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Oct 24, 2022 · Ever since King Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered, stories circulated that those who dared violate his final resting place faced a terrible curse. It was a useful ruse to scare off grave...
May 25, 2012 · Death and disasters struck a number of people who were involved with the grave, leading many to think that Carter unleashed a curse of King Tutankhamun’s tomb. Howard Carter, the discoverer of King Tutankhamun’s tomb, examines King Tut’s mummy.
The fascination with King Tutankhamen's tomb, curse and treasure extends to his own death. What killed the ruler? A 1968 X-ray showed a hole in the mummy's cranium, leading to the popular assumption that Tutankhamen was murdered.
- 5 min
Oct 25, 2022 · When King Tut's tomb was discovered in 1922, some believed the Egyptian pharaoh unleashed a powerful curse upon all who dared to disturb his eternal slumber.
- Stacy Conradt
- Overview
- HISTORY Vault: Ancient History
In early 1923, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his financier friend George Herbert, Lord Carnarvon, ceremoniously opened the long-obscured burial chamber of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamen in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. Two months later, Carnarvon was dead, killed by blood poisoning from an infected mosquito bite on his cheek.
Newspapers speculated that he was the victim of the “mummy’s curse” or “curse of the Pharaohs,” which supposedly promised death to anyone who disturbed the rest of the kings and queens buried in the valley. The rumors only increased after the sudden, early deaths of several others connected to the excavation of Tut’s tomb. But is the curse real?
Tutankhamen
Not according to the British Medical Journal, which did a study in 2002 on the survival rates of 44 Westerners whom Carter had identified as being in Egypt when the tomb was examined. (The curse was said not to affect native Egyptians.) The study compared the mean age of death for the 25 of those people who were present at an opening or examination of the tomb with the others who weren’t. It found no significant association between potential exposure to the mummy’s curse and survival, as well as no sign at all that those who were exposed were more likely to die within 10 years.
Some theorists seeking a scientific explanation say that Carnarvon’s death may have been linked to toxins within Tut’s tomb. While some ancient mummies have been shown to carry potentially dangerous species of mold, and the tomb walls could have been covered in bacteria known to attack the respiratory system, experts dismiss this hypothesis. They argue that Carnarvon was chronically ill before he ever set foot near Tut’s tomb.
Besides, he didn’t die until months after his first exposure, and the toxins would have done him in much earlier.
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There is no evidence that a curse was found anywhere in Tutankhamun’s tomb, even though the contents were fully recorded. Many of the people who entered the tomb (including Carter himself) seem to have been immune to any curse.
The tomb of Tutankhamun, also known by its tomb number, KV62, is the burial place of Tutankhamun (reigned c. 1332–1323 BC), a pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings. The tomb consists of four chambers and an entrance staircase and corridor.
