The Mummy (1999) 'Found Item' Book

[RobertMuldoon]

Near the start of the film Rachel Weisz’s ‘Evelyn Evy Carnahan’ character is reading a book on the river boat, it’s not in frame for very long:


Evy carries on reading the book as she gets ready for bed in the next scene, before Carl Chase’s ‘Hook’ Magi character breaks in to her cabin:


As a few of you know I’ve been getting interested in Egyptology recently so I actually recognised the book, it’s ‘The Dwellers on the Nile’ by E. A. Wallis Budge. More specifically, it’s the 1893 version with the cloth cover with gold embossing published by The Religious Tract Society. You can still find the book, I managed to snag one on eBay.co.uk for a whopping £9.99! Here’s a glamour shot of my book sat on (a replica of) the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum:


As a last fact these days Budge isn’t well respected and there’s even a joke in the 1994 Stargate film where James Spader’s ‘Daniel Jackson’ character comments on a bad hieroglyphic translation and says ‘they must have used Budge’.

 

[Mike J.]

If you recognized the book without enhancing those screencaps, then I'll be impressed.

E. A. Wallis Budge ... why is that name familiar?...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._A._Wallis_Budge

...Apparently he was friends with H. Rider Haggard, which is awesome. He sounds like a fun guy.


-MJ

 

[RobertMuldoon]

If you recognized the book without enhancing those screencaps, then I'll be impressed.

Then you may be impressed buddy, because I did . I had seen a collection of his books in the anthropology library at the British Museum (he was attached there for a fair while) about a year ago, so they were sort of fresh in my brain.

...Apparently he was friends with H. Rider Haggard, which is awesome. He sounds like a fun guy.

Just don't ask him to translate anything for you

 

[Mike J.]

Ooo, burn!

So, did you recognize the book from that one page of illustrations?

 

[RobertMuldoon]

Ooo, burn!

Hey, it's not my fault he got his translations wrong and wrote things with a Christianity skew because he was sponsored by churchy institutions. These days if you write a paper and cite Budge as a reference you'll get laughed at and your paper rejected. The only reason the books are still reprinted today is that they're out of copyright so it's essentially free money for the publishers.

So, did you recognize the book from that one page of illustrations?

Nope, it was actually just from the cover in those first two pictures. It looked elaborate and gilded so I immediately thought of the original Budge books. I knew from the work we all did on the Mummy 2 book props that they used books and artefacts from the British Museum, and Budge worked there for a fair while. So a quick Google and I found the right cover, and a local auction that no-one else was watching

Its funny you mention that page, which incidentally is p128 and those are statues of various gods, the way the spine of my book has deteriorated falls open at that page...

 

[Mike J.]

Its funny you mention that page, which incidentally is p128 and those are statues of various gods, the way the spine of my book has deteriorated falls open at that page...

Dun dun DUN!