Mystery in the Pyramids: Does an Ancient Curse Protect the Mummies of Egypt's Pharaohs?

Jews who learn the story of the Exodus remember well that Egypt was a vast field for sorcery. Egyptian magicians held senior roles in the government, and Pharaoh relied on their supernatural abilities when challenging Moses and Aaron. To make the king take his mission seriously, Moses first needed to show him how the miracles he performed through the sacred powers granted to him surpassed the magicians' spells.

As powerful as the Egyptian magicians were, were they strong enough to cast spells and curses that wreak havoc thousands of years later? As strange as it sounds, there are quite a few people in the world who believe just that: a belief that became popular in 1921, when the tomb of the ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamun was revealed.

The discoverer of the tomb was a British archaeologist named Howard Carter. Carter worked for years for the British nobleman Lord Carnarvon, who purchased a license for archaeological excavations in Egypt. In 1914, the Carnarvon-Carter team began digging in the area known as the 'Valley of the Kings'. They found graves there - but all were empty. Only later were the mummies and burial items found elsewhere, hidden by a medieval Egyptian government tired of grave robbers.

In 1921, Lord Carnarvon concluded he had exhausted all possibilities with his excavation license. Carter, however, felt differently. He was convinced that another king's tomb should be found in the Valley of the Kings. He had specific suspicions about this king: in his opinion, the valley should also contain the burial of Tutankhamun, an Egyptian king who reigned from ages 9 to 20 and was likely murdered by his mentor.

After much persuasion, Lord Carnarvon agreed to fund one more season of excavations. On November 4, 1922, Carter's team discovered the steps leading to the tomb. What awaited them was a genuine sensation: the most preserved pharaonic tomb discovered to date, full of treasures of gold and ivory. A few months later, Tutankhamun's sarcophagus was also found. The excavation, sorting, and cataloguing process took ten years: thousands of valuable items were found. Unfortunately for historians, no papyruses were found.

The vast treasures found in the tomb soon became famous worldwide. Suddenly, Egyptian mummies were no longer the esoteric pursuit of enthusiasts: they harbored enormous wealth. People around the world began to follow the news from the field of ancient Egyptian research with enthusiasm.

And then came the rumors of the curse. Lord Carnarvon, who funded the excavations, died - 'under mysterious circumstances', as the world's newspapers reported with undisguised delight. At the time of his death, as his personal doctor claimed, all the lights in Cairo went out - also, of course, 'under mysterious circumstances'. And, if that wasn't enough, the lord's son said that his beloved dog died at the very same hour...

Lord Carnarvon's death was the opening shot in a series of tragedies reported by the world press. In the decade since Tutankhamun's mummy was discovered - a decade dedicated to sorting and cataloguing all the items in the tomb - there were reports of 'mysterious deaths' of many people connected to the tomb: for instance, Lord Carnarvon's younger brother died five months later from blood poisoning (he went blind and, for some reason, his doctors thought pulling his teeth would cure him of his blindness. Unsurprisingly - it didn't work but did manage to kill him). The American magnate J. Gould visited the site, fell ill immediately, and died after a few months from a fever. X-ray technician Archibald Douglas Reid x-rayed the mummy and died three days later. Egyptian Prince Ali Kemal Fahmi Bey was murdered by his wife. Carter's assistant Arthur Mace died young. His secretary Richard Bethell died of respiratory failure at age 35. The secretary's father, Lord Westbury, committed suicide.

(Photo: shutterstock)

The public, initially excited by the gold treasures of Tutankhamun, became much less enthusiastic about visiting the tomb or purchasing souvenirs found in it. What they continued to do, however, was consume one sensational document after another about the activity of this ancient curse.

The concept of 'curses protecting structures' was known in ancient Egypt, says Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at Cairo University. In ancient Egyptian tombs, even before the pyramids, the walls were covered with curses intended to deter people from desecrating the tombs or stealing the treasures inside. "These curses threatened intervention by Egypt's gods to protect the buried," she says. "Or threatened death by crocodiles, lions, scorpions, or snakes".

But on Tutankhamun's tomb, experts did not identify any curses. Was there a hidden curse there? And how do you explain the series of mysterious deaths if you stubbornly cling to logic and refuse to believe that a mummy thousands of years old can kill healthy people in their prime years?

One scientific theory suggested decades ago claimed that the sealed tomb housed bacteria - or perhaps fungi - that could cause deadly diseases, especially in people with weakened immune systems like Lord Carnarvon. But while studies have indeed found mold fungi in some mummies, most researchers today reject this theory. Cairo of the 1920s was an overwhelmingly filthy place with shockingly poor sanitary conditions by any standard. It is simply hard to believe that a tomb sealed for three thousand years could contain a biological threat worse than everything the researchers had already encountered anyway, due to their residence in an overtly unhygienic country.

So, if you don't believe in ancient curses or ancient bacteria - what explanation remains?

Coincidence. This is the third version. Yes, Lord Carnarvon died - but according to all symptom descriptions, he died from blood poisoning caused by an open wound. Not an unusual scenario in an era before penicillin was discovered. The power outage at the time of his death was a regular phenomenon in primitive Cairo, not exactly the global capital of electricity usage. As for his dog? No one knows what really happened to her, but the son who testified about her death 'at the same time' was actually in India when his father passed away. Other deaths also have logical explanations: Carter's assistant Arthur Mace had struggled for years with a chronic illness that worsened during the stressful years of excavations in Egypt. Other deaths were of people who had not even visited the tomb: Prince Ali Kemal Fahmi and Lord Westbury never got close to the Valley of the Kings.

In fact, as early as 1934, American Egyptologist Herbert Winlock attempted to end the myth of the curse: he published his calculations, stating that although six out of 26 people who participated in the tomb's opening died within a decade, only two of the 22 present at the sarcophagus opening died. The ten who unwrapped the mummy all survived and even lived quite long. Many experts who examined the mummy closely were unharmed, not to mention the local workers who participated in the excavations and the thousands of tourists who visited the site. This statistics, scientists say today, also rule out the possibility that the tomb contained any lethal bacteria or fungus.

Nonetheless, there are those who continue to believe in the curse, among them the current Lord Carnarvon, the grandson of the financier of the excavations that uncovered Tutankhamun's mummy. Even in popular culture, the myth of the 'cursed mummy' still lives, breathes, and kicks. Because the discovery of an ancient mummy surrounded by gold treasures is perhaps interesting: but less interesting than such a discovery being made under the shadow of an ancient pharaonic curse.