King Tut’s Curse

The Curse of King Tutankhamen 

Archaeologist Howard Carter
enters King Tut's Tomb, 1922

When Howard Carter and his team finally found the tomb of King Tutankhamun in February of 1923, the scientific community celebrated. Everything was in such excellent condition. Centuries of grave robbers had never managed to find Tut’s final resting place, so the tomb promised untold treasures for the archeologists.

But there may have been more than gold in the tomb.

Some say, looking back, that Carter unleashed a curse similar to those that had hung over the burial chambers of other Egyptian kings.

In some cases a curse actually appears on the walls of the tomb. On the tomb of the ruler Khentika Ikhekhi are the words:

“(anyone) who shall enter this my tomb…an end shall be made for him… I shall cast the fear of myself into him.”

King Tut’s tomb had no ominous inscription, but some believe it was cursed, nonetheless.

 

The first death after the opening of Tut’s tomb — in some chronicles of the curse — was not even human. The story states that soon after the tomb was opened a cobra slipped into the cage housing Carter’s pet canary and made quick work of the bird.

One of the first humans to feel the touch of the alleged curse’s power was one of the expedition’s financers, George Herbert. He was bitten on the face by a mosquito and later opened that bite while shaving. One would expect this to be virtually harmless, but Herbert developed blood poisoning and died. Some say his dog died at the same moment as his master did.

The curse spread wider. Another backer of the expedition died of pneumonia in the year of the discovery. Herbert’s half-brother died from a dental procedure gone wrong that same year. A noted Egyptologist who had interest in the tomb died of arsenic poisoning in 1928. All in all at least 10 mysterious deaths have been linked to the curse at some point.

And not all of the cursed people died. A friend of Carter, one Sir Bruce Ingham, received a sacred object from the tomb and took it home. His house soon burned to the ground. He rebuilt it only to have it destroyed again — this time by a flood.

Skeptics put the deaths and calamities down to coincidences. They note that Howard Carter himself was not affected by the supposed curse — and he would be the most likely candidate. But he lived on for sixteen years after he opened the tomb of the most famous mummy of the century.

Ancient Egyptians were certainly not the only ones to place curses on their tombs. Such curses can be found throughout time and in most cultures.

 

Centuries after Tut, Shakespeare’s tombstone proclaimed:

Good friend for Jesus sake forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones.

Disturbing the tomb from any century is apparently not a good idea.