THEBES - 2,134 B.C

Thebes. City of the Living. Crown jewel of Pharaoh Seti the First. Home of Imhotep, High Priest of Osiris, Keeper of the Dead.

A gorgeous, olive-skinned goddess enters the outer foyer. She seemed to be wearing a skin-tight dress but what she's wearing isn't a dress at all, but rather her entire naked body has been painted in the ancient Egyptian manner She's a stunning sight to behold. This is Anck-su-namun.

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

She makes her way through the ornate statuary. A strange looking tattooed man stood there. Several more of these hideous, bald men stand nearby. They are the priests of Osiris. Imhotep's guys. Their eyes watch Anck-su-namun vanish through the bedroom curtains. Anck-su-namun embraces Imhotep, they kiss passionately, feverishly. Imhotep's hands roam over her perfect body, smearing the paint.

But for our love, we 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, he looks at the Priests.

"What are you doing here?" The Pharaoh asked them. The Priests back away, scared shitless, obviously his arrival was unexpected. The Pharaoh strides for the curtains, he throws them back. Anck-su-namun stands alone. Gives him a sexy smile. The Pharaoh sees the smeared body paint and points his finger.

"Who has touched you?!" The Pharaoh asked angrily, from behind him, his sword is ripped out of its scabbard. The Pharaoh spins around. It's Imhotep. The Pharaoh is shocked.

"Imhotep? My Priest." The Pharaoh said. Behind him, Anck-su-namun lifts a dagger and plunges it into his back.

The Pharaoh screams, Imhotep raises the Pharaoh's sword. The hideous bald Priests slam the doors and bolt them tight. Through the curtains, they see the shadows of Anck-su-namun and Imhotep stab away at the Pharaoh. Suddenly, the doors are rammed from the other side, WHAM! Imhotep and Anck-su-namun turn and look. WHAM! The doors are rammed again. The two lovers share desperate looks. WHAM! The bald Priests run up and grab Imhotep and try and pull him towards the balcony.

"The Pharaoh's bodyguards." Imhotep's priests said. Imhotep tries to break free, but Anck-su-namun rips Pharaoh's sword out of his hand and pushes him towards the balcony.

"You must go! Save yourself. Only you can resurrect me." Anck-su-namun said to Imhotep. Imhotep's face fills with despair. Suddenly, 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 Pharaoh and hisses, "My body is no longer his temple!" 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 I, 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. This is 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.

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 instantly.

The slaves were killed...

Imhotep's knife-wielding Priests attack the now unarmed Soldiers, hacking at them in the flickering darkness as Imhotep and the Mumia solemnly watches.

.and the soldiers who killed them were also slain, so that 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.

❖❖

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

But 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 arrive at a place marked on the map in hieratic. They race up the stone ramp and in through the city gates.

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

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.

But for my love of Anck-su-namun I was willing to defy the gods.

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. Imhotep has unwrapped Anck-su-namun's gorgeous, lifeless body and placed her five sacred canopic jars around her.

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 Imhotep's reading are reaching a crescendo. Anck-su-namun's eyes suddenly fly open.

Anck-su-namun 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. 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.

My 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 me, I was condemned to endure the Hom-Dai. The worst of all ancient curses. 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. The Embalmer cuts his tongue off. 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 sarcophagus.

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, I would be cursed to stay alive forever. And by eating me, they were cursed just the same.

The lid to the coffin is slammed 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.

I was to remain sealed inside my 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 me to be released. For I would arise a walking disease, a plague upon mankind, an unholy flesh-eater, with the strength of 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, vanishing clean.

And if I could raise my beloved Anck- su-namun from her place in hell, together, we 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.