Hamunaptra
| Hamunaptra | |
|---|---|
| The Mummy location | |
| Created by | Stephen Sommers |
| Genre | Action film |
| Type | City |
| Notable locations | Sahara Desert, Egypt |
| First appearance | The Mummy |
Hamunaptra (also known as City of the Dead) is a fictional Egyptian city that first made its appearance in the 1999 film The Mummy.
According to the films, Hamunaptra is a hidden city in the desert which is the resting place of Imhotep, the 3,000-year-old mummy that will revisit the Earth as a curse if released. He, and the city of Hamunaptra, are guarded by the Medjay, who do not want "the beast" to be awakened and have guarded it for centuries. It served as the resting place for Pharaohs and their wealth.
The viewer's first introduction to Hamunaptra is when Brendan Fraser's Rick O'Connell and his military unit in the Foreign Legion come across it in the desert.
As Bronwyn Williams writes in Popular Culture and Representations of Literacy, "In The Mummy the object that first excites Evie's interest in Hamunaptra is a small, intricately made metal box that is a key for opening both the sarcophagus of the mummy and the fabled black Book of the Dead buried in his tomb. When the box springs open, Evie finds a map showing the location of Hamunaptra." In the film, Evie was excited by the idea of Hamunaptra because her mother had told her and her brother Jonathan Carnahan stories about the city when they were children. Evie enlists Rick's help in finding the city, since he has been there, with an assortment of other characters joining the troupe in traveling to the desert city.
The final climactic scene at the end of The Mummy is located within Hamunaptra. The city sinks into the sand, and the main characters barely escape with their lives. The main antechamber, filled with mounds of treasure and gold, also sinks into the sand.
With the city sinking back into the sand at the end of The Mummy, in the sequel viewers see excavation attempts near the beginning of the film. Characters Meela Nais, the museum curator Hafez, and Lock-Nah oversee the excavation of Imhotep's resin-covered corpse, which they then reanimate.
Hamunaptra appears in a number of books, including:
...
Wikipedia