Indiana Jones has the Ark of the Covenant, National Treasure has the Declaration of Independence and Red Notice has the three bejeweled eggs of Cleopatra. The action-comedy, now playing in theaters and streaming on Netflix, is the latest in a long line of heist films that revolve around priceless artifacts. This time, the prize everyone is after is those eggs, and if you've heard of the Ark and the Declaration, but not these ancient Egyptian predecessors to Fabergé, you're probably not alone.

Red Notice makes sure to provide the audience with all the necessary information before the opening credits are finished rolling via a History Channel-like documentary presentation. According to the narrator, most people know about the tragic love affair between Cleopatra and Mark Antony that ended in both of their deaths. However, the voice goes on to claim that most people don't know about a particular gift given to the Egyptian ruler by the Roman general on their wedding day. As a symbol of his undying love and devotion, Antony supposedly gave Cleopatra three golden, jewel-encrusted eggs, each more valuable than the last. The eggs were lost to time and for hundreds of years, they were thought to be nothing more than a myth. Then, in 1907, a farmer outside of Cairo found two of the three, which not only proved the truth of their existence but set up a mystery as to the whereabouts of the third one.

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At Red Notice's start, one of the eggs is on display at a museum in Rome, another is part of a criminal's private collection and the final egg is still missing in action. The film's action almost entirely revolves around its three central characters' efforts to retrieve them. That brief faux-documentary does an excellent job of explaining not only the history behind the eggs but also the stakes. Red Notice also tells audiences in the opening credits that "red notice" is an Interpol term for an alert of the highest level, so they know the fact that someone is after these things is a big (as in global emergency) deal. But it's all a fiction for the sake of a three-pronged MacGuffin, to match the movie's three huge stars: Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds. In the real world, there are no such things as the eggs of Cleopatra.

Antony and Cleopatra were married (with twins no less) and they did meet their ends by suicide, but their real love story is much more complicated. Antony was married to more than one woman, including his rival Octavian's sister. His marriage to Cleopatra was, by all accounts, one of deep affection and mutual attraction, but it was probably most of all a union of political and military convenience. It's the inspiration for Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and countless other works, but none of them mention anything about three golden eggs.

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Red Notice's writer and director Rawson Marshall Thurber invented the relics and came up with their detailed backstory to give the film a reason to go globetrotting. He was so believable that, according to a producer, almost everyone on set bought the story and assumed the eggs were indeed a long-lost part of Egyptian history. The movie could've just as easily relied on verifiably existent artifacts, but Red Notice isn't particularly serious about anthropology (or anything else) so it's just as well that the whole thing is a ruse.

To see these fictional artifacts for yourself, Red Notice is playing now in select theaters and on Netflix.

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