In November 1922, an excavation team led by British archaeologist Howard Carter uncovered the tomb of the 18th-Dynasty pharaoh Tutankhamun in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. What remains significant about this discovery even to this day is that in contrast to other Ancient Egyptian royal tombs, which were plundered of their treasures long before archaeologists discovered them, the tomb of Tutankhamun was intact.
Egyptomania was nothing new in the 1920s. Indeed, the term can be traced back to the early 1800s. Even in cinema, examples from before 1923 abound that reflect the Western fascination with Ancient Egyptian culture. One need only think of Theda Bara’s now almost mythic turn as Cleopatra in the (mostly) lost American film of the same name from 1917, or Ernst Lubitsch’s first non-comedy Die Augen der Mumie Ma, made in Germany the following year.
However, the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb sparked a fresh wave of Egyptomania (or Tutmania), which saw Western tourists, including a number of prominent figures, flocking to the tomb and other Ancient Egyptian landmarks (as exemplified by the short documentary film of future Belgian King Leopold III’s visit to the Great Pyramid of Giza).
Needless to say, cinema, as other media, was quick to pick up on the Tutmania craze. This programme includes three early examples that both celebrate and mock the famous discovery (and Egyptomania in general) in different ways. In the (as yet) unidentified American comedy [Jack momie égyptienne], a rich Westerner gets more than he bargains for when he purchases a sarcophagus on a trip to Egypt. The short French animation La 
Roman de la momie follows a group of Egyptologists on their quest to find the mummy of “Tout-Tut-Amun”, only for the mummy to find them instead. Raymond Frau’s Austrian-produced comedy Tutankhamen meanwhile re-imagines the epochal discovery as a frenzied farce of suitably epic proportions.

Oliver Hanley