The Curse of King Tut's Tomb: Is It Real?

“Death will come on swift wings to him who disturbs the peace of the king.” Oooh, spooky. If you found this warning carved onto a tablet in a tomb you’ve just broken into which housed the earthly remnants of a king of Egypt, would you venture on and desecrate his final resting place, busting his sarcophagus open and poking about in his skeletal remains then hauling all his possessions out for people around the world to gawp at?

Or would you think, “hmmm, I’m standing in the middle of someone’s grave here, I feel a bit bad about that, and this warning just emphasizes the fact that I really should just make myself scarce and repair all the damage I’ve done to this king’s tomb as I go.” I mean, if Howard Carter had heeded the ominous words, the modern world wouldn’t have been exposed to the marvels of ancient Egypt’s burial traditions but maybe if he had, many lives could have been saved. We’re investigating the curse of the Pharaohs and Tutankhamun in particular here.

The Curse of the Pharaohs

We love curses over here at Decoding the Unknown. Recently I did a piece on the Hope Diamond, a famously cursed gem, but that was a tangible item passed from owner to owner, leaving a trail of bad luck in its wake. This is something a bit different.

Here we have a group of usually Western explorers or archaeologists or whatever that flagrantly ignore warnings and the obvious bad karma that comes from breaking into deceased people’s tombs and unleash some deadly form of retribution from the spiritual guardians of said place. Ancient Egypt was a mysterious era, packed with beliefs and rituals that we still don’t necessarily understand. Achieving a good status and immortality in the afterlife was the main aim of Pharaohs and wealthy people so this became an elaborate process of preserving the body via mummification, being buried with spells and funerary texts to help you on your way and also being buried with certain items thought to be useful in the afterlife.

I’m not sure how this was supposed to work — would these be ghost versions of the things buried? It would be pretty annoying to be buried with all the stuff you think you’ll need, then not be able to use any of it because, you know, you’re a ghost.

It’s also just common courtesy not to break into tombs for any reason so anyone doing it probably had a creeping feeling at the base of their skulls that mayyyyyybe they shouldn’t really be doing this. Ancient Egyptian mummies as supernatural or horror figures and their associated curses made their way into the world of entertainment in the 19th century through various works of literature including 1827’s “The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty Second Century” published anonymously by Jane Webb and Louisa May Alcott’s 1869 short story “Lost in a Pyramid, Or The Mummy’s Curse.”

In fact, there’s even a reference from all the way back in 1699. Whether it was a true tale or written as a work of fiction is not clear but Louis Penicher wrote of a Polish man who was traveling on a boat with two mummies he had “taken” from Alexandria. Presumably this means he stole them but I haven’t read the account so don’t have any real idea. Anyway, the seas get increasingly rougher and the man starts having nightmares and visions featuring the spectres of the two mummies.

In the end, he throws them both overboard and the storm miraculously stops. Poor mummies, what an unceremonious end.

In the 20th century, films like 1932’s “The Mummy”, and 1942’s “The Mummy’s Tomb” brought the idea of scary reanimated mummies and Egyptian curses to the mainstream. There was even a short film made in 1912 called “The Vengeance of Egypt” about a ring stolen from a mummy’s tomb that cursed whoever was in possession of it until it was returned to its rightful owner. In more recent times, curses associated with defiling ancient burial sites are still going strong, with the Hollywood “Mummy” franchise spawning various offshoots and even its own ride at Universal Studios Hollywood.

I went there with my family earlier this year but the butterbeer wasn’t sitting too well so I shoved my unwitting husband and two children on the “Revenge of the Mummy” ride, having been the only person to have read the description about it. Ominously the description on the app I was using said “Plunge High Speed into Total Darkness”. Er, no thanks, I thought.

From the Discover Universal blog page, the ride description is as follows: “The ride experience begins as a dark ride with light effects and advanced animatronics. It then becomes a high-speed, indoor roller coaster in the dark with fog and strobe effects, jolting twists and turns (no full inversions), sudden stops, and a lot of time traveling backwards.” I get travel sick extremely easily so this ride was never going to be in my top 10.

Everyone survived, with my kids having found it so scary that they definitely had no interest in then watching the Brendan Fraser Mummy movie which was quite disappointing as it’s one of my faves. I’ll work on them. A few months on from our visit though, they have put the ride at the top of their list for going on again if we ever make it back to Universal but I think I’ll still just wait outside.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that these days, mummies, pharaohs, tombs and curses are all pretty intrinsically linked. We know that if you accidentally lean against a certain carving or hang your bag on a handy lever, sharp spikes will spring out and impale you or millions of beetles will rush out and eat you alive. We know that reading a text out loud inside a tomb will 100% activate a curse. But we also know that curses aren’t real, right? So how did this idea even start?

As we’ve mentioned, curses and mummies have been going hand in hand in the realm of literature and film since at least the early 19th century. Going back a bit further, the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799 was what kickstarted the new wave of interest in all things Egyptian, and once the hieroglyphs were cracked in 1822, modern Egyptology got going with full force. Now people could actually read what was written in the tombs and sure enough, they found warnings aplenty. Zahi Hawass, an Egyptologist who is actually from Egypt and has also been the Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs not once but twice, once excavated a site at Kom Abu-Bellou and found the following:

All people who enter this tomb who will make evil against this tomb and destroy it may the crocodile be against them in water, and snakes against them on land. May the hippopotamus be against them in water, the scorpion on land.

A bit more on him later.

Most curses and warnings on tombs seem to follow a specific formula with a few choices of actions people might take and what will happen to them if they do. These could be mixed and matched to create the best impact such as:

Anyone who will enter this tomb in impurity, I will wring his neck like a goose and cause those who live upon earth to fear the spirits who are in the West.

Or:

Anyone who will remove any stone or any brick from this my tomb, I will exterminate his survivors.

Another curse on a tomb has been translated as:

As for the one who will obliterate [this decree] the power of the goddess Neit will come into being against him forever and ever. His son shall not be caused to remain on his place and a donkey will copulate with him, a female donkey with his wife and his children, and he will fall to the flame from the mouth of Sekhmet”.

Zoicks. I’m trying to work out how a female donkey would copulate with a woman and I’m coming up short. Better move on, I think.

The Curse of King Tut

We’ve now come to the main point, which is about the most famous tomb of all, that of the Boy King, Tutankhamun. Discovered in 1922 by a group led by Egyptologist Howard Carter, King Tut’s magnificent burial chamber was the most intact one ever found, many other tombs having been raided by thieves on various different occasions over the centuries. The entrance to King Tut’s tomb was kind of hidden away so had mostly escaped the attention of graverobbers thus far. When Carter and his patron Lord Carnarvon entered the tomb, they introduced a literal treasure trove of ancient Egyptian goodies to the general public, over 5000 artifacts, not including the actual coffin containing the remains of Tutankhamun himself.

You will definitely be familiar with King Tut’s golden death mask. There were also sandals made of gold, a one-metre high wooden throne covered in gold, silver and semi-precious stones, elaborate paintings and murals of the Ancient Egyptian gods, lots of little knick-knacks such as ivory cups, cosmetic jars, and even some board games for when Tut had some down time in the afterlife.

But of course, the main point of interest was the coffin containing Tutankhamun, or rather, the coffins. Inside a quartzite sarcophagus with a granite lid, he was buried in three nested sarcophagi like a little Russian Doll with the outer coffins being made of gilded wood set with semi-precious stones and the innermost coffin being made of solid gold. All the coffins show an image of King Tut with his famous long fake beard on and holding a crook and flail crossed over his chest.

These were prominent symbols representing kingship and the fertility of the land. The remains of the king were found neatly wrapped in linen, wearing the famous golden death mask and covered in “unguents” or ointment-like oils which seemed to have had some sort of chemical reaction over time, damaging the linens and basically sticking Tut firmly in place. The initial examinations of the mummy were carried out with him still stuck in the golden coffin and it wasn’t until the mid 2000s that the mummy was removed and put on general display back in his tomb in a climate controlled glass box, like an ancient Egyptian Disney princess.

So what’s this curse all about then? Well, in just a few short years from finding and opening the tomb, at least 9 people had either died or suffered from misfortunes in some way related to the expedition. When the tomb was initially discovered, the media and therefore the public was all over it, creating something literally called “Tutmania”.

As people associated with Carter and the discovery started dropping like flies, it’s no wonder that word of a curse swiftly traveled across the globe. It’s quite understandable that a group of interlopers disturbing a tomb that’s remained untouched for thousands of years and looting it all in the name of research might be the recipients of an ancient curse, so let’s see who was involved and what happened to them. There were about 26 people in the original team that entered the tomb and according to some reports I’ve seen, up to 11 of them died within a few years of disturbing the boy King.

Let’s take a look at some of their stories.

The Victims

The most well-known name associated with the curse of King Tut is Lord Carnarvon. His full name was George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert and he was known as Lord Porchester growing up but inherited the title of the 5th Earl of Carnarvon in 1890 so that’s who he was at the time of the discovery of King Tut’s tomb. He’d been a keen Egyptologist himself and had worked with Howard Carter since the early 1900s but due to a lack of results, his funding of the 1922 dig was going to be his last one.

Luckily, or maybe unluckily, Carter sent him a telegram in November 1922 saying they’d found the tomb. Carnarvon and his daughter, Evelyn, hot-footed it out to Luxor and Carnarvon was standing right by Carter when he finally chipped through to peek inside the previously undisturbed tomb. Although they were supposed to wait for Egyptian officials before they could do any more, it’s rumoured that Carnarvon, Evelyn and Carter snuck into the burial chamber through a hole when they weren’t supposed to.

Maybe this extra transgression was what did for Carnarvon as a few months later, he died of blood poisoning in Cairo. Rumour has it that at the moment of his death, all the lights in the city flickered out and his dog Susy, back in England, let out a howl and dropped dead.

Novelist Marie Corelli had apparently warned Lord Carnarvon about opening ancient tombs as there might be traps or poison in them and she wrote a letter that was published in a magazine called “New York World” two weeks before he died with a quote from a book saying “the most dire punishment follows any rash intruder into a sealed tomb”. When he died shortly after, this naturally bolstered the profile of the curse, especially when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle decided to add his two cents and told an American paper that priests had summoned an “evil elemental” to protect Tut’s tomb and that there were “malevolent spirits” and these may have been responsible for Carnarvon’s death. Cue curse mania.

Next on our list of victims is Richard Bethell who was apparently one of the first people to enter the tomb after Howard Carter. He was Carter’s personal secretary and on his return to London, was found murdered in an exclusive gentlemen’s club. He was also allegedly storing some artifacts from the tomb at his house, although I don’t know whether this was official or under the table but anyway, there had been several fires that had broken out in his home.

Was this the enraged spirit of the dead Tut trying to reclaim his rightful property? Bethell’s father also died three months after his son, by jumping out of a seventh floor window.

Another member of Carter’s original team who was there when the tomb was opened was James Henry Breasted. Nice name. This is more of a warning omen than anything else but after the tomb was opened, he went back to his rooms and found his pet canary had been eaten by a cobra that was sitting all smug in the cage.

You may recall seeing the symbol of a cobra on many Ancient Egyptian things such as headpieces and jewelery and there’s one on Tutankamun’s death mask itself. It symbolizes protection, guides the spirits of the pharaohs through the afterlife and is strongly connected with the sun god and royalty in general. So to see one having eaten your poor defenseless pet right after you’ve disturbed a king of Egypt was probably pretty jarring.

While Breasted didn’t drop dead then and there, when he did die, it was of a bacterial infection contracted from what was his last visit to Egypt.

Arthur Cruttenden Mace was an Egyptologist and archeologist who started working with Carter in 1922 to help clear out King Tut’s tomb. He developed pleurisy and pneumonia and had to leave in 1924 after working for 2 seasons in Egypt. His health continued to decline and he died in a nursing home a couple of years later at the age of 53.

Next up is George Jay Gould, an extremely wealthy American railroad executive. He visited the tomb of King Tut in 1923 and almost immediately came down with a serious fever, leading him to eventually die of pneumonia.

It seems that the curse touched people at every stage of the excavation and study of the body of King Tut. Sir Archibald Douglas Reid did one of the first x-rays of the body of the mummified pharaoh in early 1924, fell ill almost immediately and was dead three days later.

Hugh Evelyn-White was an archaeologist working with Howard Carter when they were looking for Tut’s tomb in 1922 so may have also been one of the first people to cross the threshold of the previously undisturbed resting place. After seeing other members of Carter’s team falling victim to the curse, he took his own life by hanging himself in 1924, allegedly writing “I have succumbed to a curse” in his own blood as a parting note.

Now let’s move on to the slightly more tangential victims of the curse and here, Carnarvon and his relatives and associates seem to have been disproportionately affected. A few months after Lord Carnarvon died, his half-brother Aubrey Herbert followed him as a result of a drastic and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to help regain his eyesight. He had been born with an eye condition but his teeth were also in a bad state and doctors advised he should get them all pulled out and this might somehow help to restore some vision.

He had them pulled, got an infection and died. Carnarvon had another half-brother, Mervyn Herbert who also died a few years later from malarial pneumonia.

Carnarvon had a friend called Dr. Aaron Ember which is a pretty sad surname when you find out what happened to him. In 1926, while working on a book about Egypt, Ember and his wife had a party, shortly after which their house caught fire. Ember’s wife told him to save his manuscript while she got their son. Unfortunately, his wife and son died in the flames and while Ember managed to escape, he later died in hospital of his burns. The book he was working on was called “The Egyptian Book of the Dead”.

Another notable recipient of the curse is Sir Bruce Ingham. While not a member of Carter’s group, he was his friend and Carter sent him a paperweight with a mummified hand inside it. There was apparently a bracelet on the hand with the inscription: “Cursed be he who moves my body. To him shall come fire, water, and pestilence.”

I don’t know whether this was taken from the tomb of King Tut or if it was just a tourist souvenir but shortly after receiving the gift, Ingham’s house burned down. Guess what happened when he tried to rebuild it? It flooded. Instead of waiting for a plague of locusts to eat his next house, Ingham prudently got rid of the paperweight.

Other names linked with the curse of the Pharaohs or the curse of king Tut include Prince Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey of Egypt who was shot in 1923 and Sir Lee Stack, the Governor General of Sudan who was assassinated in 1924. I’m not sure that they visited the site, I think they were just big names who died in Egypt around the same time Tutmania was happening so just got caught up in it too.

Decoding the Curse

Might there be a rational explanation for people becoming ill and / or dropping dead shortly after entering a chamber that had previously been sealed for literally thousands of years? Yes, there might. Quite a few of the supposed curse victims seemed to die of infections that developed into pneumonia or the like.

Is it possible that there was a sort of unintentional booby trap in the tomb after all? According to Dr. Caroline Stenger-Philippe who wrote a doctoral thesis on the subject, all the food offerings of fruit and vegetables left in the tomb decayed over the decades, first becoming mold, then eventually just “microscopic dust”.

When the tomb was breached, the first group in would have been exposed to the mold and, according to an article on AP News.com, would have: “contracted allergic alveolitis, a severe inflammation of the tiny air chambers in the lungs, and died of pulmonary insufficiency.” The dust would have dissipated over time but could have stayed around for up to 2 years, perhaps accounting for some of the deaths we mentioned earlier. While this theory is plausible, allergy specialist Dr.

Arthur Maier makes a good point that it’s impossible to recreate these conditions to definitively test Stenger-Phillipe’s hypothesis and that therefore those who want to believe in the curse of King Tut “may go on believing.” Fair enough.

Other similar theories include viruses and radioactive or other types of poisonous materials being deliberately placed in the tomb to kill anyone who entered it but Stenger-Phillipe argues that it would have been quite easy to tell if this was what had happened and also many more people would have died if this had been the case.

So let’s get back to the curse victims. I’m sure you’ve noticed that many of them had nothing directly to do with the tomb, or they died quite a long time after etc. Well, yeah, that’s about it really.

You would expect a good curse to act quite quickly, not drag on for an indeterminate amount of years. Also, while we told the sometimes mysterious and gory versions of their stories, some of it can’t be substantiated. I came across various different numbers for how many people of the original group died and also might have tweaked the wording to make things seem nearer to the opening of the tomb than they really had been.

Also, when you’re looking stuff like this up, all the sensational stuff is at the top so it’s easy to get sucked in. Don’t blame me for lazy research though, I’m going against decades of reporting here. Apparently, when Carter found the tomb, “The Times” got exclusive rights to report on the entire dig and findings.

What a scoop! Obviously this was a story with global interest so the other papers and news outlets had to get involved somehow. To get around it, what they did was write stuff that was more speculative and sensational i.e. not necessarily true, to get people to read their stories.

The curse was great fodder here as you can basically write whatever you want and add in as many victims as you like. These exaggerated versions have been passed down and repeated through the years making it difficult to work out if anything’s actually true but — spoiler alert — lots of debunking ahead. So about those victims…

Lord Carnarvon did die a bit of an unlucky death but he wasn’t really someone who was in the best of health anyway. He got a big mosquito bite on his cheek which he managed to nick with a razor while shaving. This led to an infection, blood poisoning and pneumonia. While he was only 56, he had had lung infections many times before and was basically one bout of bronchitis away from death at any moment.

The dog dying and the lights in Cairo going out are apocryphal or, if there was a power cut in Cairo, it was just a coincidence. He also died in April 1923, some 5 months after having entered the tomb. This is long enough that any micro molds in the air don’t seem to have affected him which kind of kills that theory off as he was just a sitting duck for this kind of thing, what with those bad lungs of his.

As for his half brothers, Aubrey was also in poor health, and died due to having all his teeth removed and getting a horrible infection. A bad way to go, sure, but I don’t think it can be linked to the curse, more just bad medical advice or execution. He died in 1923 at the age of 43. The other half brother Mervyn died of a form of pneumonia like several other victims, but again, this was coincidental. He had been to Albania when he contracted it, not Tutankhamun’s tomb, and died in Rome in 1929 at the age of 46.

Richard Bethell was our next listed victim, he was Carter’s personal secretary and Carnarvon’s friend and also possibly his secretary too, I kept seeing different things. Anyway, he was murdered on his return to London. Or was he?

I’ve seen more than one explanation of his death. He was found dead at the age of 46 in Mayfair’s Bath Club but I’ve seen that he “ate poison” and also “was probably smothered.” His official cause of death was given as “coronary thrombosis.”

This was in November 1929, a significant few years after he entered the tomb but the New York Times still ran a piece headlined: “TUT-ANKH-AMEN ‘CURSE’ RECALLED BY DEATH; Richard Bethell, Once Howard Carter’s Secretary, Latest of 10 Excavators to Die” a few days later. His father dying shortly afterwards by leaping out of a window is obviously extremely sad but apparently he had had a long illness and was also probably affected by the death of his son. He was 77.

Arthur Cruttenden Mace and George Jay Gould both entered the tomb and died of pneumonia shortly afterwards. They could be bona fide victims of the microscopic death mold, however, Mace didn’t die for 4 years after leaving Egypt. Gould did succumb shortly afterwards so maybe he did pick up something in the tomb and was one of the few actual victims.

Hugh Evelyn-White killed himself apparently in fear of becoming the next victim of the curse and wrote a note in his own blood. But was this really why? He did die by suicide but this can be linked to things other than a mummy’s curse.

He worked in Egypt until 1922 when the tomb was opened but then returned to work as a lecturer in England and he didn’t die until 2 years later, in 1924 at the age of 40. Maybe he was caught up in the media storm surrounding the deaths of several people he had known and worked with in the Valley of the Kings but other sources have suggested that it was the death of a close friend that sent him spiraling. I saw in most places online that Evelyn-White had hung himself but then found an old newspaper article which said he shot himself in a taxi on the way to an inquest.

What? I investigated further and found a completely different story to what normally pops up when you google his name.

The headline is “‘Curse of Egypt’ on Shot Professor. Mistress who Died by Poison. Love Romance with Music.”

Apparently a young music teacher called Helen Nind was infatuated which is a nicer way of saying “probably stalkerishly obsessed” with Hugh Evelyn-White but he didn’t return her feelings so she poisoned herself and died. She had left notes stating her feelings for Evelyn-White and he was summoned to her inquest but killed himself on the way. He might have actually been a believer in the curse as a letter written by him — not in blood, I might add — apparently said “I knew there was a curse on me, though I had leave to take those manuscripts to Cairo.

The monks told me the curse would work all the same. Now it has done so.” Oh, so he might have been feeling really guilty about transporting potentially stolen manuscripts maybe?

His brother also disputed that the letter was even in his handwriting so maybe this was yet another made up facet of his story. There was another letter he wrote that seems more believable, basically despairing of the situation with Helen Nind and how it had ended and stating that he hadn’t done anything wrong. Really, the conclusion we can reach is that this was a horrible situation gone wrong and has nothing to do with King Tut.

Sir Archibald Douglas Reid x-rayed Tut and died three days later. Coincidence? Well, to be honest, while he was a radiologist and x-ray pioneer, I can’t find any evidence that Reid did any x-rays on King Tut at all.

This was supposed to have happened in 1924, however, the lid of the sarcophagus was not raised until February 1924, never mind any other research being done on the coffins or the mummy of Tut himself. Reid had already died in January 1924 so could not have possibly done any x-rays either in situ or elsewhere. According to the British Medical Journal, he had had a serious illness three years before his death and “he had been troubled for some years by radio-dermatitis and increasing disability”.

He died in Switzerland following a medical procedure so unless the curse was killing him in advance, he appears to have no ties whatsoever with the project. Wow, I’ve feel like we’ve actually done some proper decoding with some of these. Who’s next?

Oh yeah, the various coincidental things like that guy’s house burning down and flooding and Dr. Ember dying when he went back for “The Egyptian Book of the Dead.” Well, Dr. Ember really did die like that, that was a totally true story, but he hadn’t been part of Carter’s team, he was just friends with Carnarvon.

He was an Egyptologist which is why he’s been connected to the curse but this is one of those “grabbing at straws” type things. He died while writing a book about Egyptian death rituals but at the most this is lightly ironic, not caused by a curse.

Sir Bruce Ingham was the recipient of the cursed mummy hand and had bad luck befall his home when it burned then flooded but I think I’ve used up all my powers of investigation now as this story has been repeated so often it’s difficult to find any real corroboration or contradictions. Ingham didn’t die so this is just another fun throwaway bit that’s been added on.

The remaining incident on our list was that of James Henry Breasted’s canary that was eaten by a cobra. Was it? Wasn’t it? I’ve also seen it was Howard Carter’s canary. Let’s assume that someone’s canary was eaten by a snake. I think the correct response is probably “big whoop”. It only took on any meaning at all because of the symbolic link of the cobra with Egyptian royalty and deities. If it had happened before they found the tomb, no significance would have been attached.

And here’s probably the biggest sticking point to this whole curse idea: Howard Carter was not affected. He was the one looking for, finding, breaking into and excavating the tomb. He was the first one in and also handled Tut’s remains. Surely he would have been the first victim if such a curse really existed.

Even if the mold dust theory is true, Carter spent a lot of time in that tomb and didn’t seem to suffer any ill effects. He did end up dying of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma but it wasn’t until 1939 at the age of 64, 17 years after the discovery of the tomb. That’s one slow acting curse.

You may also remember that Lord Carnarvon’s daughter was with him when Carter initially found the entrance to the hidden tomb. Lady Evelyn Herbert might have even been the first person to set foot in the burial chamber in thousands of years, as after Carter had made a peephole into the chamber, he, Evelyn and Carnarvon are rumoured to have gone back on the down low and had a private poke around. Evelyn was the smallest so she went in through a hole first. Maybe the curse doesn’t work on women or something — she lived til the age of 78, not dying until 1980 although she was in a serious car accident in 1935 and then suffered several strokes later in life so maybe she didn’t get away totally scot free.

When you look at things in detail, it’s pretty clear that there was no curse. I can’t even get a fixed number on how many people in the original dig party supposedly died, seeing numbers ranging from 8 to 12 and in a timeframe of “soon after” to “within 12 years”.

An epidemiologist called Mark R. Nelson spent a lot more time on this than I have and in a report published in the British Medical Journal in 2002, basically concluded that the number of deaths in Carter’s group, not counting native Egyptians who are apparently unaffected, over the number of years following the opening of the tomb was not any more than you would expect. To get specific: “Adjustment for age and sex, any exposure, or the number of times exposed did not confer additional risk for early (within 10 years) death (odds ratio 1.38, 95% confidence interval 0.20 to 9.6) […] There was also no effect on survival time for any exposure or number of exposures.”

So basically, nothing supernatural was going on. And for these 8 to 12 people who might have died, there was a far larger number who didn’t. Again, I had trouble tracking down the exact number but Carter’s crew numbered either 25 or 44, depending on whether you count those who were just there or the smaller number who actually entered the tomb.

Either way, the majority of people were not affected.

Also, although I started this off with the curse that was written on a tablet hidden in Tut’s tomb, sorry, but that was a bit of a porky pie. It’s yet another false flag that’s been attached to this story, they never found any curse like that at all! In fact, the “curses” mentioned at the start weren’t really curses per se, they were more just warnings not to be a dick and disturb the burial sites.

A Curse Addendum

I just remembered that I mentioned Zahi Hawass about a hundred years ago. He’s the Egyptian Egyptologist who was also the Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs twice. He’s done his fair share of excavating and discovering and while he doesn’t believe in curses, a strange thing did seem to happen after one of his digs.

In his book, The Valley of the Golden Mummies, Hawass states: “At the beginning of my career, during my first year excavating at Kom Abu-Bellou in the Nile Delta, I had to remove a truckload of gold objects and other artifacts from a Greco-Roman cemetery and transport them to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. That same day, my cousin died. Two years later on the anniversary of that day, my uncle died.

On the same day of the third year, my aunt died.” Spooky, but he didn’t attribute it to a curse or anything, just thought it was a weird coincidence. If I was related to him, I’d definitely be getting worried when that day rolled around each year.

He later was on a dig where an actual curse was found on a tomb entrance: “O all people who enter this tomb, who will make evil against this tomb and destroy it, may the crocodile be against them on water, and snakes against them on land. May the hippopotamus be against them on water, the scorpion against them on land.” The mummies of two children and an adult female were discovered and removed from the tomb to be taken to a museum.

That same night, Hawass began to be haunted by these children, having nightmares where they would reach out and try to grab his throat. He would also see the adult female pleading with him but didn’t know what it was all about. This went on for quite a while, causing him to be stressed and panicked all the time until he finally realized what the mummies had been telling him.

He flew back to Egypt and arranged for a male mummy that was still in the tomb, their father, to be reunited with them in the museum and he was never haunted by the mummies again. Make of his stories what you will — as I said, Hawass has stated he does not believe in curses — so to me, these are weirder than the King Tut stuff for sure.

Wrapping Up The Mummy’s Curse

Debunked enough for you? Sorry to spoil the fun, as usual, but I think we can see that the curse of King Tut never actually existed. Of course we have no numbers for any ancient times graverobbers who may have fallen foul of it, but in the modern era at least, we might possibly be able to pin one death on the tomb itself, potentially that of George Jay Gould, the railroad exec.

He died very soon after having visited the tomb, although whether he picked up the bug that did for him in the tomb itself or elsewhere cannot be verified. If one graverobber or archaeologist had a bad experience or died during or shortly after their visit to a mummy’s tomb, it’s easy to see how a whisper about curses could start and then catch hold, linking any type of future bad luck events together. The media sure were on it, writing headlines mentioning the curse any time anyone linked with the original discovery party died, never mind how long after it was or what circumstances it was under.

Plus, who doesn’t love a spooky story? As I found out for myself researching this, it’s easy to find multiple repeats of the same old tosh when in reality some of the supposed victims of the curse were totally tangential and had absolutely no link to Carter or Tutankhamun or Egypt at all. Carter called the idea of a curse “tommy rot” which seems to be a good final word on it as he was at the centre of the whole thing after all.

And what’s next for old young King Tut? He is supposed to be going on display at the new Grand Egyptian Museum but, as of writing, this monster project still doesn’t have an official opening date, although it looks to be gearing up to finally open later in 2023. Maybe the curse of King Tut is what’s behind its continued delay…but probably not.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Curse of the Pharaohs?

The Curse of the Pharaohs refers to the belief that disturbing the tombs of ancient Egyptian pharaohs, particularly King Tutankhamun, would bring misfortune or death to those involved. This idea gained popularity through literature and films, and was fueled by the deaths of several people associated with the discovery of King Tut’s tomb.

Who discovered King Tut’s tomb?

King Tut’s tomb was discovered in 1922 by a group led by Egyptologist Howard Carter. The tomb was found to be the most intact one ever discovered, containing over 5000 artifacts and the remains of Tutankhamun himself.

What are some of the artifacts found in King Tut’s tomb?

Some of the artifacts found in King Tut’s tomb include his famous golden death mask, sandals made of gold, a one-meter-high wooden throne covered in gold, silver, and semi-precious stones, elaborate paintings and murals of Ancient Egyptian gods, ivory cups, cosmetic jars, and board games.

What is the mold dust theory regarding the curse?

The mold dust theory suggests that the deaths of some individuals associated with the discovery of King Tut’s tomb could be attributed to allergic alveolitis, a severe inflammation of the lungs caused by inhaling mold spores from decayed food offerings in the tomb.

Who was Lord Carnarvon and what happened to him?

Lord Carnarvon, whose full name was George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, was a keen Egyptologist and the patron of Howard Carter. He was present when Carter discovered King Tut’s tomb and died a few months later from blood poisoning and pneumonia, which was attributed to a mosquito bite that became infected.

What is the significance of the cobra in Ancient Egyptian culture?

The cobra is a significant symbol in Ancient Egyptian culture, representing protection, guiding the spirits of pharaohs through the afterlife, and being strongly connected with the sun god and royalty. It appears on many Ancient Egyptian artifacts, including Tutankhamun’s death mask.

What is the current status of King Tut’s remains?

King Tut’s remains were initially examined with him still stuck in the golden coffin. In the mid-2000s, the mummy was removed and put on general display back in his tomb in a climate-controlled glass box.

What is the Grand Egyptian Museum and its connection to King Tut?

The Grand Egyptian Museum is a planned museum in Egypt that is supposed to display King Tut’s remains and many of the artifacts found in his tomb. As of the writing of the article, the museum did not have an official opening date, although it was expected to open later in 2023.

What is the significance of the warnings found on ancient Egyptian tombs?

The warnings found on ancient Egyptian tombs were not curses per se but rather warnings not to disturb the burial sites. They followed a specific formula with choices of actions and corresponding punishments, such as being attacked by animals or suffering from diseases.

What is the current scientific consensus on the curse of King Tut?

The current scientific consensus, based on studies like that of epidemiologist Mark R. Nelson, is that there is no evidence of a supernatural curse. The number of deaths among those associated with the discovery of King Tut’s tomb was not higher than expected, and many of the supposed victims had no direct connection to the tomb.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb: Is It Real?
• Hero image source by thegetty / openverse, cc0.