considered that they have brought shame to their family.

More questions & answers from The Mummy

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.