Dr. Bob Brier and Dr. Angelique Corthals extract samples for DNA analysis in Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs.

At last, a mummy movie with real Egyptian mummies!

The latest big-screen IMAX movie, Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs, doesn’t quite live up to its title. There remain a lot of mysteries that Egyptologists and modern-day scientists are still trying to unlock, including the possibility that the DNA found in some of the 3,000-year-old mummies might hold promise in finding cures for such ancient maladies as malaria.

But Mummies is a beautiful film whose vast dimensions make it the next best thing to visiting places such as the Valley of the Kings, Luxor and Abu Simbel which have intrigued generations of people.

The film has a couple of subplots, both of them mysteries. In the modern-day one, Egyptologist Bob Brier explains how he discovered the long-missing secret formula for mummification on the walls of an ancient temple built by Queen Hatsepshut, Egypt’s celebrated female ruler who predated the more famous Cleopatra by centuries. Brier used many of those same ingredients to perform a modern-day Egyptian-style mummification in 1994, in hopes of learning more about where the elusive DNA in the ancient mummies might be found. Working with Dr. Angelique Corthals, a DNA specialist, they eventually had success, although whether this will lead to disease cures today is still up in the air.

The other subplot mystery revolves around the work of 19th-century Egyptologist Charles Wilbour (William Hope) in tracking down the source of the sudden mysterious appearances in Cairo bazaars of artifacts belonging to several pharaohs who lived hundreds of years apart. His detective work leads to a pair of grave-robbing brothers and eventually to an incredible, history-making discovery in an ancient tomb in the Valley of the Kings, where the mummies of the royals had been hidden away for centuries in hopes of defeating grave robbers.

There are close-up views of several mummies, still kept in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, fascinating in their shriveled state. Once the public could view these ancients, their mummies kept under glass. But for more than a decade, they have been hidden from the prying eyes of tourists, so Mummies provides a rare opportunity for the curious.

Anyone who has been intrigued by the history of ancient Egypt, its tombs, its monumental statues, its hieroglyphic writings and, of course, its mummies, will find a lot to like in Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs. But at a running time of just 39 minutes, including credits, there’s obviously much more to be said.

Fittingly, Mummies is narrated with solemnity and a sense of awe by Christopher Lee, whose long horror movie credits include the title role in the 1959 British film The Mummy.

mjanuson@projo.com