Periodic innovations in the way that ancient Egyptian material culture is
depicted by influential popular sources, notably Hollywood, are quickly
imitated by subsequent productions. After the movie "Stargate", for
instance, futuristic Egyptianizing armour started appearing on Egyptian
characters elsewhere, such as the mummy superheroes in the cartoon series
"Mummies Alive!" (1998). It's worth noting that the Anubis and Horus guards
in "Stargate" also had prominent wadjet tattoos on their biceps. "The Mummy"
(Sommers dir. 1999) pioneered Egyptian "temporary tattoos" including gold
paint on shaven-headed priests and indigo or soot paint on the character
Anaksunamun.
(Illustration added for clarity)
Consider how popular body painting has become in recent years,
with art books published on the subject; Hollywood borrows from the current
vernacular. So the likely source for the gold-painted priests in the TV
miniseries "The Ten Commandments" (2005) is the 1999 mummy film.
Gold body paint is of course a modern invention, but the 1999 film's
portrayal of dark-coloured body paint, applied on Anaksunamun to represent
clothing and jewellery patterns. . .
(Hmmmm, looks like we need another helpful illustration)
. . .got the late Dominic Montserrat to thinking
that perhaps Hollywood was actually onto something: did the Egyptians use
indigo or some other substance to paint themselves? I know of no
Egyptological evidence for this (perhaps other EEF members have some ideas),
but if you're interested to read Dominic's article, it was in EA:
Montserrat, D. (1999) Review of 'The Mummy', Egyptian Archaeology 15:44.
Interesting. One always thinks of academia pointing Hollywood in particular directions, but not vice-versa. At any rate, this is fascinating from a number of perspectives.