One fateful day in 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the nearly intact tomb of boy pharaoh Tutankhamen in Egypt\u2019s Valley of the Kings\u2026or did he? Yeah, he did. With the help of his wealthy aristocratic buddy George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, Carter excavated the tomb and\u2026unleashed a mummy curse?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, nothing awesome happened, such as the awakening of an evil mummy with deadly, fantastical powers. But a mere one year later, Carter was pushing daisies. The cause of death: a mosquito bite, which became infected after he cut himself shaving, resulting in fatal blood poisoning\u2026or was it? Yeah, it was. Pretty mundane stuff. If you want to find something to blame it on, it was the lack of scientific knowledge about treating infected wounds. If you also consider he was suffering from poor health long before his visit to King Tut\u2019s tomb, there\u2019s nothing mysterious about the fact that he died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what about the other 44 Westerners (the \u201ccurse\u201d was said to not affect the locals) who were reported to have been in Egypt when the tomb was examined? A 2002 study by the British Medical Journal calculated the mean age of death of the folks who were around the tomb\u2026and you will be absolutely shocked at what they discovered! Or not. They found nothing unusual. Nobody was more likely to have died as a result of being exposed to any supposed curse. Noted supernatural debunker James Randi found that those who in theory should have been cursed went on to live another 23 years on average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Consider this: if anybody should have dropped dead real quick, you\u2019d think it would have been Carter, right? After all, not only was he the one who discovered and physically opened the sarcophagus, he actually removed the mummy. Tut should have been shaking with rage. Yet, Carter lived another 16 years, dying at the not-so-tender age of 64. Herbert\u2019s daughter, Lady Evelyn Beauchamp, who was also present at the opening of Tut\u2019s tomb, lived another 57 years after the event, dying at 78 of natural causes. Or was it a mummy curse that for some reason decided to let her live a rich, full life and then waited half a century to finally do her in? Boy, it\u2019s really difficult to tell, isn\u2019t it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n So here\u2019s our spicy hot take on the Curse of Tutankhamun: Yeah, nope. So what gives? How did the rumor of the curse spread? One of the culprits was journalistic sensationalism. The newspapers at the time weren\u2019t merely content with the discovery of King Tut. Reporting things at face value from a scientific point of view wasn\u2019t enough. There had<\/em> to be more to it. It needed to be perceived as daring and dangerous. Surely the ancient Egyptian pharaohs had responded by unleashing a terrible plague.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It didn\u2019t help that popular contemporaries such as Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle \u2014 who believed in the supernatural, witchcraft and a whole lot of other nonsense \u2014 responded in a\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/em>article that there were \u201cmany malevolent spirits\u201d and that one of them might very well have signed Herbert\u2019s death warrant. When one of the members of the excavation party got into a minor traffic accident in 1970, the tabloids teased the idea that it had something to do with the mummy curse because of course they did!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other influences were movies and fictional books written about the topic. In the aftermath of the discovery, writers were riding the King Tut wave by cranking out stories about cursed mummies and such. Movies such as The Mummy\u2019s Curse<\/em> captivated the audience\u2019s imagination. But even several decades before the discovery of Tut\u2019s tomb, writers were planting thoughts into the public\u2019s collective head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For instance, Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women<\/em> and its zany, non-existent sequel Little Women 2: Back and Smaller Than Ever<\/em> had published a short story in 1869 titled \u201cLost in a Pyramid; or, The Mummy\u2019s Curse.\u201d But, alas, arguing that a mummy curse exists based on the imagination of writers is like trying to claim vampires are an actual thing because of Twilight<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, it isn\u2019t to suggest artifacts found in the tomb weren\u2019t intriguing. For instance, one of the items recovered was a dagger made of meteorite iron. This can only mean one thing: it must be the work of aliens and\/or ancient astronauts. Stay tuned. Perchance some day we\u2019ll write an awe-inspiring article about that theory! <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u061f The Real Deal or Nah Author\u2019s note: For spooky, maximum effect, it is best to read this article with the lights off and holding a flashlight under your chin. One fateful day in 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the nearly intact tomb of boy pharaoh Tutankhamen in Egypt\u2019s Valley of the Kings\u2026or did …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-te-public"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/img-cdn.brainberries.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/00-Howard-Carter.jpg\")
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