Movies - TV
Stargate's Production Went The Extra Mile With Recreating Ancient Egypt
By DEBOPRIYAA DUTTA
Roland Emmerich’s 1994 sci-fi action film, “Stargate,” centers around aliens laying the foundation for human civilization and an expedition to the desert planet Abydos, which evokes ancient Egypt. Emmerich and producer-co-writer Dean Devlin created a convincing world inhabited by people who speak a variant of ancient Egyptian dialects with the help of an expert.
In an interview commemorating the film’s 25th anniversary, Emmerich and Devlin explained the core concept of aliens helping ancient humanity advance as a race and shared how they produced a genuine linguistic system. Devlin wanted to “recreate our best guess of what ancient Egyptian sounded like” and hired a UCLA Egyptologist in their pursuit of authenticity.
Devlin shared, “Our executive producer at the time was screaming at us saying, ‘Why are you spending all this money and time creating a language that not a single person on Earth will know whether it’s accurate or not?’ I kept saying, the sci-fi fans will know.” Although critically panned, “Stargate” was Emmerich’s breakout film that would eventually lead to “Independence Day.”