The Curse of the Pharaohs' Tombs

by Harrison Paul

  Carnarvon had more than a passing interest in Egyptian archaeology for some time before the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb. First travelling to Egypt in 1898, he was involved in digs at Thebes in 1905 and later at Dra’ Abu El-Naga’, where he discovered an 18th Dynasty tomb belonging to a king’s son. Teta-Ky was later identified as ‘Mayor of the Southern City (Thebes)’. In fact, we also know that he had more than a passing idea about Egyptian curses. Egyptologist Arthur Weigall told of one such instance when mysterious unaccountable happenings occurred.

  One of the first discoveries made in the Valley of the Kings was the coffin of a mummified cat, which had been painted black and possessed gleaming, bright yellow eyes. The object was cleaned up and removed to the dig-house. Carnarvon instructed that it be put into his room, but by mistake it was placed in Arthur Weigall’s room instead. Returning to the house late at night, Weigall entered his room and bumped into and fell over the coffin, which had been left in the middle of his room. He hurt and bruised his shin. Not long after, the butler in the house was stung by a scorpion and, delirious and in serious pain, he screamed out that he was being pursued by a grey cat. There was nothing Weigall could do to help so he returned to his room and retired to bed. As he was falling asleep he opened his eyes and believed that the mummified cat had turned its head to face him, with a look of anger on its face. The bright yellow eyes were bold and piercing in the darkness of the room. In the distance, Weigall could still hear the insensible cries of the butler. About an hour after he fell asleep, Weigall was awakened by a loud bang – the sound of a gunshot – which he assumed was a member of the house staff shooting the scorpion. At the same moment, a grey cat leapt over his bed and out of the window. The wooden cat coffin lay in the middle of the floor, now split into two separate pieces, as if whatever was inside had forced it open and released itself from within. Weigall ran to the window and saw the house tabby cat on the garden path. Normally a docile creature, it was hissing and glaring into some nearby bushes, and its back was arched. Shocked by the incident, Weigall spoke to other members of the household staff and explained what had happened and what he saw. The wooden coffin was split in two and there was no sign of any mummified cat. Everyone in the dig-house was of the same opinion: the grey cat that was pursuing the butler and had somehow caused the scorpion to sting, was a malevolent spirit that had caused Weigall to hurt himself when he bumped into its coffin. Carnarvon was in residence at the dig-house when all this occurred, and would have been aware of the idea of the existence of a curse.

  By 1907, Carnarvon had been introduced to Howard Carter in Egypt and the pair immediately recognised that a collaboration between them would benefit both sides. They began to excavate new areas and in 1912 a book was published about their work at Thebes: Five Years’ Exploration At Thebes – A Record Of Work Done 1907-1911. After exhaustive digs across Thebes, often in search of the elusive tomb of King Tutankhamun, in June 1922 Carter suggested one last season of excavations before calling it a day. Carnarvon had all but spent his personal wealth subsidising countless archaeological digs, and this final effort, if it did not find King Tutankhamun’s tomb, could have left him in grave financial peril. But Carnarvon believed in Carter, and offered to fund the expedition. The rest, as they say, is history, as the two discovered the boy king’s tomb virtually intact.

  Two weeks before Carnarvon’s death, British novelist Mary Mackay/Corelli wrote a letter that was published in the New York World magazine, which seemingly quoted from an obscure book, asserting that, ‘dire punishment’ would follow intrusion into a sealed tomb.

  I cannot but think some risks are run by breaking into the last rest of a king in Egypt whose tomb is specially and solemnly guarded, and robbing him of his possessions. According to a rare book I possess ... ‘The Egyptian History of the Pyramids’ [an ancient Arabic text], the most dire punishment follows any rash intruder into a sealed tomb. The book … names secret poisons enclosed in boxes in such wise that those who touch them shall not know how they come to suffer. That is why I ask, was it a mosquito bite that has so seriously infected Lord Carnarvon?

  On Thursday 5 April 1923, at around 1.55am, Lord Carnarvon passed away in his room at the Continental Hotel in Cairo. His son, Lord Porchester, 6th Earl of Carnarvon, was present and later remarked to the press that at the precise moment of his father’s death all the lights across Cairo went out. Thousands of miles away at Highclere Castle, at exactly the same moment, Carnarvon’s three-legged pet dog Susie, howled and died. The curse of the pharaohs was thus brought to the attention of modern society.

  It was at this time, aroused by the press speculation about the circumstances attached to Carnarvon’s death, that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle revealed his own belief that the pharaoh’s curse was potentially the cause of these matters. He suggested that ‘elementals’ created by Tutankhamun’s priests to guard the royal tomb had caused Carnarvon’s death. Before long, it was reported that a specific curse had been inscribed in the tomb, a detail that Carter always denied to the outside world. The curse, it was claimed, was written in hieroglyphs adjacent to a winged creature on the door of the second shrine: ‘They who enter this sacred tomb shall swift be visited by wings of death.’ The exact phraseology has varied with the passage of time, dependent upon the imagination of the writer. In an attempt to ridicule and dismiss such reports, the authorities revealed that Lord Carnarvon’s death had not been suspicious or sinister. He had cut into a mosquito bite while shaving, which had become infected. Carnarvon was already weak through exhaustion from over-exertion in Egypt, and he contracted pneumonia and shortly after passed away. The official reports on the cause of death, however, did little or nothing to dispel the belief that the curse was responsible, since mosquitoes have wings and the curse reportedly included the phrase ‘wings of death.’

  Carter dismissed any suggestion of a curse and denied the existence of any curse in the tomb. However, local people who worked on the dig site claimed that two curses were inscribed at different points of access into the tomb and its inner confines. A local Egyptologist, Abdul Aziz, explained in 2008:

  The mystery remains why no one took any notice of local people involved in the excavations. Carter and Carnarvon did their utmost to shut down communication within the Valley of the Kings. They wanted no word or secrets revealed to the outside world and if you look at some of the statements ascribed to both Carnarvon and Carter, they were struggling to cope with the amount of worldwide interest ranging from visiting dignitaries to the press, all wanting to see something of note or to get a story. It remains unofficial but most dignitaries gained access to the tomb by negotiating an access fee, for this they could be given a tour by Howard Carter and receive an irrelevant artifact as a souvenir, not always from the tomb! Both Carnarvon and Carter worked hard to stop information leaking out to the press or elsewhere. A financial deal had been prearranged with The Times newspaper as sole reporting body for the excavation. It was the local Egyptians who worked on the site that knew the truth about what was happening in the Valley of the Kings. Within countless different families there exist stories of unaccountable things that occurred during the dig for King Tutankhamun’s tomb. It isn’t about mass hysteria, or tales that are created to earn them some attention, most of the families don’t and won’t repeat them because they live in fear that if they discuss the dead and the underworld then they will suffer too. This fear is something that is tangible, it’s clear when one speaks with them that they do not like or wish to be associated with it.

  It was common knowledge that both Carnarvon and Carter would deliberately spread propaganda among the workers, denying the existence of Egyptian magic and spiritual matters, such as the perils of the underworld. This propaganda served a dual purpose: it helped keep the workers’ minds on the tasks they were set, dispelling tales of the dead and of vendettas of long since dead pharaohs’ priests, and secondly, any loose tongues among the work force would have little or nothing of any mystical note to
convey to an inquiring press. Such detail comes from many different sources, not just one family. Likewise, Howard Carter’s dislike, some say it was fear, of the black desert dogs or jackals. He admitted seeing these creatures running wild in the deserts of Egypt after the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb; his servants claimed he was terrified by them and believed them to be evil and real life portrayals of Anubis. There are many tales of mysterious deaths and incidents surrounding many tombs in the Valley of the Kings, but it is King Tutankhamun that resonates most loudly with the public.

  When one looks at the some of the things that happened when Carnarvon passed away, it doesn’t add up. For instance, the lights going out across Cairo at exactly the same time he expired. I know it has been counterclaimed by some so called ‘authorities’ that this was a common occurrence, well, it wasn’t that common. It wasn’t reliable but it certainly wasn’t something that happened with any frequency, this is just another way for the authorities to dismiss suggestions that some unexplainable phenomenon may have occurred, which helped supplement the propaganda that Egypt was curse-free. Local Egyptians thought Carter, Carnarvon and others associated with the excavations to be foolish for ignoring the dangers and the warnings of the gods of the underworld. It is well known that a curse or curses were found inscribed on the tomb of King Tutankhamun. Five different and unconnected families speak of how their fore-fathers working there were instructed by Carter to break up and destroy, then bury, a stone plinth upon which a curse had been carved. Carter had already taken a hammer to the object, smashing it into several pieces so it was unreadable. He instructed the men to smash it into tiny particles and then go forth and bury it in the desert sand at individual points so that it could never again be found, or reassembled! When asked what the object was, he angrily exclaimed that it was nothing to do with a curse, but rather, something that was unhealthy and carried the threat of disease to everyone. The men asked him why he wanted this carried out during the hours of darkness? Carter told them that he felt there would be least disruption during that time and the fewer the number of people who knew about it, the better it would be for everyone. Each of the workers who carried out this task was paid by Carter and all were told not to discuss the matter with anyone else. Later, a group of workers overheard Carter discussing the plinth and the curse inscribed upon it with Carnarvon. The two men were in a tent and believed no one was listening. Carter had told Carnarvon that it (the curse and the plinth) must never be mentioned or discussed by them or anyone else again; he said it would strike fear into the workforce and the excavations might be stopped. Carter, especially, spent the rest of his life denying the existence of a curse. However, what many people do not realise is that shortly before his death on 2 March 1939, Carter was haunted by images in his mind, images of Anubis.

  (This in fact is a detail I have previously been told, that Carter didn’t die quietly of heart failure at his Collingham Gardens home in Kensington, London. Instead he was tormented and suffered night terrors, with visions of Anubis sitting on his chest, staring down at him). Nowhere will you find such detail recorded in any official document. Science and social pressures do not allow a man as influential as Howard Carter in his own discipline to suddenly proclaim a belief in something so institutionally unacceptable as a pharaoh’s curse. I say ‘institutionally unacceptable’, because it is not the masses who distinguish reality from fiction, it is the Establishment that does so. Any suggestion that Carter had altered his beliefs before his death would undermine the status quo and therefore damage the very infrastructure upon which society is based. Curses, therefore, simply cannot exist because the Establishment dismisses them as nonsense.

  It’s interesting to note that an inscription was found inside the tomb by Carter, on a statue of Anubis, which read: ‘It is I who hinder the sand from choking the secret chamber. I am for the protection of the deceased.’ Perhaps this stuck with Carter, causing him to consider Anubis such a danger to him as he neared death? If this was the end of the curse material associated with King Tutankhamun then it would be reasonable to assume that Lord Carnarvon’s demise was not suspicious, and nor were the deaths of workers in the Valley of the Kings. Sadly, the deaths and curious incidents don’t end there; after the death of Lord Carnarvon they increased in quantity and intrigue. From the long list of incidents and deaths that were suspicious in their very nature, here we will mention just a few.

  Sir Bruce Ingham was given a gift by Howard Carter, a paperweight which contained a tiny mummified hand. Around the wrist of this limb was a scarab bracelet. The following inscription had been added to the object: ‘Cursed be he who moves my body, I’m sure and severs my hand and uses it as a trinket.’Alternatively, according to some reports, it read: ‘Cursed be he who moves my body. To him shall come fire, water and pestilence’. Not long after accepting the gift, Ingham’s house burned to the ground and later, as it was being rebuilt, the land was flooded. It is said that Ingham believed the cursed paperweight was to blame for the ill fortune. The wording of the alternative curse appears to have been adapted to fit the scenario that befell Ingham, fire and flood.

  The story surrounding Prince Ali Kamel Fahmi Bey, a 23-year-old Egyptian who, it is claimed, had visited the tomb of King Tutankhamun and been handed a personal gift (artifact), has a more final end. Fahmi Bey was, in the early hours of 11 July 1923, shot dead by his wife, Marie-Marguerite, in the Savoy Hotel, London. Ali Kamel Fahmi Bey was not actually a prince, but did little to counter suggestions that he was. According to his murderous wife of six months, he was violent and had temper tantrums if he did not get his own way. Being Egyptian, and more since his visit to the Valley of the Kings, he had talked openly of the curse of the pharaohs and believed that the gift he had accepted had associated him with the desecration of the tomb, making him likely to suffer. His belief wasn’t too much of an exaggeration, since not only was he murdered, but his integrity also suffered and his reputation was all but destroyed in the subsequent trial of his killer, who walked free from court after being acquitted. Marie-Marguerite moved to Paris where, as a result of her acquittal, she became a minor celebrity, even appearing in minor roles in the occasional French film. One such performance saw her playing an Egyptian wife! Perhaps feeling somewhat invincible, she almost immediately made a claim against the estate of her late husband. Not only did she think she would get away with killing a man, but she also then wanted access to his fortune! Her attempt failed as Fahmi had made no will. Undeterred, and keen to get her hands on the wealth, the sinister side of Marie-Marguerite began to emerged. She came up with a ludicrous tale, pretendeding that she had been pregnant by Fahmi, and had subsequently borne a son (the child being entitled to his father’s fortune). The allegation was easily disproved. She was socially ostracised as a result, and eventually became something of a laughing stock in Parisian society. She never remarried and rarely discussed the case or her past again. She died on 2 January 1971 in Paris.

  George Jay Gould was a wealthy financier who subsidised some of the work at the tomb. When he visited Egypt and the tomb in May 1923 he fell ill, dying of pneumonia on the French Riviera on 16 May 1923, as a result of the illness contracted in Egypt. He was fifty-nine. Prior to his death, Gould, it was alleged, said he could see and hear the spirits of the pharaohs surrounding him, with the mighty jackalheaded god (Anubis) drawing the last breath out of him. Then we have Lord Carnarvon’s half-brother, Aubrey Herbert; this unfortunate man went blind. It was claimed that rotting teeth had somehow interfered with his vision. In an attempt to regain his sight, he had every single tooth pulled from his head, to no avail; he never regained his sight. However, he died of blood poisoning as a result of the surgery, on 26 September 1923, just five months after the death of his half-brother Lord Carnarvon! Hugh Gerard Evelyn-White, an eminent scholar, was so afraid of the curse that he killed himself before the terrors of Tutankhamun could harm him at his home at 33 Victoria Terrace, Leeds on 9 September 1924. Evelyn-White was a respected ar
chaeologist who had helped in the excavations of the tomb, and after witnessing the deaths within the Valley of the Kings, and later those of some of his fellows associated with the dig, he took his own life by hanging himself. He left a suicide note: ‘I have succumbed to a curse which forces me to disappear.’ Here was a man in good health, just fifty years of age and at the peak of his career. He had no known reason to commit suicide and among those who knew him he was regarded as content. Yet he was clearly haunted by demons, hence his tragic death and sinister-sounding suicide note.

  Georges Aaron Bénédite was a French Egyptologist and curator at the Louvre. Bénédite is noted for his discovery of the tomb of Akhethetep at Saqqara on 28 March 1903. In March 1926 he visited the tomb of King Tutankhamun and shortly afterwards died in Luxor. He had appeared to be well and in good spirits before he entered the tomb, but was struck down by sudden illness after leaving. One of America’s leading Egyptologists, scholar Professor Aaron Ember, a good friend of Carnarvon who had received artifacts from the tomb, died in 1926 when his house burned down. The following is the report of what happened to Ember, published by the American Oriental Society in 1926:

  Dr. Aaron Ember, Professor of Egyptology at Johns Hopkins University, lost his life in a terrible tragedy which occurred at his residence at Windsor Hill, Baltimore, Md., in the early morning of 31 May. He and Mrs. Ember had been entertaining friends until a late hour, and must have gone to sleep after retiring. Apparently less than an hour after the guests had departed, a chance passer-by noticed smoke pouring from the house, and attempted without success to arouse the family. Just what happened in that house after the inmates did awaken will never be known. Mrs. Ember, attempting to save her invalid six-year old son, was overcome and burned to death with her child before aid could reach her, and a similar fate overtook the maid. Professor Ember, fearfully burned, managed to reach the roof of the side porch, and was helped to the ground, where he was with difficulty restrained from rushing into the blazing house again in search of his wife and child. Fire engines which had been summoned arrived too late to save the lives of those left in the house. Professor Ember was hurried to hospital where he died of his burns the following day. In the brief intervals in which he was fully conscious he could give very little account of the tragedy except that the family awoke to find the house in flames, and that Mrs. Ember told him to rescue the manuscript of the book he was writing while she saved Robert.