THEBES - 2,134 B.C

Thebes. City of the Living. Crown jewel of Pharaoh Seti the First.

An Arabian horse-drawn chariot comes barreling, driven by pharaoh Seti.

Glaring out over the city at the setting sun is a muscular man with intense, evil eyes.

Home of Imhotep, Pharaoh's high priest, Keeper of the Dead.

A gorgeous, olive-skinned goddess enters the outer foyer.The skin-tight dress she's wearing isn't a dress, but her entire naked body has been painted in the ancient Egyptian manner.

Birthplace of Anck-su-namun. Pharaoh's Mistress. No other man was allowed to touch her.

She makes her way through the ornate statuary. Several bald tattooed men stand nearby.

They are the priests of Osiris. Their eyes watch Anck-su-namun vanish through the bedroom curtains. Anck-su-namun embraces Imhotep, they kiss passionately. Imhotep's hands roam over her perfect body, smearing the paint.

But for their love, they were willing to risk life itself.

On the other side of the curtains, the bald priests rush over and close the doors. But just as they do, the doors suddenly burst open. The pharaoh angrily strides in and looks at the Priests.

"What are you doing here?" the pharaoh asks.

The priests back away, scared, his arrival was unexpected. The pharaoh strides for the curtains. And throws them back. Anck-su-namun stands alone and gives him a smile. The pharaoh sees the smeared body paint which he points at.

"WHO HAS TOUCHED YOU?!"

From behind him, his sword is ripped out of its scabbard. The pharaoh spins around, he sees Imhotep and is shocked.

"Imhotep?... My priest."

Behind him, Anck-su-namun lifts a dagger and plunges it into his back. The pharaoh screams. Imhotep raises the pharaoh's sword. The bald priests slam the doors and bolt them tight. Through the curtains, they see the shadows of Anck-su-namun and Imhotep stab at the pharaoh. Suddenly, the doors are rammed from the other side. Imhotep and Anck-su-namun turn and look. The doors are rammed again. The two lovers share desperate looks. The bald priests run up and grab Imhotep and try and pull him towards the balcony.

"Pharaoh's bodyguards!" the priests yell.

Imhotep tries to break free, but Anck-su-namun rips the pharaoh's sword out of his hand and pushes him towards the balcony.

"You must go. Save yourself. Only you can resurrect me", she says.

Imhotep's face fills with despair. The doors explode open. Men with blue-tinted skin and strange puzzle-tattoos over their bodies, stride in, armed to the teeth. These are the Mumia. The priests hustle Imhotep out onto the dark balcony just as the Mumia rip through the curtains. Anck-su-namun points at the pharaoh and hisses.

"My body is no longer his temple!" she hisses.

She plunges the sword into her own heart. Out on the balcony,

Imhotep's mouth opens into a horrible silent scream...

For murdering the pharaoh, Anck-su-namun's body was to be cursed. And it was Imothep,

the High Priest, whose duty it was to curse it.

Imhotep leads a torch-lit procession across the dunes. Anck-su-namun's mummy is carried by nubian slaves. They put her down in the sand along with five jewel encrusted jars.

Her body was mummified, her vital organs removed and placed in sacred canopic jars.

Imhotep, filled with dread, reads from a book made out of pure gold. The book of the living.

The Book of The Living contained sacred incantations that would send the evil dead on a journey into the dark underworld.

A strange light suddenly flashes across the faces of the slaves and the Egyptian soldiers. Suddenly, everyone's fear-filled eyes all rise, as if watching Anck-su-namun's body rising. Then one last huge flash, accompanied by a blast of wind, and it's over. Anck-su-namun's body now lies twisted on the ground. Imhotep's priests place the body into a stone sarcophagus. The Nubian slaves lower it into a hole and bury it with sand. Imhotep then signals to the Soldiers, who throw their spears at the Nubians, killing them.

Imhotep's knife-wielding priests attack the now unarmed Soldiers, hacking at them in the flickering darkness as Imhotep and the Mumia solemnly watch, no unholy person should ever know the exact location of the burial site.

The Mumia walk off across the sand and then, one by one, the

priests stop their frenzied stabbing and stare off at the vanishing Mumia. As the last Mumia disappears over a distant

dune, Imhotep nods, and the Priests leap onto Anck-su-namun's grave and begin digging it back up with their hands.

To resurrect Anck-su-namun Imothep and his priests broke into her crypt and stole her body.

Chariots race out into the moonlit desert. Imhotep leads the way. A "hearse" carries Anck-su-namun's mummy.

They raced deep into the desert, taking Anck-su-namun's corpse to Hamunaptra, City of the Dead, ancient burial site for the sons of pharaohs and resting place for the wealth of Egypt.

There was another book, The book of the Dead, which was never to be opened, never to be read, for it contained the incantations that could bring a dead body back to life a most unholy thing.

The chariots race up the stone ramp and in through the city gates.

The book was hidden at Hamunaptra, City of the Dead, inside the statue of Anubis, so that no such sacrilege might ever disgrace Egypt.

For his love, Imothep dared the god's anger by going deep into the city where he took the black book of the Dead from its holy resting place.

Imhotep pulls an ornate chest out of a secret compartment inside the giant statue of Anubis. He opens the chest and lifts out the book of the Dead, made of black stone.

Big hairy rats scurry through the mausoleums and over the

headstones of this very large, scary, underground cemetery. A detritus moat surrounds the cemetery, muck made out of filthy water and human remains. Skulls bob in the goop. The priests have gathered in a circle. Their hooded, lifeless eyes seem dead to this world. Their bald heads rock back and forth as they chant, a quiet eerie hum.

In the middle of the circle is a strange, twisted altar. Imhotep has unwrapped Anck-su-namun's gorgeous, lifeless body and placed her five sacred canopic jars around her.

Anck-su-namun's soul had been sent to the dark underworld, her vital organs removed and placed in five sacred canopic jars.

Anck-su-namun's vital organs were still fresh, so a human sacrifice would not need be made.

As Imhotep begins to read from the book of the Dead, a large swirling hole starts to open in the detritus bog. Several priests look over at it, frightened, then quickly look back down and resume chanting. A strange mist wafts up out of the swirling hole and over to the jars, it passes through them and into Anck-su-namun's body. One of the jars shudders, the heart inside begins to beat. The chanting priests, swirling hole, wafting mist, beating heart and Imothep's readings are reaching a crescendo. Anck-su-namun's eyes suddenly fly open.

Anck-su-namun's soul had come back from the dead.

Now all that was needed, was to return her organs to their rightful place within her body.

Imhotep lifts a sacrificial knife above Anck-su-namun's breast, about to plunge it down. The chanting, swirling and beating heart climax.

But pharaoh's bodyguards had followed Imothep and stopped him before the ritual could be completed.

And that's when the Mumia burst in and storm through the startled Priests. The head mumia smashes the jar with the beating heart. The mist instantly sucks back out of Anck-su-namun's body and implodes back into the swirling hole. Anck-su-namun's eyes close, dying once again. Imhotep screams in rage. The Mumia grab him and his priests.

His priests were condemned to be mummified alive.

Inside a torch-lit chamber, Imhotep is held by Anubis-headed embalmers. He cringes at the flickering, impressionistic glimpses of his Priests being embalmed and mummified alive.

The horrid-looking Embalmers, using knives, needles and thread, calmly perform their ghastly surgery on the screaming priests, who are going insane from the procedure. A red hot poker is pulled out of a pit of burning coals. A priest's head is wedged between two strong boards. His

eyes widen in terror as an Embalmer moves to insert the red hot poker up his nose. All twenty-one of Imhotep's priests

squirm inside their wrappings. Imhotep is forced to his knees. His arms are held back. His mouth is pried open.

As for Imothep he was condemned to endure the Hom-Dai. The worst of all ancientcurses. One so horrible, it had never before been bestowed.

Using a pair of tongs, an Embalmer slowly pulls Imhotep's tongue out of his mouth, then places a very sharp knife on

top of it, Imothep's tongue is

cut out. The Embalmer flings Imhotep's tongue onto the floor. The Mumia's dogs attack and quickly eat it. Imhotep is wrapped alive. Only his mouth, nostrils and fearfilled eyes are left free of the slimy bandages. Detritus muck boils inside a black cauldron. Embalmers scoop out the fetid muck and apply it to Imhotep's wrappings as he squirms. He's then laid in a wooden coffin inside a stone sarcophagos. An Embalmer with a bucket steps up and looks into the coffin. Imhotep's wild eyes stare back. The Embalmer empties the bucket over Imhotep's chest: dozens of scarabs, disgusting dung beetles. They scurry across Imhotep's screaming face. Some vanish into his tongue-less mouth and up his nostrils.

By eating the sacred scarabs, he would be cursed to stay alive forever. And by eating him, they were cursed just the same.

The lid to the coffin is slamned shut. Then, using a strange four-sided key, the Head Mumia locks the coffin lid tight.The heavy sarcophagus lid is shoved into place and with a loud whoosh seals itself airtight. Once again, the Head Mumia uses the strange key, locking the sarcophagus lid tight.

Imothep was to remain sealed inside his sarcophagus, the undead for all of eternity.

The blue-skinned, strangely tattooed man carefully collapses

the sides of the key, turning it into a little puzzle box.

They would never allow him to be released. For he would arise a walking disease, a plague upon mankind, an unholy flesh-eater, with the strengthof ages, power over the sands, and the glory of invincibility.

Imhotep's sarcophagus is dropped into a detritus pit. The

disgusting muck splashes up, drools down it's sides, and then is mysteriously sucked into it's seams, vanishing clean.

And if he could raise his beloved Anck-su-namun from her place in hell, together, they would be an unstoppable infection upon this world. The Apocalypse. The End.

Imhotep's horrifying tongue-less screams can be heard coming from inside his sarcophagus as grave diggers shovel dirt onto it.

The heavily armed Mumia stand guard around Imhotep's grave.

Looking down on the burial site is the huge statue of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of death.

For 3,000 years men and armies fought over this land neuer knowing what evil lay beneath it. And for 3,000 years werden the Medjai the descendants of Pharaoh's sacred bodyguards kept watch.

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