familiarity of the audience with the modern language.

Abu Simbel as a Burial Place?

Once Sety I makes his journey into the west, the film shows a funeral procession taking the deceased king to his tomb at Abu Simbel. Abu Simbel is a large temple complex that guarded the ancient border between Nubia and Egypt and does not date to the reign of Sety I at all. Begun and completed by Ramesses II, it is dedicated to the gods Amun-Re, Re-Horakhty, and Ptah, along with a deified Ramesses II. The temple, located along Lake Nassar, was famously dismantled in the 1970s and reinstalled at a higher elevation in order to save it from the rising waters of the new Aswan Dam.

King Sety I was in reality buried in his rock-cuttomb in the Valley of the Kings (KV 17). It is puzzling to ponder the purpose of the pyramid shown under construction at the beginning of the film, if it was not intended as the king’s burial place. On the positive side, the film does show how the well-known ritual called the Opening of the Mouth (intended to reanimate deceased persons or a statue of a deity) was performed in ancient times by a son for his father. The mummified body of the king (rendered in subtle Karloffian fashion) is shown in his coffin as Ramesses takes on the role of the priest. A well-known scene of this ritual is found in the burial chamber of Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings (KV 62) where his