The phrase uttered by Venture after he and Augustin realize they are lost (and says "We seemed to have misplaced the French army") is "mesh ma'ool" which is "unbelievable" in Arabic said in fairly good Egyptian dialect.
A leopard attacked Ben Daniels during filming, nearly breaking his neck. Daniels was saved by the leopard's trainer.
Renowned film critic Roger Ebert called this film "a brave folly of a film, easy to laugh at but deserving a certain respect if only because it involves such a foolish and difficult story."
Though shot in 1995, the film was released in 1997 at the Telluride Film Festival and theatrically released in 1998. The film was theatrically released 200 years after the actual French invasion of Egypt during the French Revolutionary Wars in 1798. The conflict lasted from 1798 to 1801.
Lavinia Currier invested $5 million of her own money in the making of this film besides writing and producing.