The Book of the Dead from The Mummy (part 1)

JC Randombookbinding, diy, prop2 Comments

The book we are making this time is the Book of the Dead from The Mummy (1999)!.

The Book of the Dead from The Mummy
The mummy (1999)

The Book of the Dead from The Mummy has been in my to-do-list for a very long time, but I always thought I might be a bit too difficult to make.

The whole clasps system looked a bit too fantastical to me. But, we actually got a request over Facebook asking if we could make a replica of it so we finally decided to at least start making a potential plan for building it.

A couple of weeks later, we had a couple a reasonable plans and a list of materials so we started the build. In the end, the book was finished with a couple of parts missing, but you’ll will see all our misadventures on our next posts!

The Book of the Dead References!

As always the first par of any project is to gather some references. Sadly the movie doesn’t have quite enough shots of the prop to get much details so we based our replica on several other props that were floating on the internet.

Here is a small compilation of the photos I used to start this build:

[embed-google-photos-album “https://photos.app.goo.gl/FNqjtnU3LgHoL2im7”]

Good enough

I usually don’t really go for 100% screen accurate perfection when it comes to replicas. My favorite replicas to make are objects from cartoons and animation so perfect replicas are by default not quite possible since most don’t even exist in reality. Also, not striving for absolute perfection gives me a lot of flexibility when it comes to materials and time. Most of the time, I rather have a props that looks 90% equal to the original with a week of work than a 100% in a month.

I have too many side projects to give myself the luxury of perfect accuracy. This project required even more flexibility when it came to perfection because we had a 3 or 4 day deadline so we had to choose our battles very wisely; there was no time to remake or rebuild anything.

So, lets begin!

If you are looking for the downloads, please to the The Mummy downloads.

Next episode: plans and planing!

2 Comments on “The Book of the Dead from The Mummy (part 1)”

  1. Hi I love the book of the dead from the mummy how much would it cost for the book you done a awesome job on it and would you be able to do the key with it to if so how much would it all cost thank you for your time

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