The Mummy is a 1999 film written and directed by Stephen Sommers, starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, with Arnold Vosloo as the reanimated mummy of the title. The movie features some dialogue in ancient Egyptian language with the assistance of a professional Egyptologist.

It is a loose remake of The Mummy (1932), which starred Boris Karloff as the mummy.

The Mummy does not take place at the famed Giza pyramids where several Old Kingdom Egyptian kings (Egyptian monarchs were not yet called pharaohs) were buried. Instead most of the action takes place in the fictitious Hamunaptra — the "City of the Dead" that lies "deep into the desert" beyond Thebes that has buried treasure that the characters soon come to find.

It was followed in 2001 by a sequel, The Mummy Returns and The Mummy: The Animated Series, followed by The Scorpion King in 2002. Another sequel, The Mummy 3: Curse of the Dragon is expected in 2008. Universal Studios opened a roller coaster, Revenge of the Mummy, in 2004.

The movie and its sequel were novelized by Max Allan Collins.

In 1992, producer James Jacks decided to update the original Mummy film for the 1990s. Universal Studios gave him the go-ahead but only if he kept the budget around $10 million. He brought horror filmmaker/writer Clive Barker on-board to direct. Barker’s vision was quite violent and gory with the story revolving around a man who runs a contemporary museum and turns out to be a cultist trying to reanimate mummies. After several meetings, Barker and Universal lost interest and parted company. Filmmaker George A. Romero was brought in with a vision of a zombie-style horror movie similar to Night of the Living Dead, but this was considered too scary by Jacks and the studio who wanted a more accessible picture.

Joe Dante was the next choice, increasing the budget for his idea of Daniel Day-Lewis as a brooding Mummy. This version (co-written by John Sayles) came close to being made with some elements, like the flesh-eating scarabs, making it to the final product. However, at that point, the studio wanted a film with a budget of $15 million and nixed Dante’s version. Then, writer/director Stephen Sommers called Jacks in 1997 with his vision of a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style action/adventure film. He had wanted to make a Mummy film since 1993 but other writers or directors were always attached. Finally, he had gotten his window of opportunity and pitched his idea to the studio with an 18-page treatment. Universal liked this idea so much that they approved the concept and increased the budget from $15 million to $80 million.

The dialogue in Ancient Egyptian in both The Mummy and its sequel, The Mummy Returns, were "reconstructed" by the Egyptologist Stuart Tyson Smith, who also did similar work for Stargate, in order to make the language more speakable (in hieroglyphics vowels are not written so it is unknown how the language was pronounced).

The writers named the character Ardeth Bay after the mummy from the 1932 original. Minor changes were made from the original script by Stephen Sommers. Evelyn Carnavon was renamed Carnahan, and the beginning narration, originally to be spoken by Imhotep, was changed to Ardeth Bey when it was realized that Imhotep does not speak English.

The film begins in 1290 BC. High priest Imhotep is having an affair with the mistress of King Seti I, Anck-su-namun. When the king discovers the lovers, he is murdered by both of them. Anck-su-namun then kills herself, intending for Imhotep to later resurrect her. After her burial, Imhotep breaks into her crypt and steals her corpse. He and his priests then flee through the night across the desert to Hamunaptra, the city of the dead, where they commence the resurrection ceremony. However, they are caught by Seti's guards before the ritual can be completed, and her soul is sent back to the Underworld.

As punishment for this sacrilege, Imhotep's priests are mummified alive, and Imhotep himself is forced to endure the curse of Hom Dai: his tongue is cut out, and he is buried alive, wrapped like a mummy, along with a swarm of flesh-eating scarabs. The horror of the ritual is that it grants eternal life, forcing him to endure the agony of his wounds for all time. He is buried under high security, sealed away in a locked sarcophagus below the statue of the Egyptian funerary god Anubis, and kept under strict surveillance by the descendants of Seti's palace guards. If he were ever to be released, the powers that made him immortal would allow him to unleash a wave of destruction and death upon Earth.

Three thousand years later, in 1923, Rick O'Connell is serving in a unit of the French Foreign Legion who have voluntarily journeyed to Hamunaptra in search of the treasure rumored to be stored there. After a fight with a group of Arabs, he is the only one left alive and walks off into the desert.

Three years later, Cairo librarian and aspiring Egyptologist Evelyn "Evie" Carnahan and her bumbling brother Jonathan contact Rick while he is imprisoned. When he reveals that he knows the location of Hamunaptra, Evelyn strikes a deal with the warden to keep him from being hanged. He is then recruited into an expedition that quickly becomes a race against another group. This latter is composed of Americans, who are being led by Beni Gabor, a wimpy former army colleague of Rick's who knows the way to Hamunaptra.

Both groups trying to reach Hamunaptra are attacked by members of a secret society lead by Ardeth Bey, devoted to making sure the "creature" never awakens. However, they make it to the city nonetheless, where everyone excavates old artifacts in search of the Book of the Dead. While exploring the city they come across several traps, such as flesh eating scarabs. When necessary, scarabs amass together to form an army that completely devours everything organic in its path similar to killer ants.) The team of Americans discover a wooden chest under the statue of Anubis adorned with a warning, which the Egyptologist translates as "Death will come on swift wings to whomsoever opens this chest". Skeptical of such a curse, the Americans pry open the lid, while Beni scrambles out shouting, "Beware of the curse! Beware!". When the millenia old dust clears, the Book of The Dead lies gleeming in the dim light, accompanied by several canopic jars.

Evelyn "borrows" the book and translates a page of the Egyptian language. Imhotep is accidentally awakened by this and begins killing the Americans who opened the box. Beni survives a meeting with Imhotep by pledging allegiance to him and helps him track down the remaining Americans. Imhotep eventually brings the Ten Plagues of Egypt and captures Evelyn, intending to use her to resurrect his long-dead lover, Anck-su-namun. Rick and Jonathan rescue Evelyn and, after an intensive battle with Imhotep's fellow mummies, thwart his resurrection attempts. Evelyn reads from the golden book of Amun-Ra, which takes the mummy's immortality, after which Rick kills his mortal body by impaling him in the belly with an Arabian scimitar.

As they are leaving, Beni falls behind to plunder the treasures of the lost city and is trapped by a swarm of flesh-eating scarabs, his torch flame just going out as they surround him. The heroes escape and ride off into the sunset on a pair of camels, unaware that their saddlebags are packed with the treasures that Beni looted earlier.

The book of Amon-Ra, also called The Book of the Living, is a fictional book seen in both "Mummy" films. It is made completely of gold and it "takes life away" — in the film it is used to make Imhotep mortal, apparently by sending his soul to the underworld. It was found in the base of the statue of Horus. During the collapse of Hamunaptra it was dropped and lost. It bears similarities to the non-fictional Book of the Dead.

On its opening weekend, the film grossed a total of $43,369,635 in 3,210 theaters. As of November 29, 2006, the film has grossed a total of $415,885,488 worldwide (Domestic: $155,385,488; Foreign: $260,500,000).

In the original release of The Mummy in England, around five to ten seconds of footage was cut during the hanging scene in the Egyptian prison, including a single line from the prison warden. The cut takes away any footage of Brendan Fraser actually hanging by his neck. This was then added back into the Ultimate Edition.

Roger Ebert a film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times said that

"There is hardly a thing I can say in its favor, except that I was cheered by nearly every minute of it. I cannot argue for the script, the direction, the acting or even the mummy, but I can say that I was not bored and sometimes I was unreasonably pleased."[2]

Jess Cagle of Entertainment Weekly said that

"And it should be said that no one handles this kind of stuff with more aplomb than Fraser. Handsome in a funny way, swaggering in a goofy way, Fraser gooses the movie with his deft comic timing."

Stephen Holden from The New York Times wrote,

"This version of The Mummy has no pretences to be anything other than a gaudy comic video game splashed onto the screen. Think Raiders of the Lost Ark with cartoon characters, no coherent story line and lavish but cheesy special effects. Think Night of the Living Dead stripped of genuine horror and restaged as an Egyptian-theme Halloween pageant. Think Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy grafted onto a Bing Crosby-Bob Hope road picture (The Road to Hamunaptra?) and pumped up into an epic-size genre spoof."

The Mummy holds a 52 percent "rotten" rating at Rotten Tomatoes and a 6.6 rating at the Internet Movie Database with 48,852 votes.