Hamunaptra - The City of the Dead

Hamunaptra - City of the Dead 

Hamunaptra built circa 1998 A.D.
 

Luxor built circa 1200 B.C.
 

First let us look at the architecture of Hamunaptra. As you realise there are many temples in Egypt which the designers could have used as their inspiration. I have just put an example of the temple Ramses (Seti I's son) built at Luxor here as a reference, but you can play 'spot the column' and see if you can see a similar one in the two pictures. You see the problem with Hamunaptra is that it is a big mess of many parts of temples and many periods Egyptian Archintecture built higgledy piggledy with no logic to it. I would love to see the original plans used by the designers and see if I can locate the where and when of all the pieces of the architecture which they have used to make up the temple.

Now then, those jars.... I could jump up and down and fume about these for several days because of the mess the film made of things.

There never should have been five jars, only four as this picture of some from the British Museum shows.

The inscription on the jars comes from King Tut-ankh-amen's canopic chest, it held the four little coffins he had instead of jars. Ankh's jars even have his name (Neb-kepheru-ra) shown right) on in a cartouche if you look.

Canopic Jars were fashioned with heads in the shape of the four sons of Horus and each held part of the deceased's internal organs.

Imsenti had a human head and held the liver.

Hapi had a baboon's head and held the lungs, the jars used in the film were also far too small - about 4x too small and did not smash when they were finally knocked off the altar in the final fight between O'Connell and the mummies. There was no way that anyone could have carried a real jar about in their pockets. Interestingly however there is a dummy jar their size in the British Museum created later in history when dummies were used to reperesent the real thing.

Duamutef had a jackal's head and held the stomach. Qebehsenuef had a falcon's head and held the intestines.
 
The Book of The Dead does exist - there are lots of copies in many museums but it was nothing but prayers and spells to keep the soul safe in the underworld. You might be interested to see the drawing which is a copy done by Sir Wallace Budge of Ani's book of the dead kept in the Egyplology department at the British Museum and compare it with the film version.