- My name is Nick Brown,
and I'm an Egyptologist here in Los Angeles,
and I study ancient Egypt.
So today I'm watching different video clips
from Hollywood movies to check how accurate or inaccurate
they are in depicting ancient Egypt.
I'm expecting that a lot of the clips that I'm gonna watch
today are gonna full of a lot of errors,
and a lot of things that actually aren't true
for ancient Egypt.
(Egyptian music)
So in the case of a monument like the pyramids at Giza,
we have evidence lets us know
that it was actually ancient Egyptians themselves
who were building these monuments
with almost like a conscripted workforce,
or perhaps even as like a form of tax
or tribute of some kind to the living king.
Though the ancient Egyptians did have different forms
of oracles, the actually never, as far as we know,
would cut open animals and look at the entrails
and try to figure out the future
based off these animal entrails and stuff,
so this already has been a blatant issue with this clip.
One of the other problems with this clips
is blending or merging of both like the palace area
and the settlement, like right alongside
the Pyramids of Memphis.
These actually would have been separated in reality.
Most of the palaces, and the settlement, and the city itself
would have probably been on the East bank of the Nile,
and separated from the many pyramids,
most of which aren't even real or in existence in this clip.
- [Man] Fight me.
- Father, turned.
- Stay out of this, son.
I won't fight.
I love you, brother with all my heart.
(crowd screams)
- So one of the very few things
that's actually accurate about this clip.
In ancient Egyptian mythology, it does say that Set,
the God of Chaos, did murder his brother Osiris,
so I will let that be true.
(dramatic music)
Most of the weapons that these Gods are using
to fight each other, we don't actually really have anything
that looks like that from ancient Egypt,
so this type of spear that Set is using
is based off an object from Egypt,
but it was not used as a weapon.
The types of shields that they're using, again,
the armor that they're wearing made of solid gold,
and things like this, seems to be a very exaggerated
reality of the truth.
(man screams)
- No!
- In this story that we have preserved,
the Contendings of Horus and Set,
there is a part where Set takes one of the eyes of Horus,
causing him to lose his sight.
Horus, with the help of his mother Isis, and the God Thoth,
actually gets his sight restored with new eye from Thoth
called The Eye of Horus, or The Wadjet Eye.
This is The Ten Commandments done by Cecil B. DeMille.
- Let me people go!
- The slaves are mine.
Their lives are mine.
All that they own is mine.
- The clip is pretty faithful to the biblical story.
Most of what the story that the Bible talks about says,
we don't actually have evidence for in ancient Egypt.
One of the issues, again, with movies about ancient Egypt
is that they did popularize a lot of misconceptions
about ancient Egypt, such as the pyramids were built
by enslaved peoples.
It's also really troubling that all the characters
in these movies are like completely white,
and like not actually like North African, or Middle Eastern,
or what have you.
A classic from my childhood.
- [Man] Thebes, city of the living.
- Kay one of the problems already with this one
is Thebes is modern day Luxor,
which is in the South of Egypt,
and all of our pyramids from ancient Egypt
are up in the North near Cairo,
so I'm not sure what the pyramids are doing there in Thebes,
but there we go.
I should mention that the two characters so far,
Imhotep, and Anck Su Namun,
those are two real people that we have from ancient Egypt,
however, Imhotep was the architect
of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara.
He was alive during Dynasty 3,
which is around 2,600 B.C, something like this.
What he's doing in The New Kingdom around 1300 B.C,
I'm not entirely sure, and then Anck Su Namun
was the wife of King Tutankhamun.
She was not a mistress either,
so again, some creative license there.
Also, the ancient Egyptians had a lot of gold,
but I am not entirely sure what's going on
with the entire bodies being painted in this gold paint.
(speaking foreign language)
- The ancient Egyptian language,
we are able to read and write hieroglyphs,
but we consider it a dead language,
because we don't know for certain
how it was spoken, or vocalized.
The actors and the script is using real words.
How they were actually pronounced
is open for debate and interpretation.
This clip from Cleopatra is actually probably
the most historically accurate.
- The one who's total assets up to a few moments ago
is a devoted slave, and a rolled up carpet.
- Caesar mentions that Cleopatra came to visit him
rolled up in a carpet, and from our historical texts,
seem to think that that's how she was able
to meet Cesar the first time.
- I shall have to insist that you mind what you say.
I am Isis.
I am worshiped by millions who believe it.
- Cleopatra saw herself as a form of the goddess Isis,
and this we also know to be true
from the Egyptian sources themselves.
- You've seen my brother, and listened to him,
and that truly evil man to whom he belongs.
- As far as we know, it is true that when Cleopatra
ascended the throne, there was a civil war going on in Egypt
between her and her younger brother, Ptolemy XIII.
It got to the point where it was so bad
that Cleopatra actually needed the help
of the ancient Romans in order to defeat her brother
to take the throne for herself.
Hollywood is basing their stories,
and the way they're making theses movies on some facts,
and some truth that we have from ancient Egypt,
so overall, I think for popular entertainment,
they're fun, they're great for people to see and stuff,
but in terms of actually learning about ancient Egypt,
I would air on the side of caution
when watching clips like this.
(Egyptian music)