Ancient bronze inscription in a modern film set in China
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Philip Taylor writes:
At around 07:08 into the extraordinarily stupid film The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008), the witch holds a scroll engraved with pictograms. Is this a real example of an early Sinitic script, or just a nonce script created for the film?
Looks like a bronze inscription, though the medium on which it is written is made to appear like bamboo or wooden strips.
Constance Cook says that it might be in this:
Lìdài zhōngdǐng yíqì kuǎnzhì fǎtiè 歷代鐘鼎彝器款識法帖 (Catalog of calligraphy models of inscriptions on sacrificial bells and tripods from successive dynasties) compiled during the Southern Song period 南宋 (1127-1279) by Xuē Shànggōng 薛尚功 (fl. 1144).
Connie adds: "They even copied the commentary. Funny."
I see a lot of repetition, so I think they just picked (parts of?) one or more inscriptions and kept recycling them to fill up the space on the scroll.
I'm not going to go through all 348 pages of the catalog looking for the inscription(s) copied on the scroll in the film, but here's a clear electronic version of the entire work if anybody wants to try.
The movie stars Brendan Fraser, Maria Bello, Luke Ford, and Jet Li and includes spoken English, Mandarin, and Sanskrit. This reminds me of the Sanskrit in "Painted Skin 2", for which see "Barbarian Language in a Chinese movie" (9/20/20).
[Thanks to Matthew Anderson and Yan Sun]