I wanted to see this silent slapstick short from Vitagraph, "The Egyptian Mummy," after having seen another mummy-themed short, "Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled" (1918), from the Ebony Film Company (and included in the Pioneers of African-American Cinema set). The latter film is essentially a remake of this one, but with a black cast instead of a white one, along with a few minor plot alterations. There's nothing like the attempted suicide here played for humor or the business with investing his profits in the stock market in "Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled."
In both pictures, a young man is refused a mad doctor's daughter's hand in marriage without his having a bankroll. The scientist, working on an elixir to bring a mummy back to life, puts a notice in the paper regarding his want to purchase such a preserved Ancient Egyptian corpse. Seeing his opportunity, the young man hires another to pretend to be a mummy for a day. Knockabout ensues. Another slight difference in this one is that the guy hired to pretend he's been dead for thousands of years is a hobo, and stereotypes of the homeless' appetite for booze and smokes are played up quite a bit here.
The entire scenario is rather amusing, though, in its absurdity. I wish something clever had been done with the possibility of equating life, death and mummification with film, which itself records life, leaves them dead as still images and, then, brings them back to life as projected motion pictures. Indeed, André Bazin compared cinema to mummification in his essay, "What is Cinema?" But, that would be expecting too much from a Vitagraph one-reeler from 1914. Besides, "The Egyptian Mummy" remains of interest for being an early example in the history of film of the Western fascination with Ancient Egyptian mummies, and it features Constance Talmadge, before her career-turning role as the Mountain Girl in "Intolerance" (1916), in the minor part of the daughter.