The Mummy

AN ANCIENT LEGEND

Imhotep, High Priest of Osiris, lusted after an Egyptian beauty whom no man but the Pharaoh was meant to touch. Punished for his blasphemy, Imhotep was mummified and buried alive—cursed throughout all eternity.

A SWASHBUCKLING
ADVENTURER

Rick O’Connell, dashing American and legionnaire, is in Egypt looking for a good time. His discovery of the lost City of the Dead is a fluke—but to British librarian Evelyn Carnahan it’s the archaeological find of the century. The city contains all the treasures of Egypt and possibly the secrets of life and death. Leading Evelyn’s expedition deep into the Sahara isn’t exactly easy money, though, as Rick must dodge death traps, escape the jaws of man-eating beetles, and even duel a hook-handed mercenary. And just when he’s caught his breath, a long-ago evil returns from the grave—with a taste for human flesh.

THE MUMMY

A novel by Max Allan Collins, based on a screenplay by Stephen Sommers. Screen story by Stephen Sommers and Lloyd Fonvielle & Kevin Jarre. Based on the motion picture screenplay by John L. Balderston, story by Nina Wilcox Putnam & Richard Schayer.

PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Boulevard edition / May 1999

All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1999 by Universal Studios Publishing Rights, a division of Universal Studios Licensing, Inc.

Book design by Tiffany Kukec.
Cover design by Jill Boltin.

The Penguin Group Inc. World Wide Web site address is
http://www.penguin.com

ISBN: 0-425-17381-X
BERKLEY BOULEVARD Berkley Boulevard Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For Bill Mumy
(
not
pronounced mummy)

“Death is but the doorway to new life—
We live today, we shall again,
In many forms shall we return.”

—Ancient Egyptian prayer

 
PART ONE
 

The Mummy’s Curse

Thebes—1,290 B.C.

 
1
 

The Painted Paramour

A
s straight and shining as a well-burnished sword, the river that would one day be known as the Nile slashed through the verdant valley in the midst of a vast sand-swept bleakness that in time would be called Sahara. Any boat or barge gliding down the wide river’s smooth surface would eventually be greeted by the shining golden nubs of temple flagpoles, hundreds of them, catching the sunlight to wink at the cloudless sky. Shortly thereafter, the river would widen to a harbor and an army of colorful linen pennants, shimmering against purple cliffs, would announce the city that was the crown jewel of the pharaoh’s domain.

Thebes—the City of the Living—sprawled upon the east bank, a crowded, thriving metropolis of riches and poverty; in the shadows of its vast limestone palaces, tiny brick houses huddled, and wide avenues befitting the grandest royal procession were within a stone’s throw of narrow alleyways, where rats and drunks made their homes.

On the west bank, symmetrical waterways fed the silty black soil, green fields edged by the paint, plaster, and pennants of grand temples. Behind these temples and fields stretched a strip of desert where the dead of Thebes, in their fine white linens, occupied burial chambers below ground. It was said that the dead rose from their underground city, on certain sundowns, and stood in the blue dusk striped by the orange dying sun, looking longingly across the water at the City of the Living.

Even as Pharaoh Seti had ruled over the living citizens of the bustling, vital city, so did Imhotep, the High Priest of the green-eyed god, Osiris, prevail over the decaying bodies of those who awaited the afterlife. The towering, sinewy Imhotep—head shaved, copper-skinned, intense eyed, and as well-chiseledly handsome as any idol—was one of the most powerful men in the City of the Living: he was the Keeper of the Dead.

And now in death, even the pharaoh—murdered by his favorite mistress, the ethereal beauty, Anck-su-namun—was under Imhotep’s dominion. Seti had regarded Imhotep as a loyal servant, prized advisor, and—as much as a potentate could be said to have one—a trusted friend. So it now fell, in due course, for Imhotep to fulfill one last duty for his fallen friend: to curse the body of the woman who had betrayed the flesh-and-blood man who had worn the robe and crown of the pharaoh.

Under the starry dome of the sky, a torchlit procession of slaves, soldiers, and priests wound through and around the desert dunes. The bare-chested Nubian slaves bore the linen-bandage-wrapped mummified body of Anck-su-namun, the sinuously feminine curves of the woman apparent even in death; five more of them carried the jewel-encrusted canopic jars that held the dead paramour’s vital organs, and another two lugged an unpretentious wooden coffin. White-helmeted, bare-chested soldiers in full shields-and-spears battle array accompanied the slaves, protecting the jeweled jars, if not the worthless remains of this traitorous wench. At the rear, a contingency of Imhotep’s priests, as calm as the soldiers were stern, seemed to float in their dark linen, holding in their arms cats as white as the purest sand, strange cats with eyes that glowed like hot coals in the darkness, their bodies so limber they might have been boneless.

At the head of the parade of death, his own torch held high, Imhotep—his long dark face devoid of expression, but his eyes jumping with firelight, his robe black with threads of gold, muscular bare chest pearled with sweat—directed the group to a site of his own choosing, where a hole had been dug that afternoon.

Imhotep carried in one hand a massive book fashioned from purest gold, heavily hinged in brass, its cover, and the hinges, too, decorated with the letters and images of their language, which Imhotep’s people called the Words of God.

The exquisitely carved book weighed as much as a man, and that the high priest betrayed no strain at bearing such a burden indicated both his emotional self-control and immense physical strength. Surrounded by dunes, in a dip of the desert, the high priest gave a barely perceptible nod and the slaves placed the mummified body, not into the grave, but on the sand several paces away, and arranged the five jeweled jars around her, in preparation for the ceremony Imhotep so dreaded.