In the 19th century, fiction novels of travel and horror became popular, and Egypt’s mysterious ruins and strange artifacts produced many new twists on these old stories. Among the first was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote The Ring of Thoth (1890) about a mummy that is brought to life. In the early 20th century, the West was
struck with “Egyptomania,” especially after the tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in 1922. Soon tales of a curse on the tomb began to circulate, fueled by the deaths over the next eight years of 11 people who were
at the opening, including the expedition’s leader, Howard Carter, and the financer, Lord Carnarvon, both in 1923. Mummies also began to be portrayed in film, and in 1932 perhaps the best of the mummy movies was made, The Mummy, starring Boris Karloff as the mummy of Imhotep.
Boris Karloff’s Imhotep is a tragic figure, and audiences feel sympathy for him; however, in later mummy films, the mummy now called Kharis becomes a monster whose only purpose is to kill. In the 1999 remake of The Mummy, Imhotep is returned but portrayed as generally evil instead of being a sympathetic figure. The plot concerns the death of the pharaoh, who is killed by his fiancé Ankh-Su-Namun, who is in love with the priest Imhotep. In the 1932 film, the female lead has the same name, Ankh Es-en- Amon. In both versions, the inspiration for the female character comes from the name of Tutankhamun’s wife, Ankh Es-en-Amen.