The Curse of Tutankhamun
Carter began excavations in the autumn of 1922 between the tombs of Rameses IX and Rameses VI. These excavations allowed him to discover the tomb of Tutamkhamun and his fabulous riches, thus making the most fantastic archaeological discovery of all time. While Carter's team was gradually examining the various pieces making up the tomb and cataloging its fabulous treasures, newspapers around the world announced the discovery by bringing together the names of lords Carnavon, Carter and Tutankhamun in the same sudden celebrity. As the funerary inscriptions of ancient Egypt announced, Carter and Lord Carnavon had revived this pharaoh by saying his name ...
Those who are skeptical by temperament believe, like Howard Carter, that all tales relating to the revenge of the pharaohs are just a "degenerate form of ghost stories".
However, there are many who remain convinced that the anathemas pronounced more than three thousand years ago by the ancient Egyptians have preserved their evil powers.
The list of people who died as a result of direct or indirect contact with the tombs or mummies of the pharaohs is actually disconcerting. In less than half a century, there have been about forty cases of "strange" deaths.
What are the "apparent" causes of these deaths? In some cases, the victim was seized by violent fits of fever and delirium. Others have been affected by cancer. However, the most frequent cause of deaths appears to be heart attack. Phenomena of paralysis, nervous depression and mental alienation have also been observed in some Egyptologists.
The event that gives rise to the problem of the "curse of the pharaohs Tutankhamun" is the death that unexpectedly strikes Lord Cararvon, in April 1923, only a few weeks after the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb.
A month and a half before his death, in March 1923, Lord Carnarvon, like every day, goes to the Valley of the Kings to follow, confused among the workers, the progress of the work in the tomb of the young pharaoh.
For some time he has been wearing a dressing on his cheek because the week before, while shaving, he was stung by a mosquito and the wound is still suppurating.
Carnarvon feels abnormally weak. Nausea and fainting seize him more and more frequently. And now he can't stand the scorching sun he's actually grown so well used to in nearly seventeen years that he's in Egypt.
On March 27, 1923, Lord Carnarvon was struck by a syncope in Tutankhamun's tomb. Immediately transported to his apartment in Cairo, he becomes delirious. Doctors diagnose pulmonary congestion. The state of the disease worsens day by day. His dreams are filled with frightening nightmares. The fever continues to rise and fall. A few days later Carnavor died.
Of course, Carnavor's death did not fail to induce journalists to talk about strange facts, about surprising coincidences, about an invisible hand, finally ... about the curse of the pharaohs.
But it is also true that the chain of deaths that occurred in the following years gives some credit to these claims.
For several years, death continues to fall not only on the team that took part in the excavations, but also on those who helped the undertaking, visited the tomb, or were simply relatives or friends of the researchers.
Canadian archaeologist La Fleur arrived in Egypt in April 1923 in perfect health. A close friend of Carter, he joined him to help him with his work, but died of a mysterious illness just a few weeks after his arrival.
The third victim is British archaeologist Arthur C. Mace, who helped Carter tear down the mortuary wall. Shortly after the death of Lord Carnarvon, he in turn is taken by strange ailments. Perhaps they gradually abandon him, until he loses consciousness and dies in the same hotel as Lord Carnarvon without being able to establish the cause of his illness.
Then it is the turn of the American billionaire Georges Jay Gould, one of the oldest friends of Lord Carnarvon, who has come to Egypt to pay a final tribute to his companion. Very interested in the work undertaken in the Valley of the Kings, he insists with Carter to show him the tomb. The day after this visit, Jay Gould is struck by violent fevers. He dies the same evening.
Dr. Evelyn White, Carter's famous archaeologist and collaborator, hangs himself sometime later. Seized by malaise every time he enters the morgue, he eventually falls victim to a nervous depression that leads to suicide. In his farewell letter he writes: "I have succumbed to the curse that forced me to disappear".
Alfred Lucas and Douglas Derry also die. Disquiet is rampant among scientists all over the world.
The two scholars participated in the autopsy of Tutankhamun's mummy and died shortly after, following a heart attack.
A little later, Lord Carnarvon's half-brother, Aubrey Herbert, commits suicide in a fit of madness that is as sudden as it is inexplicable.
In February 1929 Lady Almina, Lord Carnarvon's wife, died under strange circumstances. An insect bite, according to doctors, is the cause of her sudden death.
During that same fateful year of 1929, in November, Richard Bethell, Carter's former secretary, is found dead in bed. Heart failure, doctors say.
Richard Bethell was Lord Westbury's only son. Three months later, the latter, who is seventy-eight, kills himself, throwing himself from the seventh floor window of his London apartment.
During Lord Westbury's funeral, the hearse overwhelms two teenagers. One of them dies while being transported to the hospital.
England has just recovered from the trauma of these two deaths that a "thrill runs through it again", as the press of the time underlined.
Archibald Douglas Reed, an English scholar seconded to the Egyptian government, also dies. Reed, a few days earlier, had received orders to X-ray Tutankhamun's mummy. His assignment was to discover any foreign bodies that may exist inside the corpse.
The day after the x-ray examinations he is stricken with malaise; a few days later he dies, who until then had never suffered from any disease.
... The latest in this bewildering series of deaths is that of James Breasted, of the University of Chicago, one of the archaeologists who, along with Carter, remained the longest in the tomb.
All of these deaths relate to the discovery of Tutamkhamun's tomb.
It is up to you now to believe if the curse exists or if these deaths are just a series of coincidences ..... the doubt remains ?!
