Tutankhamun's "Pharaoh's Curse": Those Who Opened the Tomb Did Not Live Shorter Lives

In November 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered a stone step in the sands of Egypt's Valley of the Kings. He was working for a British nobleman named Lord Carnarvon, who had paid him to excavate for nearly fifteen years with no major discoveries. Just as the money was running out, Carter dug for another quarter and uncovered this step; below it was a door sealed with mud seals, and behind that door was the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun from over 3,000 years ago, the best-preserved tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

In February 1923, the burial chamber was officially opened, and the golden mask, coffins, and chariots inside filled newspapers all over the world.

Two months later, on April 5, Lord Carnarvon died in a hotel in Cairo. He had been bitten on the face by a mosquito, then nicked the wound while shaving; it became infected and inflamed, he ran a high fever, and it developed into pneumonia. Newspapers immediately went wild with stories, claiming that at the moment of his death, all the lights in Cairo went out, and his dog in England died at the same time. Some said there was an inscription carved on the tomb door: "Death shall come on swift wings to him who disturbs the peace of the Pharaoh." Later, all scholars checked, and that line of text was not found on any tomb wall.

In the following decade or so, every time someone associated with the tomb died, newspapers would bring up the "Pharaoh's Curse" again.

In 2002, an Australian doctor named Mark Nelson compared the lifespans of twenty-five Westerners who had entered the burial chamber with those who had not, and found no difference whatsoever. Carter himself lived until 1939, dying sixteen years after uncovering the tomb, of lymphoma, at the age of sixty-four. Lord Carnarvon's health had always been poor; he had been in a car accident when he was young and had been frail ever since.

If there truly was some danger inside the tomb, some researchers speculate it was mold and dried dust—after thousands of years with no one entering, the air contained everything, and people who went in did cough, that was true.

Pharaoh's mummy still remains today in that small tomb in the Valley of the Kings, kept in a temperature-controlled glass case, and tourists can buy tickets to go in and see it.

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