Question: Anyone know what Beni said to Rick? I'm referring to what he said (I'm assuming Hebrew) before Rick said "What did you say?!" followed by "I'm not gonna tell you" by Beni.
Corrected entry: Near the end of the movie, when the Mummy's girlfriend is put on the table next to Rachel Weisz, it is VERY obvious that she is breathing BEFORE he tries to bring her back to life.
Correction: Based on an IMDB entry, this is plain wrong. Until the 'spirit' enters her body, Ankh-Su-Namum is just a prop dummy, not an actress in costume, so there is no breathing, or a pulse, or anything similar. After the spirit enters, she's allowed to be breathing.
This is inaccurate. The female mummy was actually one of the make-up artists, and she was so nervous during filming that her pulse is visible prior to the spirit entering her body.
Question: What does Colonel O'Connell yell to his Legionnaires in French as the cavalry charge nears? And why does he then continue in English ("Steady, Steady...Fire!").
Answer: He is in the French Foreign Legion, which is a corps in the French army which allows foreigners to sign up. But, it is mostly led by French and a lot of French nationals are still a part of it. So hence why he speaks in multiple languages, being trained by French.
Yes, I know, but what does he yell in French? Does anyone have the text? It's not in the script. Fraser is fluent in French, maybe it was his improvisation. I'd still like to know what he said.
Ah yes, sorry. I was too focussed on the second question. He says "Prenez vos positions." Which means "take your positions!"
Question: Why is it said that Imhotep and his priests were mummified alive? Mummification occurs when someone dies and has most of the organs removed. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that he was buried alive?
Answer: It means the process of removing their organs was performed while they were still alive. Certainly at some point they would die during the process from blood loss or having a vital organ removed. And it was just the priests that were mummified alive, Imhotep was subjected to a different punishment.
Their internal organs were not removed or they'd die instantly. In the movie you see them being bandaged up and put in the sarcophaguses whilst still moving and then sealed up so they still had their organs. It is indeed more like being buried alive but then as a mummy.
Indeed, but you can also see the Medjai using sharp tools against some of the priests. The priest on the left side of the screen with his arm writhing has a Medjai placing a sharp object around his face, indicating he might either be cutting out his tongue or removing his brains through his nose. The Medjai in the immediate foreground is (badly) making a slashing motion with his sword towards the priest lying on the table before him.
Question: In the Mummy, when we first meet Evie, after knocking down multiple bookshelves, the "Egyptian Librarian" is scolding Evie. He mentions her parents then says, "Allah, rest their souls." This leads us to believe that he of Muslim faith. In the next sentence though he says, "Clean up this meshiva." My first thought, the word sounds Yiddish. The only reference or definition I could find was to a new Final Fantasy video game. There were several Yiddish translator and terminology websites included in the search engine results, but the closest reference I could find was for meshugah. Did they make up a word just for that part in the movie? Was it a mispronounced and missed in editing? Could it be Yiddish slang? And my last question started all of this; why is an Egyptian of Muslim faith using Yiddish terminology or slang?
Answer: He's a scholar, probably knows many languages. Why wouldn't he use foreign expressions or words regardless of his own religion? Many multilingual people interchange expressions and words all the time so it's really not that odd.
Answer: The word "meshiva" is Hindi, and it means simply "mess."
Answer: The word is indeed "Meshuga" (various ways to spell it) meaning craziness, and is simply Hebrew. You gotta remember the order he is part of is way older than the Muslim faith and even the Jewish faith. I'm sure the order turned to the Muslim faith at some point in time and probably Jews have been part of it as well, anyone who can help keep the mummy secret. They all probably have mixed faiths and believes along with the ancient task to protect the mummy.
Mishugash is yiddish. And yiddish is a combination of hebrew and german... so not exactly something you would expect from a person native to the mid east.
It's used in both Yiddish and Hebrew.
Question: What's the significance of the tattoo on the hands of the medjai? Not the medjai symbol but the 3 lines?
Answer: The tattoos they have are various symbols that mark them as Medjai. The sequel, "The Mummy Returns" confirms this.
Yes, I know, but the tattoos on the top of the hands are different from the one on the forehead and the cheeks. It makes me think of pyramids.
I believe it's just that seal of the Medjai. I don't think there's much significance beyond that.
Question: The answer for another question made me wonder. If Imothep was alive when put in his sarcophagus, how can there be jars with his internal organs elsewhere? Wouldn't they still be in his body in order for him to be alive?
Answer: If you're referring to the only jars that are used in the movie, those are Anck Su Namun's organs. Not his. Near as I can tell, his organs were not taken, hence him being alive.
They are his body parts; remember that he had to get the body parts from each of the adventurers to complete his resurrection (he left one guy without eyes or a tongue and sucked the life out of him).
No, they are Anck Su Namun's. The mummy steals the man's eyes and tongue because he's been decomposing and his own have rotted off. It's part of his regeneration process. He simply didn't have time to fully "suck him dry," as the movie puts it before Evie stumbles onto him.
Answer: He was buried alive as part of his punishment so they can't be his. They are Anck su Namun's. He needs them for when he resurrects her. He gets organs when he fulfills the curse by taking them from the men that opened the chest.
His organs were probably eaten by the bugs, if they weren't they probably decayed, hence why he needs to replace them with the organs of others.
The priests cut off his tongue as he was being linen wrapped, but I doubt it was placed in a canopic jar. But it kept him from doing invocations or screaming even though a wordless scream is possible with no tongue.
Corrected entry: There was no solar eclipse visible anywhere near the Middle East in 1923.
Correction: The eclipse was caused because Imhotep was regenerating. An event that happens in a fantasy, as a result of a fictional character's actions, cannot be considered a factual error.
Correction: "Magically" creating a solar eclipse would mean altering the rotation of the earth and its orbit around the sun. The earthquakes would be beyond imagination and the resulting tsunamis and devastating climate changes would wipe out the few survivors. Some things are beyond magic. This is one of them.
But using magic he could "easily" (at least judging by his powers in this film) cast a shadow over the sun - it doesn't have to be the moon. Especially given that the sun stays dark for a while, whereas natural eclipses are over quite quickly.
Actually creating a solar eclipse would require moving the moon, not the Earth. It's not "beyond magic", magic is magic.
Correction: The ancient Egyptians worshipped the Sun as their ultimate god, Ra. Given that their "magic" seemed to function remarkably well (well enough to resurrect desiccated mummies after 3000 years, anyway), there's a slight chance that the ancient Egyptians were slightly more in touch with the magic of celestial mechanics than we are today with our dogmatic Science. I mean, if it happened that they were correct about the Sun being a God, then perhaps they were knowledgeable in summoning the Sun's cooperation in their magical endeavors.
Question: In the scenes where Rick lights a match to use on a stick of dynamite, he does so by striking the match against either his own ear or the ear of Ardeth Bay. Is there an explanation to how he does this?
Answer: He's lighting the match on his beard-stubble by raking it down his face. He's not striking the matches on his ear. It's not practical at all (and in fact, it's basically impossible unless you have beard-stubble like sandpaper), but it's just a cute way for the movie to show how much of a bad-a** he is. In reality behind the scenes, they actually had a strip of matchbox taped to the actor's faces that they were striking the matches on to light them. But with the right camera placement, it looks like they're lighting them on their faces.
Answer: Matches in those days were friction matches, with added red phosphorous so you could light them on basically any surface, as long as you generated enough heat. Some prefer the bottom of their boots, or a wall, but others light them on their own body, or someone else's.
Bare skin does not provide the necessary friction to light a match. It's possible to light one using one's fingernail by flicking it hard against the match head, but not with skin. There has to be a hard textured surface to create a spark.
Rough stubble?
Those matches are known as 'strike anywhere matches', because of the phosphorous coating on the matchhead they can be used on any suitably frictional surface. That's why Rick used Ardeth's stubble beard to strike the matchhead against.
Answer: I don't think he was rubbing the match on bare skin, more likely the edge of where the beard grows. The rough hairs would make the area of skin able to produce enough friction to light the match as long as it was rubbed fast enough.
Other mistake: Evie explains that if Imotep was resurrected he'd bring with him the ten plagues of Egypt. This is followed by (in no particular order) a plague of Locusts, Flies, Water running to blood, the sun being eclipsed and a plague of boils. At the plague of boils Jonathan says 'last but not least, my favourite plague - boils and sores'. How does he know this is the last plague? Aren't there supposed to be 5 more? (01:23:10)
Suggested correction: This may be taking the dialog too literally. It may be foreshadowing, in the sense of "uh, oh, they've got us now" or Jonathan may simply be expressing the fact that he's had enough plagues now and would like it to stop please. By the way, you forgot the fire raining from the sky, so technically Imhotep did six, not five.
The fact that Evie stated specifically 10 plagues, it makes no sense for Jonathan to say "last" on the 6th one, without considering it a mistake on the parts of writers, actor, or director.
Jonathan doesn't simply say "last", but rather "last but not least" - a statement that is regularly used on things the speaker knows for a fact to be, in fact, not the actual last. Taken as a sarcastic remark it makes perfect sense in the situation.
I know he said more than just "last", but that was the keyword to point out that the mistake is in fact valid. "Last but not least", weather said sarcastically or not, is never meant to be said about something that is in fact not last. It's always said to indicate the last item is not necessary the least, such as at Christmas when the last gift remains or when the last graduating student is given his or her diploma.
Also it's a possibility that off screen there was death of livestock, lice, raining frogs and death of first born children. Just want to show which we missing and it's obvious why, as in a movie raining frogs or dying livestock isn't all that threatening to the main characters and doesn't look cool. And for the movie showing first born children die is just stupid. And lice, that's just too much like flies.
Trivia: Because the white nightdress Evelyn wears during the ship attack got wet, it became transparent, and had to be digitally painted white in post production. Otherwise the film would have lost its PG-13 rating.
Different eras. The movie "The Bounty" with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins features an abundance of topless native island women but retained a PG rating. It would easily receive an R rating today.
Question: After the fire on the ship, and everyone gets out, Benny yells to O'Connell that he has all the horses. O'Connell yells back, "You're on the wrong side of the river." Benny makes a big stink about all that. My question is why? Surely it would not be so hard to cross a river.
Answer: Depends very much on the size of the river. The Nile at that point is pretty wide and deep, which doesn't make it particularly easy to cross. Benny and his cohorts would need to find a ferry or bridge to get across, which would take time. Even without horses, that gives O'Connell's group a considerable head start.
There are poisonous snakes in the Nile River.
Answer: There are also crocodiles in the Nile.
Factual error: I counted five canopic jars, one of which has the head of a lion. In ancient Egypt there were only four canopic jars - Hapi, the baboon-headed god representing north, Imseti, the human-headed god representing south, Duamutef, the jackal-headed god representing east and Qebehsenuef, the falcon-headed god representing west. None have lion heads. (00:04:20)
Suggested correction: Why does it matter. They added a fifth. No reason after making up a lot of history and a cover to cover book instead of a scroll for us to suddenly go, hmm, they gave the ten plagues of God in the Bible to an Egyptian priest? Lions are cats. Therefore worship, plus the lioness goddess who slew through the land once. They can certainly add that and might make it a nicer play on the mummy's power and deadliness comparatively to the canopic heads and their gods.
A better excuse is the fact that the earliest found canopic jars are from the 11th dynasty (2200 BC) whilst the jars in the movie are way older than that (2700 BC) and could have represented anything they wanted and be more than 4. Someone should make a correction like that.
There is no real excuse. It is simply an inaccuracy and the trivia section to include it as such. It certainly "does matter".
Corrected entry: At the beginning of the film Evie tells us that Imhotep being buried alive with the beetles would have been a slow and horrible death, yet later in the film any death involving the beetles was fast.
Correction: I would guess it's part of the Hohmn-dai (or however its spelled) curse that the beetles would eat Imhotep slowly.
The coffin only have a few scarab tossed in.they would have bred into a multitude and probably half starved it would be quick to eat anyone down to the bones in no time at all.
Answer: Beni: As long as I serve him, I am immune. Rick: Immune from what? Beni: Piszkos állat [this is Hungarian for "filthy animal," an insult directed at Rick]. Rick: What did you say? Beni: I don't want to tell you. You'll just hurt me some more.
Charles Austin Miller
But how come he speaks Hungarian throughout the movie? Is he portrayed as a Hungarian in the film?
Beni is shown to speak many languages, as evident when he is confronted by the mummy and tries to pray to different religions.
lionhead
Beni was a native Hungarian, but he was multilingual.
Charles Austin Miller