A little history
After an automobile accident in Germany in 1901, the English Lord Carvanon suffered from chronic bad health. He could not tolerate the cold, humid English climate and therefore spent his winters in Egypt. There he financed the now famous archaeologist Howard Carter in his pursuit of undiscovered royal graves in the Valley of the Kings. After five years without success, Lord Carvanon began to loose faith in Carter’s pursuit but Carter was able to convince Carvanon to finance one more season.
Not long into that fateful season, Carter found a stone staircase leading to a shaft buried in the sand near the grave of Pharaoh Ramses VI. The shaft led to a sealed door.
Lord Carvanon was, against custom, in London at the time of the discovery and was called to Egypt so he could participate in the opening of the unknown grave. He arrived in November of 1922 and the grave was opened showing, as we no know, the mummy of Pharaoh Tutankhamon and his treasures.
Tutankhamon was no more than 18 years old when he died of unknown causes. It was earlier believed that Tutankhamon was murdered because of a wound found on the left side of his cranium, theoretically inflicted due to intrigue in his court. Recent scannings of his mummy have shown that this injury occurred after his death. The latest theory is that Tutankhamon died after breaking his thighbone by falling from a horse. The fall theoretically also caused a dislocated kneecap and led to serious blood loss. Researches believe that he died from that blood loss or from an infection which developed due to the fall.
Lord Carvanon died April 5th 1923 aged 57 after suffering from cough and fever for three weeks which, after a short period of convalescence, worsened, causing his lungs to give out. His death was before the advent of antibiotics (and many people at the time died due to such symptoms) but rumours soon surfaced that his death was the revenge of the Pharaoh for disturbing his slumber. On the other hand, Howard Carter lived on for 16 years even though he had disturbed the grave more than Carvanon.
The media has received the blame spreading rumours of the curse of the Pharaoh. Howard Carter gave “The Times” exclusive rights of reporting his find, and no other newspaper, not even Egyptian newspapers, had access to the dig. The papers therefore fabricated sensational stories about the dig in lue of the truth.
It was told that the cruse of the Pharaoh was found in two versions. The first supposedly was found by Carter on the floor of the grave’s antechamber in the form of hieroglyphics on a small clay tablet. The text was: “May death come on wings of haste to those who disturb the Pharaoh’s peace.” This text has been associated with an episode which occurred shortly after the opening of the grave where a mosquito stung Lord Carvanon which later causing an infection when he cut himself where he was stung while shaving. This occurred shortly before his death. The clay tablet was not registered among the other finds and its existence is now believed to be a fabrication to scare away possible grave robbers.
The second version of the curse was supposedly found in the burial chamber behind a statue with the text: “I am him who drives out grave robbers with the desert’s fire. I am the protector of Tutankhamon’s grave.” There are many more or less fantastic episodes associated with this text. For example, when Carter came home after discovering the grave he was told that a cobra had eaten his canary. The cobra is a symbol the Pharaohs royalty. Also, when Lord Carvanon died, all of the lights in Cairo went out (this may not be so extraordinary when one considers the quality of the Egyptian electrical net!). A more fantastic occurrence was when, after the death of Lord Carvanon, the Carvanon family dog, home in England, began to wander aimlessly and died suddenly. It is also said that Tutankhamon’s mummy had a scar in the same place that Lord Carvanon received the mosquito bite that later became infected.
Aspergillus niger
There are actually relatively few reports of people dying shortly after visiting Tutankhamon’s grave. When one considers how many people visited the grave, there is no statistical basis for claiming excessive mortality. The most plausible cause of the Pharaohs curse is a small fungus called Aspergillus niger. The burial chamber was actually full of colonies of this fungus, which has the appearance of peeling paint. The warmth the humidity produced by the breath of the many tourists to the grave gave the fungus a very good growth environment. The mummy was also analysed from all angles and was found to be full of fungus spores and bacteria.
Aspergillus belongs to a family of fungus, including several species, which can cause illness in people who have a lowered immune system. Some people are allergic to aspergillus spores, which can be inhaled. This kind of allergy is common in asthmatics.
People with damaged lung tissue after tuberculosis or other diseases can also be infected with aspergillus sopres. These spores can grow in the walls of the lung and pierce cells where the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide takes place causing the release of massive amounts of toxins into the body.
Aspergillus can also, in seldom cases, enter the body via an open wound.
If this is the curse of the pharaoh, then the chances of activating it are greatest if one visits the grave during a period when receiving immunosuppressant medication after transplantation, if one has a lowered immune system due to the HIV virus, is undergoing chemotherapy, is undergoing hormone therapy, suffers from general immune deficiency, or if one touches the fungus covered walls.
The ancient Egyptians seem to have cursed everything. Curses were primarily reserved to protect gods and pharaohs and were issued by the priests. The curses put open gravesites were apparently not very affective; almost all of the Egyptian royal graves were visited by grave robbers. An attempt was also made to rob Tutankhamon’s grave, but the robbers are believed to have been caught in the act.
The curse of the pharaoh
A feared form of curse in ancient Egypt was that of “identity destruction.” A person in the court, either living or dead, could through magical rituals risk having his identity erased. The ritual was followed by erasing all references of the cursed person, including the destruction of statues and any relevant monuments. If the person was a pharaoh, his name was erased from all of the official lists in the kingdom and all references to him were erased to the point where there was no evidence of his existence. The cursed could not be talked about or, if living, receive any help from others.
This was an effective kind of curse, and the people who were cursed in such a way during their lifetimes must have had a hard life. Even so, not all references of these “erased” people were destroyed and archaeologists have been able to reconstruct some of their lives.
Tutankhamon himself was a victim of such a curse. In his case, it lasted 3000 years until Carter lifted it and changed him from an almost unknown pharaoh to the most well known of all the pharaohs. Carter gave Tutankhamon the kind of immortality where one is remembered forever.
