additional essay:

(I recommend that this piece be read before viewing The Mummy: Year of the Scorpion. While it doesn’t make up for The Mummy Returns‘ deficiencies, I hope that the depth it gives the characters makes for a more involving experience.)

Who the Duat is Meela Nais?
An Essay on “Meela Nais / Anck Su Namun” from The Mummy Returns

By Gaith, Fan Editor of The Mummy: Year of the Scorpion

One of the many discontents of The Mummy Returns is the seemingly arbitrary plotting concerning the character of “Meela Nais“.
The entire plot of the first Mummy, one recalls, came about due to Anck-Su-Namun’s treachery against the Pharaoh in indulging her desires with Imhotep, and the latter’s goal throughout that film was more or less limited to (in Beni’s phrasing) “bringing his dead girlfriend back to life.” One might therefore expect to be given some explanation for how “Anck” (as director Stephen Sommers and editor Bob Duscay refer to her) came to be reincarnated, even if only in body, in the form of “Meela Nais” in The Mummy Returns; alas, one would be wrong. This mini-essay, then, concerns my personal explanation of Meela’s history, and how it informed an editing choice for The Mummy: Year of the
Scorpion.

First, a disclaimer:

I have neither read any script for The Mummy Returns (none are, to my knowledge, publicly available) nor read the novelization. But then, I shouldn’t have to. It’s suspect enough when a supporting character is introduced outside of the bounds of a major franchise picture (I’m thinking specifically of “Kid” from the Matrix sequels, whose first exchange with Neo would mystify anyone not familiar with The Animatrix), but Anck isn’t a mere supporting character in The Mummy Returns. We should have been told who she is, and where she came from. (So far as I can tell, the name “Meela” is only spoken once, by Lock- Nah, in the British Museum.)

Happily, I have come up with a personal explanation not only for Meela’s origin and motives but also those of the British Museum’s Curator, Baltus Hafez. (The latter being another sorely under-written character.) In my formulation, Hafez was a lowly scholar who, in the course of some rather esoteric researches, found persuasive evidence that the
Scorpion King was due to reawaken in the 1930s. If he could somehow resurrect Imhotep, whom he had also found rare writings about, surely the latter could kill the Scorpion King, take control of his army, and rule the world. And Hafez would surely be granted dominion over a modest kingdom of his own.

The trick, of course, would be to make Imhotep feel a personal connection to him. Hafez knew that as soon as the twice-killed priest was resurrected, he would search for a female host for Anck’s soul (remember that in the first film, Imhotep chose Evelyn for this very purpose). Without the Book of the Dead, still lost in Hamunaptra, Hafez couldn’t summon spirits from the afterlife, but he somehow managed to acquire enough magic to shape the developing fetus of a pregnant woman. What better gift for Imhotep than a bodily incarnation of Anck herself? Thus was Meela, destined
to grow into the woman we see in The Mummy Returns‘ first half, born.

This explanation is supported by several scenes in which we see Hafez advising Meela on how best to protect and interact with Imhotep. However, it is also foiled entirely by a moment during Meela’s introduction to the newly-reincarnated Imhotep, when, after the latter declares that he will soon resurrect Anck in Meela’s body, thus making their love whole again, Hafez rolls his eyes and walks away. As such behavior is obviously incompatible with my designs on the character, I excised this beat in my edit.

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On another note: one Katie Sullivan makes an interesting conjecture as  to why Anck didn’t rescue Imhotep at the end of the film, speculating that Meela’s spirit had not been entirely overwritten by the reincarnated other, and that it was Meela that abandoned the former high priest. While this could have been a very cool theme for the
movie to explore, it provides no evidence to support this idea.
Sullivan assumes, moreover, that the love between the two Egyptians is real. But is it? My personal reading is that they were only infatuated with each other in ancient Thebes, and the relative shallowness of their connection inspired Anck’s attempted flight.

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