The ‘curse of the pharaohs’ is alleged to be cast upon anyone who disturbs the mummy of an Ancient Egyptian, especially a pharaoh. This curse, which does not differentiate between thieves and archaeologists, can cause bad luck, illness, or even death!
The famous Mummy’s Curse had baffled the best scientific minds since 1923 when Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter discovered King Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt.
The Curse of King Tutankhamun
Though no curse has been found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, deaths in succeeding years of various members of Carter’s team and related individuals fueled visitors’ superstitions to the site, kept the story alive, especially in cases of death by violence or odd circumstances.
Canary
James Henry Breasted was a famous Egyptologist who was working with Carter when the tomb was opened. The Egyptian workers were sure the tomb’s discovery was due to Breasted’s pet canary, killed when a cobra slithered into its cage. The cobra was the symbol of the pharaoh’s power.
Lord Carnarvon
The second victim of the Mummy’s Curse was 53-year-old Lord Carnarvon himself, who accidentally tore open a mosquito bite while shaving and introduced dirt of blood poisoning shortly after that. This occurred a few months after the tomb was opened. He died at 2:00 AM on April 5, 1923. At the exact moment of his death, all the lights in Cairo mysteriously went out. Two thousand miles away in England, Carnarvon’s dog howled and dropped dead at the exact moment.
Sir Bruce Ingham
Howard Carter gave a paperweight to his friend Sir Bruce Ingham as a gift. The paperweight apparently consisted of a mummified hand wearing a bracelet that was suspiciously inscribed with the phrase, “cursed be he who moves my body.” Ingham’s house burned to the ground not long after receiving the gift, and when he tried to rebuild, it was hit with a flood.
George Jay Gould
George Jay Gould, a wealthy American financier and railroad executive, visited the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1923 and fell sick almost immediately afterward. He never fully recovered and died of pneumonia a few months later.
Evelyn White
Evelyn White, a British archaeologist, visited Tut’s tomb and may have helped excavate the site. After seeing death sweep over about two dozen of his fellow excavators by 1924, Evelyn White hung himself—not before writing, allegedly in his blood, “I have succumbed to a curse which forces me to disappear.”
Aubrey Herbert
It’s said that Lord Carnarvon’s half-brother, Aubrey Herbert, suffered from the effects of King Tut’s curse merely by being related to him. Herbert was born with a degenerative eye condition and became blind later in life. A doctor suggested that his retina, influenced by the curse, somehow interfered with his vision. It didn’t work. He died, however, due to sepsis as a result of the surgery, just a few months after the death of his supposedly cursed brother.
Aaron Ember
American Egyptologist Aaron Ember was friends with many of the people present when the tomb was opened, including Lord Carnarvon. Ember died in 1926 when his house in Baltimore burned down less than an hour after he and his wife hosted a dinner party. He could have exited safely, but his wife encouraged him to save a manuscript he had been working on while she fetched their son. Sadly, they, along with the family maid, perished in the catastrophic event. The name of Ember’s manuscript? The Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Sir Archibald Douglas Reid
Proving that you don’t have to be one of the excavators or expedition backers to fall victim to the curse, Sir Archibald Douglas Reid, a radiologist, merely X-rayed Tut before the Mummy was given to museums authorities. He got sick the next day and was dead three days later.
Mohammed Ibrahim
At the age of 43, the curse struck down one Mohammed Ibrahim, who officially agreed to loan Tutankhamun’s treasures being sent to Paris for an exhibition. His daughter was seriously hurt in a car accident, and Ibrahim dreamed he would meet the same fate to stop the export of the treasures. He failed and was hit by a car. He died two days later.
Did these bizarre deaths happen due to the Mummy’s curse? Or, is all this happening by coincidence? What’s your thought?