The Mummy franchise traces its roots to the 1930s, when Boris Karloff portrayed the historic embalmed character at the height of the Universal Classic Monsters heyday. The first film, made in 1932, framed Imhotep as a mummy carrying an ancient curse. But Imhotep was a real-life priest in ancient Egypt, and he wasn't anything like his character in The Mummy movies. So who was Imhotep? The real Imhotep lived around 2600 BCE and was one of the first recorded geniuses in world history. He was an engineer, a physician, a politician, and a priest. Over the course of his life, he worked his way through the Egyptian ranks to hold a key position in the governments of two different pharaohs. He was also the mastermind behind the first pyramid.