King Tut's Curse
The Mummy's Curse and King Tutankhamen
When Howard Carter uncovered King Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922, nobody expected that the historical significance of the find would be plagued by the rumor of a curse. King Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor in Egypt on November 4, 1922 (Handwerk, n.d.). On February 17, 1923, after months of excavation, Carter, and approximately 20 other people, gathered at the entrance of the tomb's antechamber and prepared to unseal King Tutankhamen's burial chamber (Dowdy, 2013). Shortly after entering King Tutankhamen's burial chamber, many of the people present began to fall victim to strange and unusual circumstances that led to unexpected death. While much of these circumstances have been attributed to a "mummy's curse," there have been theories attributing these deaths to biological factors.
The concept of a mummy's curse can be traced back to before King Tutankhamen's death by at least 100 years and it possible that curses inscribed in burial chambers in ancient Egypt were meant to deter people from desecrating and robbing these sacred chambers (Handwerk, n.d.). According to Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at the American University at Cairo, these curses have been found inscribed on mastaba walls -- early non-pyramid tombs -- in Giza and Saqqara (Handwerk, n.d.). These curses warned of divine retribution by a council of gods, and/or death by crocodiles, lions, scorpions, or snakes (Handwerk, n.d.).
It was only a matter of months before those present at the tomb's unsealing began to die under mysterious and unexpected circumstances that were attributed to the mummy's curse. The first person to die was George Herbert, Lord Carnarvon, the project's chief financier. During the spring of 1923, Lord Carnarvon was bitten on the cheek by a mosquito. Shaving aggravated this bite and it soon became infected. The infection quickly developed into blood poisoning, which soon claimed his life (The Curse of the Mummy, n.d.; Conradt, 2009). George Jay Gould,...
Their design was no more crude than tile bed I was using" (Fertado). He even slept on the beds that had been entombed over 3,000 years before, showing no ill effects! In fact, Adamson lived to be 82 years old and died in 1982, sixty years after the discovery and with no ill effects from his experience. Even today, rumors about the curse continue to swirl around King Tut and
Mummy's Curse The objective of this study is to consider the Mummy's Curse, which involved a series of unexplainable, unfortunate, or tragic events that happened to the individuals who were present at the opening of Tutankhamen's tomb. King Tut's tomb was discovered in Egypt in 1923. Six weeks following the tomb being opened the individual who financed the expedition died suddenly and following his death was the circulation of a rumor
Other theories are that he died after having been sent into battle. Other scholars state that a hole found in the King's head indicates foul play but experts believe that the hole was made after his death. (Tutankamun: Life and Times) Another mysterious aspect of the life of King Tutankhamun that still lingers in the modern consciousness is the famous, or rather infamous, curse that is associated with his name.
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