Strangest Mysteries of the World and Beyond !

The curse of King Tut

The curse of King Tut

We’ve all heard the story.

The “Curse of the Pharaohs” is a strong belief that anyone who should disturb a mummy or a Pharaoh’s tomb will be cursed.

This commonly known belief was intended to preserve the sanctity of these tombs in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, rather than to deter grave robbers. But in the past century, the curse has turned into a grave warning, particularly in the case of King Tut’s tomb. Some people choose to believe the curse is alive and well, while others feel it can be simply explained by simple science.

Archeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter’s team was put under the microscope after opening the tomb of King Tutankhamun, as people wondered if the curse had truly affected the people who witnessed the tomb’s opening in 1922.

Here are a few of the people and pets connected to “the curse.”

Who: Howard Carter’s pet canary.

Cause of Death: Eaten by a cobra.

Explanation:  The cobra is symbolic to the Egyptian Monarchy and it is believed that the Royal Cobra was released in Carter’s home as a symbol of how the King strikes his enemies. This began local rumors that the curse had been released.

Who: Lord Carnarvon, sponsor of the King Tut dig.

 Cause of Death: Blood Poisoning.

Explanation: Carnarvon was bitten by a mosquito, and accidentally cut the bite while shaving. It then became infected, and he died of blood poisoning. Some believed the mosquito bite was in the same location as a lesion on King Tut’s cheek, but since Lord Carnarvon was buried with no formal autopsy, no one could confirm this.

According to legend, Lord Carnarvon soon died from a mosquito bite; and simultaneously, his three-legged dog howled and dropped dead, and all the lights in the city of Cairo suddenly went out.

Who: Sir Bruce Ingham, Carter’s friend.

Material Destruction: House burned down – twice.

Explanation: Ingham received paperweight made of mummified hand with its wrist adorned with a scarab bracelet marked with, “Cursed be he who moves my body. To him shall come fire, water and pestilence.” No one has an explanation for this other than bad luck.

**Of the 26 people present at the opening of the tomb, 6 had died.

**Of the 22 people present at the opening of the sarcophagus, 2 had died.

**Of the 10 people present at the unwrapping of Tut's mummy, none had died.

**Carter died in 1939 at age 64, Harry Burton died in 1940 at age 60, and Sir Alan Gardiner died in 1963 at age 84.

Critical thinking-

First, the accounts of the curse all come from 1920's-era newspapers, well known for sensationalism and expansion of facts to make great headlines. Reliable records of what happened to Carter's people after they left the dig are hard to come by. References to the simultaneous death of dogs, the canary, and the lights going out in Cairo are found only in these unreliable newspaper reports and so can be considered anecdotal at best.

Second, Lord Carnarvon was known to be in pretty frail health at the time, and infection was a common cause of death. He had aggravated the mosquito bite on his cheek while shaving, and developed erysipelas resulting in septicemia and pneumonia. There was no curse needed to explain the dangers of these conditions.

Third, the explanation that the curse's effect on Carter himself was to leave him alive and well while others died is clearly a post-hoc rationalization.

Fourth, and this goes back again to the pulp-fiction nature of the newspapers of the era, is the inconsistencies among various versions of the tale, notably the alleged stone tablet bearing the curse. It should be noted that there is no record of any written curse, either in Carter's own documents or in any modern collections; at least not associated with Tutankhamun's tomb specifically.

Scientific explanation-

One of the first people to present a serious scientific explanation for the deaths associated with King Tut's curse was Dr. Caroline Stenger-Phillip, who proposed in 1986 that ancient mold in the tomb could have caused potentially fatal allergic reactions. Since fruits and vegetables and other organic items were buried in tombs, and since the tombs were completely hermetically sealed, it is plausible that mold spores could have existed and remained viable through the millennia.

This proposal has become known as "tomb toxins", and has been broadened to include other compounds, such as two molds that are found on ancient mummies, Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus flavus, and that can be potentially harmful to people with weakened immune systems.

Bacteria are also found in tombs, including Pseudomonas and Staphylococcus. And don't forget the chemicals used in embalming the mummies: ammonia, formaldehyde, and hydrogen sulfide. Tomb toxins do sound like a plausible explanation for the mummy's curse.

But unfortunately, tomb toxins do not explain the deaths from Carter's group very well at all. Even in the unlikely event that members of Carter's party received lethal doses of any or all of the above, such death would have followed quite quickly; it wouldn't have been delayed by the months or years reported among the victims of King Tut's curse. Even Lord Carnarvon's death, the one most closely associated with the curse, occurred six months after he entered the tomb.

Another problem with the tomb toxin explanation is that it sounds good to a layperson, but it is, in fact, armchair science. It's a reasonably plausible idea, but one that has never actually happened in the real world.

So, what was it- the mummy’s curse or something scientific? The research is still on.