The idea of mummified bodies being lined up along a wall was adopted from Pierre Benoît's 1919 book "L'Atlantide" ("Atlantis"), which had recently been made into a 1932 film by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. The wall paintings depicted on a cover of was based on a bas-relief of Hathor and Seti I housed in the Louvre, Paris, while the throne featured in Tintin's dream was adopted from that found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. The inclusion of the secret society operating the smuggling ring was influenced by right-wing conspiracy theories about Freemasonry, with Hergé likely gaining information on the brotherhood from a 1932 article by Lucien Farnoux-Reynaud in the radical magazine "Le Crapouillot" ("The Mortar Shell").