20 Things You Somehow Missed In Raiders Of The Lost Ark
17. The Egyptian Locations Aren't Egyptian
The majority of Raiders of the Lost Ark takes place in Egypt, right?
Wrong! When it was discovered that no recognisable Egyptians locations (the pyramids, the Sphinx, etc.) were to appear in the film, the decision was made to film in Tunisia instead with Kairouan doubling for the Egyptian capital of Cairo.
It was, by all accounts, a nightmarish part of the shoot, with many cast and crew members falling ill (Spielberg himself only escaped illness by eating canned food shipped from England, whilst John Rhys-Davies famously lost control of his bowels in his own costume). Spielberg managed to compress six weeks of shooting into four and a half weeks, and the production was surely not upset to move on to pastures new.
However, Tunisia did a more than admirable job standing in for the land of the pharaohs, and the ailments of the cast and crew actually led to some innovative little changes in the script, including the iconic sequence in which Indy simply shoots a swordsman who is threatening him in a marketplace.