CURSE OF TUT’S TOMB

I’ve always been fascinated by all things ancient Egypt. It had a very advanced culture that existed such a long time ago, with so much knowledge— and drama, as evinced by the stories of both the gods and the mortals. While reading “The Discovery of the World’s Greatest Treasure” in the last issue and thinking about the moment Howard Carter first opened King Tut’s tomb, I had to wonder: What about the curse of the mummy that’s supposed to afflict anyone who opens a tomb? Is it real? Alice Burns, Crescent Springs, KY

“The curse of the pharaohs” is thought to befall anyone who disturbs mummified remains, in particular those of a pharaoh. In the culture of ancient Egypt, the condition of the corpse was thought to be firmly tied to the deceased person’s chances of successfully navigating the afterlife. The Egyptians regarded a properly preserved body as a home for part of the soul while another part journeyed to the entrance to the afterlife. When it comes to Tutankhamun, arguably the most famous of Egypt’s rulers even though the boy king was meant to be confined to obscurity by the priests of his day, there was no actual curse inscribed in the tomb. But in the 10 years after the tomb’s discovery there were 11 notable deaths, beginning with the death of Howard Carter’s patron, Lord Carnarvon, about four months after the tomb was opened. He had been bitten by a mosquito and then accidentally slashed the bite while shaving, which lead to an infection that soon did him in. Some of the deaths, such as that of the radiologist Sir Archibald Douglas-reid, who had performed an X-ray of Tutankhamun’s mummy, seemed to result from a mysterious illness. Carter himself passed away in 1939 (well over 10 years after the discovery of the tomb in 1923) of Hodgkin’s disease, though some still suspect his death was the work of a curse.