Watching movies about ancient times can be fun, but they are often misleading. Sometimes the style and history are completely off in terms of what researchers actually say it was like, or just entirely made up.
We see that a lot with older history, like Ancient Egypt. But that doesn’t mean that it is all completely inaccurate. Some movies put in a lot of detail to make sure the movie is as accurate as possible.
Let’s take a look at some of them below.
10 Gods of Egypt (2016)
Lionsgate Films
Gods of Egypt is a fairly recent movie that has a pretty big cast, including Gerard Butler and Chadwick Boseman. But you may be wondering how theatrical the movie was and how much of the information is accurate.
While this movie throws in some accuracy, there is just as much inaccuracy, which can make it confusing. The movie focuses mostly on the mythology of Egypt at the time, so there isn’t much about Egypt itself.
Interestingly, the small details were fairly accurate, such as how the path to a happy afterlife changed based on the ruler. But overall, the movie seems to poke fun at mythology more than actually following it.
9 Stargate (1994)
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
The first part of the Stargate franchise is a 1994 movie that focuses on a wormhole device. It is set in 1928 in Giza, Egypt, and they use the Stargate to teleport back in time to Ancient Egypt.
The coolest thing about this movie is that many of the actors have to speak similarly to how Ancient Egyptians would have. To do this, the filmmakers hired a man known as Stuart Tyson Smith, who was an Egyptologist in Los Angeles.
Even then he was guessing, as no one knew how the Ancient Egyptians spoke, but he managed to make educated guesses based on his work and study. This made the movie seem much more accurate and the translations much more realistic, though some had to be changed a little.
8 The Ten Commandments (1956)
Paramount Pictures
The Ten Commandments is a 1956 epic that is based on the story of Moses from the Bible, which is in the Book of Exodus. It was also loosely based on a few other books like Pillar of Fire, Prince of Egypt, and On Eagle’s Wings.
One of the biggest historical accuracies is that the movie was actually filmed in Egypt, specifically Mount Sinai and the Sinai Peninsula. It is considered to be culturally, aesthetically, and historically significant. Not only was it well-loved upon release, but the filmmakers did a lot of studying to make the movie accurate by consulting historical texts from the time as well as many other books, and the Bible.
7 The Prince of Egypt (1998)
DreamWorks Pictures
Though animated, The Prince of Egypt can be considered a pretty historically accurate movie.
It is historically accurate in two ways. The first is its depiction of the stories from the Bible and Exodus. It closely follows the story of Moses.
It is also highly accurate in its representation of Ancient Egypt. One of the few ways it isn’t super accurate is that it doesn’t talk about the wars and violence that were occurring at the time as much, but that is likely due to it being made to be mostly family-friendly.
The weapons you do see were very common in the Late Bronze Age at the time, as are the articles of clothing portrayed, even down to the ceremonial crown worn by Ramesses.
Even the details on how monuments were built. For a long time, there was a lot of mystery behind how Egyptians managed to build pyramids. Despite a thrilling horse and chariot race near the beginning, the wheel wasn’t invented at the time, so sand ramps were the common way to move around heavy materials because the sand could be easily removed or blown away over time. The movie manages to catch these details as accurately as possible.
6 Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
The Raiders of the Lost Ark has a lot of problems with in terms of accuracy, but it does have some historical facts buried underneath the rest of the movie.
One of the most notable is the Ancient Egyptian city where the Ark is found. While the city never contained the Ark, it was a major city in ancient times. It was the capital of the 21st and 22nd Egyptian dynasties due to its advantageous location for a long time before Alexandria took over.
However, there are other historical accuracies as well, such as the behaviors of people. Grave robbers and locals will often cause damage to important historical sites in the faint hope of finding treasure. Additionally, the Nazis were originally an occultist group that grew to be something much darker.
The booby traps are also pretty fake, but seeing warnings about ancient curses that will attach to whoever opens the tomb is pretty common.
5 Faraon (1966)
Horizon Films
Originally known as Faraon, the movie is more widely known as Pharaoh. Despite its old age, this movie manages to be a pretty accurate story.
The Pharaoh portrayed in the movie, Ramses XIII, is fake, but the world, life, and clothing are all pretty accurate to what we currently imagine Ancient Egypt looked like.
This is largely in part because the director brought on an Egyptologist by the name of Kazimierz Michalowski who is one of the most renowned Egyptologists out there. He was a technical advisor for the movie and made sure that the details were accurate. Additionally, the costume designer, Shadi Abdel Salam was a costume designer and film director that focused on Ancient Egypt.
The movie is Polish, and is based on a novel by a Polish writer known as Boleslaw Prus.
4 The Mummy
Universal Pictures
Much like other movies on this list, The Mummy did some things horribly wrong, but others it nailed right on the head. Strangely, it was the smallest of details that the crew decided to focus on when it came to accuracy.
Some examples are how characters were mummified, and what they might also have in their tomb with them. The masks worn for that are doing the mummification process are also accurate based on the knowledge we currently have. Additionally, the logos and names of the team that studies Ancient Egypt are also accurate, though almost impossible to see on a normal screen.
So while most of the main plot of the movie may be untrustworthy, it is interesting to see that some of the small details were heavily researched.
3 The Loves of Pharaoh (1922)
Europäische Film-Allianz
The Loves of Pharaoh also known as The Wife of the Pharaoh or Das Weib des Pharao is an old movie directed in Germany. It is considered a historic epic film.
The movie was made by Ernst Lubitsch with music composed by Eduard Kunneke. It was said that this movie was created by Lubitsch to prove to Hollywood that he was able to make epics, and it was his last movie in Germany before he moved to Hollywood.
While the movie was based loosely on a true story, and the movie is ultimately a comedy, Lubitsch added detailed costumes and a plot to the story that was highly accurate to what was known about Egypt at the time.
Unfortunately, the complete version of the film is considered lost, but in 2011, a digitally redone version was released.
2 Cleopatra (1963)
20th Century Studios
Originally, Cleopatra was meant to be broken into two films. The first was to be the love between her and Caesar, and then the second would be the love between her and Antony, but it was eventually combined to make a movie longer than four hours about the Egyptian queen Cleopatra.
A lot of time and thought went into the movie, and it came to be one of the most expensive movies ever made at the time it was finished.
While the clothes themselves are pretty different from what Egyptians would actually have worn at the time, the makeup and the wigs were more accurate, but they were still heavily influenced by styles in the 1960s when the movie came out.
Where Cleopatra really shines is its historical accuracy. It follows the tale of Cleopatra and her goals and love interests pretty accurately, with a little leeway for increasing drama.
1 Agora (2009)
Fox International Productions
Agora is a movie that pays a lot of attention to the details of Ancient Egypt. It gets most of its information from the Book of Exodus, where a lot of myths and history from the time can be found. The movie focuses on one woman in history, but you see a lot of information about Ancient Egypt and how it stayed as powerful as it did for so long.
The movie itself focuses on Hypatia of Alexandria, who was a genius in a variety of STEM subjects, including math, astronomy, and philosophy. She not only learned about the subjects but was a teacher as well.
Any book lover will know the tragic fate of the Library of Alexandria. Hypatia did her best to save as many ancient texts as she could from the Christians rampaging and destroying the library.
Her role wasn’t a standard one at a time, and the fact that she was able to be a genius in these fields and teach others shows what an amazing woman she was.
