figure which guarded the entrance to Tutankhamun's treasury room The belief in a curse was brought to many people's attention due to the deaths of a few members of
Howard Carter's team and other prominent visitors to the tomb shortly thereafter. Carter's team opened the tomb of
Tutankhamun (
KV62) in 1922, launching the modern era of
Egyptology. The famous Egyptologist
James Henry Breasted worked with Carter soon after the first opening of the tomb. He reported how Carter sent a messenger on an errand to his house. On approaching his home the messenger thought he heard a "faint, almost human cry". Upon reaching the entrance he saw the birdcage occupied by a
cobra, the symbol of the Egyptian monarchy. Carter's canary had died in its mouth and this fueled local rumors of a curse.
Arthur Weigall, a previous Inspector-General of Antiquities to the Egyptian Government, reported that this was interpreted as Carter's house being broken into by the Royal Cobra, the same as that worn on the King's head to strike enemies (see
Uraeus), on the very day the King's tomb was being broken into. An account of the incident was reported by
The New York Times on 22 December 1922. The first of the deaths was that of
Lord Carnarvon, who financed the excavation. He had been bitten by a
mosquito, and later slashed the bite accidentally while shaving. It became infected and that resulted in
blood poisoning. Two weeks before Carnarvon died,
Marie Corelli wrote an imaginative letter that was published in the
New York World magazine, in which she quoted an obscure book that confidently asserted that "dire punishment" would follow any intrusion into a sealed tomb. A media frenzy followed, with reports that a curse had been found in the King's tomb, though this was untrue. six weeks after the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb resulted in many curse stories in the press. Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of
Sherlock Holmes and
spiritualist, suggested that Lord Carnarvon's death had been caused by "
elementals" created by Tutankhamun's priests to guard the royal tomb, and this further fueled the media interest. Arthur Weigall reported that six weeks before Carnarvon's death, he had watched the Earl laughing and joking as he entered the King's tomb and said to a nearby reporter (
H. V. Morton), "I give him six weeks to live." The first autopsy carried out on the body of Tutankhamun by Dr. Derry found a healed lesion on the left cheek, but as Carnarvon had been buried six months previously it was not possible to determine if the location of the wound on the King corresponded with the fatal mosquito bite on Carnarvon. A study of documents and scholarly sources led
The Lancet to conclude it unlikely that Carnarvon's death had anything to do with Tutankhamun's tomb, refuting another theory that exposure to toxic fungi (mycotoxins) had contributed to his demise. The report points out that the Earl was only one of many to enter the tomb, on several occasions and that none of the others were affected. The cause of Carnarvon's death was reported as "'pneumonia supervening on [facial]
erysipelas,' (a streptococcal infection of the skin and underlying soft tissue). Pneumonia was thought to be only one of various complications, arising from the progressively invasive infection, that eventually resulted in multiorgan failure." The Earl had been "prone to frequent and severe lung infections" according to
The Lancet and there had been a "general belief ... that one acute attack of bronchitis could have killed him. In such a debilitated state, the Earl's immune system was easily overwhelmed by erysipelas." In 1925, the anthropologist
Henry Field, accompanied by Breasted, visited the tomb and recalled the kindness and friendliness of Carter. He also reported how a paperweight given to Carter's friend Sir
Bruce Ingram was composed of a mummified hand with its wrist adorned with a scarab bracelet marked with, "Cursed be he who moves my body. To him shall come fire, water, and pestilence." Soon after receiving the gift, Ingram's house burned down, followed by a flood when it was rebuilt. Howard Carter was entirely skeptical of such curses, dismissing them as
'tommy-rot' and commenting that "the sentiment of the Egyptologist ... is not one of fear, but of respect and awe ... entirely opposed to foolish superstitions". In May 1926 he reported in his diary a sighting of a
jackal of the same type as
Anubis, the guardian of the dead, for the first time in over thirty-five years of working in the desert, although he did not attribute this to supernatural causes. Skeptics have pointed out that many others who visited the tomb or helped to discover it lived long and healthy lives. A study showed that of the 58 people who were present when the tomb and
sarcophagus were opened, only eight died within a dozen years. All the others were still alive, including Howard Carter, who died of
lymphoma in 1939 at the age of 64. The last survivors included
Lady Evelyn Herbert,
Lord Carnarvon's daughter, who was among the first people to enter the tomb after its discovery in November 1922, who lived for a further 57 years and died in 1980, and American archaeologist
J.O. Kinnaman, who died in 1961, 39 years after the event.
Scientific speculations It has been suggested that the toxic spores of the fungus
Aspergillus flavus, besides possibly contributing to deaths following a
1973 tomb opening in Poland, may also have contributed to some of the allegedly Tutankhamun-related deaths, particularly the deaths of
Lord Carnarvon,
George Jay Gould, and
Arthur Mace,
Deaths popularly attributed to Tutankhamun's curse The tomb was opened on 29 November 1922. •
George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, financial backer of the excavation, who was present at the tomb's opening, died on 5 April 1923 after a mosquito bite became infected; he died 4 months and 7 days after the opening of the tomb. •
George Jay Gould I, a visitor to the tomb, died in the
French Riviera on 16 May 1923 after he developed a fever following his visit. • Sir Archibald Douglas-Reid, a
radiologist invited to x-ray Tutankhamun's mummy, died on 15 January 1924, aged 52, in Switzerland after abdominal surgery to help treat the metastatic spread of skin cancer he developed as a result of his career. •
A. C. Mace, a member of Carter's excavation team, died in April 1928, having suffered from
pleurisy and
pneumonia in his final years. •
The Hon. Mervyn Herbert, George Herbert's half brother, died on 26 May 1929, reportedly from malarial pneumonia. • Captain The Hon. Richard Bethell, Carter's secretary, died on 15 November 1929: died in bed in a
Mayfair club, the victim of a suspected smothering. •
Howard Carter opened the tomb on 16 February 1923 and died well over sixteen years later on 2 March 1939; however, some have still attributed his death to the curse. == Popular culture ==