Tutankhamun's curse

Case file

A tomb. A dead lord. A warning.

In November 1922, Howard Carter found the lost tomb of a teenage king.

Five months later, the man who paid for the dig was dead.

Newspapers all over the world printed one word: curse.

Did a pharaoh really kill him? We will check every claim, one page at a time.

First, the strangest part: the warning itself →

The people at the centre of the story

Carter was the digger. Lord Carnarvon was the money. Lady Evelyn was Carnarvon's daughter. Remember all three names.

It all began with one step

On 4 November 1922, a worker in the Valley of the Kings found a step cut into rock. It led down to a sealed door. The seals were still whole.

Carter had hunted for this tomb for years, paid for by Lord Carnarvon.

Carnarvon died 48 days after the burial chamber opened

Source: Griffith Institute, first season 1922 to 1923

Now, about that warning →

The curse nobody carved

The Cairo reporter of the Daily Express told readers the tomb carried this warning:

Other papers repeated it, including the Daily Mail and the New York Times.

There is no such inscription. Not on the walls, and not in Carter's own records.

What the tomb really says

The nearest real words are about protection. They threaten nobody. Some other Egyptian tombs do carry written curses, but this one does not.

So who invented it? →

Who wrote the scary story?

Carnarvon sold the exclusive story of the dig to The Times of London for £5,000, plus 75% of the money from selling it on.

Every other paper was locked out. They had space to fill and nothing to put in it.

So they filled it with rumours. Carter blamed one reporter, Arthur Weigall of the Daily Mail, and called the curse “tommyrot”.

Source: History Hit, History Today

The world came to look

Thousands wanted a story. Reporters wanted one more.

Then the famous voices joined in

Marie Corelli was the Dan Brown of her day, a best-selling novelist. She told the press that “the most dire punishment” follows anyone who breaks into a sealed royal tomb.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who created Sherlock Holmes and also believed in fairies, said an “evil elemental” could be at work.

Neither had been to the tomb.

Then Carnarvon died →

Twelve days that made a legend

Sources: University of Manchester, Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

So what really killed him?

He was 56. A mosquito bit his cheek, and he cut the bite while shaving. It got infected. The infection spread to his blood, then his lungs.

He had also been frail for years after a car crash, and he smoked heavily.

Six steps from a shaving cut to the grave

Sources: Griffith Institute, Hampshire Field Club

The idea was older than the tomb

In 1827, a young writer named Jane Loudon (then Jane Webb) published The Mummy!, a three-volume novel about a mummy brought back to life. A revised edition followed in 1828.

It sold well, and it is among the first stories of its kind. Victorians then wrote mummy tales for decades.

Even Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women, wrote one.

How old was the fear? →

Mummy stories were in print 95 years before the tomb

Sources: Jane Loudon, BMJ, Nelson 2002, New Humanist

Did the curse kill anyone? Count them.

In 2002, a doctor named Mark Nelson did what the newspapers never did. He counted.

He found 44 Westerners in Egypt during the dig. 25 were present when a sacred seal was broken. 19 were around but not at those moments.

Then he checked how long each person lived.

The result →

People at the seals lived to 70. The others, 75.

A gap this small happens by chance (p = 0.87). Nelson found no link between the tomb and an early death.

Source: BMJ, Nelson 2002

The man who should have died first

If a curse hunts people down, Howard Carter was target number one. He opened the door.

He lived 16 more years and died in March 1939, aged 64, of a cancer of the lymph system.

Lady Evelyn Herbert was among the first people inside. She lived until 1980, aged 79, longer than every man who entered.

Put it side by side →

The woman who was there lived longest

Sources: Science News, History Today

So why won't it die?

In 1970, a Tutankhamun show toured the West. A guard in San Francisco said a mild stroke came from the “mummy's curse”.

Scientists even asked if tomb mould could make people sick. It can, in rare cases.

But in 2013, a team tested the brown spots on the tomb walls. The living thing that made them is no longer active.

Source: Live Science

How did the king himself die?

A 2005 CT scan ruled out murder. It showed a broken leg. A 2010 DNA study found severe malaria too.

Sources: AP via NBC News, JAMA 2010

No curse. A better story.

A warning nobody carved. A death from a shaving cut. A legend built from novels and jealous newspapers.

And a boy king who died young from a broken leg and malaria.

The tomb's only real words promise protection.

The scariest thing in Tutankhamun's tomb was a good headline.