It is worth noting, explicitly, that as with his Universal predecessors, Kharis is not, strictly speaking, a mummy: the character has not been ritually embalmed after death but, rather, entombed alive, having first, been forcibly restrained by yards of linen bindings. Recognising this, Roy Ashton’s inventive makeup for Kharis, researched at the British Museum, displays none of the desiccated features previously associated with cinema’s somewhat decrepit ambulant mummies. Ashton’s vision of Kharis is of a mystical monstrosity held together, within his grimy wrappings, by the ancient magic of the Scroll of Life, ‘said to have been written by the hand of the god Karnak, himself.’

Following its early scenes at the excavation site – a hastily hewn, rock-cut tomb, some distance from the Nile valley – The Mummy plays out in the sparsely populated fictional English village of Engerfield in the year 1898. This pastoral setting references the leafy Oxfordshire lanes of "Lot No. 249" as the locale for the mummy’s lethal activities, providing an effective visual juxtaposition of ancient Eastern sorcery with fin de siècle Western rationalism. The incongruous nature of this situation is further stressed by dialogue in which an exasperated Inspector Mulooney (Eddie Byrne) dismisses ‘fantasies straight out of Edgar Allen Poe,’ and, in so doing, the screenplay directly references Poe’s 1845 work of satirical Egyptomania, "Some Words with a Mummy".

As with "Lot No. 249" and each of the Universal mummy films, from The Mummy’s Hand (US, Christy Cabanne, 1940) onwards, Kharis’ actions are largely controlled by a contemporary magical adept, utilising ancient paraphernalia: Mehemet Akhir, a modern Egyptian with a determinedly ancient faith, who finds the archaeological intrusion into his priestess’ burial morally repugnant. Whatever his strongly held beliefs, he presents as intelligent, educated and, apparently rational in his attitudes. It seems likely that Cypriot actor George Pastell’s elegantly nuanced performance is informed by Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Hussein, a prominent international figure at the time of the film’s production, following the 1952 Egyptian Revolution and the subsequent Suez Crisis.

The tediously familiar ‘Egyptological’ fantasy trope of reincarnation, first broached by H. Rider Haggard’s 1886 novel, She: A History of Adventure, and a major narrative element of the Universal cycle, almost raises its lacklustre head but Isobel Banning (Yvonne Furneux) only resembles Princess Ananka and whilst her physical similarity is a significant plot point, it is handled with considerable pragmatism, ensuring that the film’s supernatural elements are strictly limited to the undead Kharis and the magical power of the Scroll.

The film’s archaeological authenticity is notably inconstant. In view of Jack Asher’s gorgeous cinematography and the sumptuous production design, the film is at some pains to display the interior and contents of Ananka’s tomb and, in an extended flashback sequence to the Nineteeth Dynasty, the mummification and lavish funeral of the princess. Although the mummification involves a quite literal natron solution bath, and the funerary rituals involve the bloody slaughter of both handmaidens and slaves – it is a horror film, after all – the various Egyptological props are primarily immaculately detailed recreations of artefacts from the tomb of Tutankhamun, fashioned by Production Designer Bernard Robinson and his future wife Margaret Carter. These include a recognisable throne, bovine funerary bed, head of the goddess Hathor, and most prominently, a diminutive facsimile of Tutankhamun’s cartouche-shaped chest, here acting as the case for the papyrus Scroll of Life, still emblazoned with the king’s name and the epithet ‘Ruler of Thebes!’ Much like Kharis, himself, the film’s props enjoyed a vigorous afterlife, continuing to appear in various British film and television productions for a further two decades, while the fibreglass, rishi-patterned coffin of Ananka – clearly based upon Tutankhamun’s middle coffin – following a worldwide publicity tour for the film, came to rest in Perth Museum, Scotland, where it is on periodic display.

Whilst the film does portray somewhat unexpected religious elements such as the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, with Lee’s still young and vibrant Kharis, adorned in the requisite leopard skin mantle, a funerary priest wearing an all-encompassing Anubis mask, and even ‘maidens bearing the Ushabti,’ Sangster’s screenplay makes little genuine effort to engage with Egyptian religious belief: the chief deity worshipped by Kharis, Ananka, and Mehemet being the entirely fictious, and improbably named ‘Karnak.’ Sangster’s reasoning for this decision varied across the subsequent decades, and the current writer feels it most probable that in creating a hitherto unknown deity with a recognisably ‘Egyptian’ name, Sangster was simply allowing himself a degree of artistic freedom and lessening the necessity of undertaking potentially time-consuming Egyptological research.

The film credits Andrew Low as ‘Technical Advisor,’ however, considerable research by this writer has been unable to confirm Low’s Egyptological qualifications or academic background, and Margaret Carter’s recollections suggest that that he may have been rather less knowledgeable of the discipline than he, or, indeed, Hammer’s publicity materials at the time of The Mummy’s release, proclaim.

Author: John J. Johnston