TOXIC TOMB OF TUT

‘Curse’ is radiation

The unsettling curse of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt has long been feared to be linked to the mysterious deaths of multiple excavators who discovered it in 1922.

Now a scientist claims to have solved the mysteries of the “Pharaoh’s Curse” more than 100 years later.

Toxic levels of radiation emanating from uranium and poisonous waste are believed to have lingered inside the tomb since it was sealed over 3,000 years ago, Ross Fellowes wrote last month in the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

The radiation level inside Tutankhamun’s tomb is so high that anyone who comes in contact with it could very likely develop a fatal dose of radiation sickness and cancer.

“Both contemporary and ancient Egypt populations are characterized by unusually high incidences of hematopoietic cancers, of bone/blood/ lymph, for which a primary known cause is radiation exposure,” Fellowes wrote.

He said “unusually high radiation levels have been documented in Old Kingdom tomb ruins” throughout Egypt.

“Radiation has been detected by the Geiger counter at two sites at Giza adjacent to the pyramids,” he wrote, adding that radon — a radioactive gas — has also been detected in “several underground tombs at Saqqara.”

“Modern studies confirm very high levels of radiation in ancient Egyptian tombs, in the order of 10x accepted safety standards,” the study found.

It’s theorized that those who built the tombs were aware of the toxins.

“The nature of the curse was explicitly inscribed on some tombs, with one translated presciently as, ‘they that break this tomb shall meet death by a disease that no doctor can diagnose,’ ” Fellowes wrote.

Finders felled

Lord Carnarvon funded the excavation and walked through the treasured-filled rooms in the Valley of Kings. “Carnarvon was dead within a few weeks of the uncertain diagnosis of blood poisoning and pneumonia,” Fellowes wrote.

Howard Carter, the first person to walk inside Tutankhamun’s tomb with Carnarvon, died in 1939 after a long battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

In total, six of the 26 people present when the tomb was opened died within a decade from cancer, asphyxia, stroke, diabetes, heart failure, pneumonia, poisoning, malaria and X-ray exposure.