Plot
In Egypt, 1290 BC, high priest Imhotep engages in an affair with Anck-su-Namun, the mistress of Pharaoh Seti I. When the Pharaoh discovers their tryst, Imhotep and Anck-su-Namun murder the monarch. As Seti's guards arrive, Imhotep flees while Anck-su-Namun kills herself, intending for Imhotep to resurrect her. After Anck-su-Namun's burial, Imhotep and his priests steal her corpse and travel to Hamunaptra, the city of the dead, where they begin the resurrection ceremony. They are caught by Seti's guards before the ritual can be completed, and Anck-su-Namun's soul is sent back to the Underworld. Imhotep's priests are mummified alive; Imhotep is cursed to immortal agony as he is buried alive with flesh-eating scarabs. He is buried under high security, sealed away in a sarcophagus below a statue of the Egyptian god Anubis, and kept under strict surveillance by warriors known as the Medjai.
　
In 1926, Jonathan Carnahan presents his sister, Cairo librarian and aspiring Egyptologist Evelyn, an intricate box and map which Jonathan says he found in Thebes. After the pair discover the map leads to Hamunaptra, Jonathan reveals he stole it from an American adventurer named Rick O'Connell, currently in prison. Evelyn and Jonathan visit Rick; he tells them that he knows the location of the city because his unit of the French Foreign Legion found the location years ago. He makes a deal with Evelyn to reveal the location of Hamunaptra, in exchange for Evelyn saving Rick from being hanged.
　
Rick leads Evelyn and Jonathan's small expedition to the city, where the group encounters a band of American treasure hunters led by the famed British Egyptologist Dr. Allen Chamberlain and guided by Beni Gabor, a cowardly former comrade of Rick. Shortly after reaching Hamunaptra, the expeditions are attacked by the Medjai, led by the warrior Ardeth Bay. Ardeth warns them of the evil buried in the city, but rather than heed his warning, the two expeditions continue to excavate in separate portions of the city. Evelyn searches for the Book of Amun-Ra, a solid gold book reportedly capable of taking life away, but comes across the remains of Imhotep instead. The team of Americans, meanwhile, discover a box containing the black Book of the Dead, accompanied by canopic jars carrying Anck-su-Namun's preserved organs; Chamberlain takes the Book of the Dead while each of the Americans takes a jar as loot. Before opening the box, Chamberlain reads an engraving saying that any and all who open the box are cursed if Imhotep is awakened. The men ignore the warnings, but Beni refuses to assist them, and flees.
　
At night, Evelyn takes the Book of the Dead and reads a page aloud, accidentally awakening Imhotep. The expeditions flee to Cairo, but Imhotep follows them with the help of Beni, who bargains with Imhotep in exchange for his life. Imhotep absorbs the life from the American expedition, returning to full strength. Seeking a way to stop Imhotep, Rick, Evelyn and Jonathan meet Ardeth at a museum. After Evelyn reveals that Imhotep referred to her as Anck-su-Namun in Hamunaptra, Ardeth and museum curator Terrence Bay hypothesize that Imhotep wants to resurrect his love again and will do so by sacrificing Evelyn. Evelyn hypothesizes that if the Book of the Dead brought Imhotep back to life, the Book of Amun-Ra can kill him again. After discovering the location of the Book, Imhotep corners the group with an army of slaves. Evelyn agrees to accompany Imhotep if he spares the lives of the rest of the group. Imhotep goes back on his word and leaves his slaves to kill the group. Luckily, Rick discovers an entrance to the sewers and they escape. Terrence sacrifices himself to buy the others time to escape.
　
Imhotep, Evelyn and Beni return to Hamunaptra, pursued by Rick, Jonathan, and Ardeth. Evelyn is rescued after an intense battle with Imhotep's mummified priests, and she reads from the Book of Amun-Ra. Imhotep becomes mortal, and Rick stabs him, forcing him into the River of Death. Rapidly decaying, Imhotep leaves the world of the living, vowing revenge with the same words he carved into his sarcophagus, Death is only the beginning. While looting treasure from the pyramid, Beni accidentally sets off an ancient booby trap and is trapped by a swarm of flesh-eating scarabs as Hamunaptra collapses into the sand. The heroes escape, although they lose the Book of Amun Ra in the process. Rick, Jonathan and Evelyn ride off into the sunset on a pair of camels laden with Beni's treasure.
　
Critical reaction
The Mummy has received mixed reviews from critics. It currently holds a 55% "rotten" rating at Rotten Tomatoes and a 48 Metascore at Metacritic. Roger Ebert, a film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, writing "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." Likewise, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B-" grade and said, "The Mummy would like to make you shudder, but it tries to do so without ever letting go of its jocular inconsequentiality." Bob Graham of the San Francisco Chronicle gave the film high marks for the acting as well as the special effects.
　
Stephen Holden from The New York Times wrote, "This version of The Mummy has no pretenses 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." Publications like The Austin Chronicle and Dallas Observer came to the conclusion that despite good acting and special effects, the movie lacked cohesion; talking about the special effects, the Observer lamented "If only generating a soul for the film itself were so easy." Other publications such as Jump Cut felt that Industrial Light and Magic's lock on special effects proved detrimental to The Mummy; "The mummy", Ernest Larson wrote for the Jump Cut, "is standard-issue I.L.&M.". Kim Newman of the British Film Institute judged the picture inferior to the original, as all the time was spent on special effects, instead of creating the atmosphere which made the original film such a classic. USA Today gave the film two out of four stars and felt that it was "not free of stereotypes", a sentiment with which the BFI concurred. "If someone complains of a foul odor, you can be sure an Arab stooge is about to enter a scene. Fraser, equally quick with weapon, fist or quip, may save the day, but even he can't save the picture", USA Today wrote.