THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY

"Death shall come on swift wings to him who disturbs the peace of the King." These are the words Howard Carter was reported to have seen carved in stone as he entered the tomb of King Tutankhamun, the famous pharaoh who ruled Egypt from 1333 to 1325 BCE. Egyptian sepulchers¹ like that of King Tutankhamun contain curses to frighten those who would violate the tombs, and in what has come to be known as "the curse of the mummy," it is believed that tragedy and death befall those who disturb the graves of Egyptian kings.

In the 1930s, the belief in a mummy's curse was rekindled² after the deaths of Carter's colleagues. Years earlier, in 1891, Howard Carter, then a young archaeologist from England, went to Egypt to study ancient Egyptian culture and to try to locate the unopened tomb of an ancient king. Because Egyptian kings were buried with gold and other valuable items, by the end of the 19th century, most tombs in the Valley of the Kings had been plundered³. Therefore, many archaeologists believed that there was nothing left to excavate⁴. Carter, however, believed there was at least one more undiscovered tomb, and he wanted to find it.

The great burial chambers in the Valley of the Kings contained the wrapped bodies of pharaohs, as well as items Egyptians believed would aid the kings in the afterlife. Before being buried for the afterlife, the bodies of the kings were carefully preserved by a process of embalming called mummification. When a body was mummified, the brain and other organs were removed and stored in large jars; then the skin, muscles, and bones were covered in a special salt for three months. At the end of the three months, after the salt had absorbed the water from the body, the body was wrapped in pieces of cotton soaked in pine resin (the liquid from pine trees). Through this process, the bodies of Egyptian kings have been preserved for thousands of years, and bodies that have undergone this embalming⁵ process are called mummies.

After years of working in Egypt studying various sites, and still convinced he would find an unopened tomb, Howard Carter approached wealthy British businessman Lord Carnarvon, who agreed to finance the search. After five unsuccessful years, however, Lord Carnarvon threatened to withdraw his patronage⁶. Carnarvon gave Carter just one more year within which to make a discovery. Returning to Egypt, Carter brought with him a canary, which was later believed to have been the harbinger⁷ of both success and disaster. It was in that year, 1922, that Carter discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun, but days before the discovery, Carter's canary was killed by a cobra—once symbolic of the pharaohs.

In November of 1922, Howard Carter cut a hole in the stone door that stood in front of Tutankhamun's tomb. With him were Lord Carnarvon and twenty others, including archaeologists, workers, and servants. Upon opening the tomb, they found wonderful treasures, including a solid gold mask that covered the face and upper torso⁸ of King Tutankhamun's body. Soon, however, their celebrations were dampened by a number of tragedies.

Lord Carnarvon died in Egypt a few months after the opening of the tomb. At first, doctors could not identify the cause of his death, but they finally determined it to be pneumonia and blood poisoning caused by an infected mosquito bite. The British press reported that at the exact moment of his death, back in England, Lord Carnarvon's dog howled⁹ at the moon and then died. Rumors of a mummy's curse shook the British public when the mummy of Tutankhamun was unwrapped, and a wound was discovered on the pharaoh's left cheek in the same spot as the insect bite that had caused Lord Carnarvon's death.

By 1929, London newspapers reported that eleven people connected with the discovery of King Tutankhamun's tomb had died of unnatural causes, including relatives of Lord Carnarvon, Carter's personal secretary Richard Bethell, and Bethell's father. The latter leaped to his death, leaving a suicide note describing the "horrors" he had seen. Did the mummy's curse cause these deaths? If so, why didn't the man who opened the tomb succumb to¹⁰ the curse of the mummy? Howard Carter, who never believed in the curse, survived into his mid-sixties, dying of apparently natural causes in 1939.

• infected mosquito bite
• continued to live
• a mummy's curse
• not been violated
• jumped to his death
• preserved tomb

• absorb
• dampen
• infect
• organ
• suicide
• symbolic

Dispelling the Mummy's Curse

Was the curse of the mummy real? Though the death of Lord Carnarvon seemed mysterious, it was probably the result of bad hygiene rather than a curse, says Dr. Robert Prichard, a medical examiner for the state of California. "His mosquito bite became infected from a dirty shaving razor, and he developed sepsis, or blood poisoning," Dr. Prichard explained. As for the deaths of the others involved in the opening of King Tutankhamun's tomb, there is nothing mysterious there either, researchers say. The British Medical Journal looked at all the evidence concerning forty-four of the people who were associated with the excavation of King Tutankhamun's tomb. They concluded that statistically, no more of those people died than in any other population sample of similar size.

Still, research into microbiology suggests that although there is no mummy's curse, there may be real health dangers associated with opening tombs like those in the Valley of the Kings. The old tombs were sealed so tightly that the insides may have become anaerobic, meaning that air could not get inside. When this happens, certain bacteria grow in the oxygen-free environment that can not ordinarily survive otherwise and which can be harmful if inhaled. Other types of organisms like mold and fungi could also be present, some of which can cause serious health problems. For these reasons, modern archaeologists, unlike those in the 1920s, wear protective filter masks and gloves when entering a tomb for the first time.

Finally, it has been suggested that the stern inscription engraved on the entrance to King Tutankhamun's tomb was the invention of a young British newspaper reporter by the name of Doyle, later known as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The real inscription, it is reported, was more concerned with protecting the dead than with inflicting punishment.