Death’s wings will touch who ever touches the pharaoh

Now what is a good story with out some mayhem, chaos and a little curse thrown in lol. Or is it all coincidental?

Of course scientists dimiss the ideal of the so called curse. But it is said that this sinnister curse all started at the moment they opened up the tomb of the Boy King.

With the finding of the first step, and then a flight of steps, they come upon a wall. Carter sends a telegram to George Herbert, or Lord Carnarvon as most of us know him as, for him to come at once.

"AT LAST HAVE MADE WONDERFUL DISCOVERY IN VALLEY STOP A MAGNIFICAENT TOMB WITH SEALS INTACT STOP RECOVERED SAME FOR YOUR ARRIVAL CONGRATULATIONS"

It was November 4, 1922

Just before Carnarvon was to leave for Egpyt he holds a séance at his home. The clairvoyant warns him not to go to Egypt, that there are certain dangers in the tomb. But like any of us would have done, he ignored the warning and returned to Egypt.

Upon his arrival he wasted no time in getting down to business. It was November 26, 1922. He arrives in the Valley of the Kings and the wall is torn down. The passage is cleared and anxiety is building up, only to find another wall. But upon examining this wall, they see the Royal Cartouche of Tutankhamun. I can't imagine what was going through their minds at this moment. Is the tomb intact? Is this finally it?

Armed with a hammer and chisel, Carter strikes the wall with the first blow in the eeriness of silence and apprehension all around him. Is this the moment they woke the gods? Invoking them into spreading an evil curse that would eventually claim the lives of dozens of people?

As pieces of the wall falls to the floor, then a tiny aperture appears, uncanny and strange sounds come from deep with in the tomb. Carter ever so careful, inserts a candle into the hole to check for any decaying and foul gases. As he does the flame flickers wildly as the musty air is escaping from it's 3000 year old entombment.

"At first I could see nothing, the hot air from the chamber causing the flame to flicker...but as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room emerged slowly from the midst: strange animals, statues and gold- everywhere the glint of gold."

As they bring down the wall, they find themselves in the ante chamber. (first part of the tomb) It had just about everything a pharaoh could use in the afterlife. Early photo's show they indeed found the Mother Load of priceless Egyptian Antiquities. It is said that the tomb was previously entered, unusual as this may seem, the tomb raiders did not completely empty the contents of this tomb.

While all this was taking place though, the epitomy of evil was unleashing itself outside the tomb. It is said that at the moment Carter was breaking down the wall of the young Pharaoh, a snake entered into his home and killed his pet canary. Was this perhaps an omen of things to come?

Consider this, in ancient times the pharaoh's wore a headdress with a symbol of a snake just above the forehead. This was called uraeus, representing the "Eye of Ra". The snake was symbolic of defending and protecting the pharaoh against his foes by spiting into the eyes of his enemies. Was this the first victim of the so called curse?

As Carter continues to clear, catalog and document the priceless treasure, they still have not found the Boy King himself. They know at this point there has to be an adjacent room that holds his mummy.

Finally all is cleared out of the chamber. They now need to find Tutankhamun. They find a small opening under one of the magnificent couches and knock it down only to find a storage room. Then they move on to the two Sentinels or Guardians who seem to be guarding a wall.

Upon close examination they decide to break down this wall. And behind this wall they find the burial chamber and next to it, the treasury. As days turn into weeks, and weeks into months, Carter is finally face to face with Tutankhamun. Carter stands alone with the young Pharaoh. Carnarvon had previously joined the young Pharaoh in the afterlife.

Just ten days after the opening of the tomb, Carnarvon is bitten by a pesky mosquito on his cheek. As with many of us, no one thinks twice about being bitten. We swat the insect and go on about our business. But within a few days of the the incident, fate steps in and Carnarvon's health plumments to dire circumstances... The bite is infected. Carnarvon returns to Cairo. By the time he reaches his hotel, the infection is in his bloodstream and he dies. As peculiar and uncanny as this already is, while on his death bed, he would cry out that a bird was pecking and scratching his face and that it was hurting him. A curse from the first intermediate period reads; "The Goddess Nekhbet will destroy the face of those who disturb the eternal rest of the Pharaoh." We know today that Nekhbet in her vulture form is is a protector of the ancient kings.

However, this is not the only event that takes place on this night. As bizarre and evil as it may seem, it is said that at the moment of his death, all the power in Cairo went out. Simultaneously, at that moment of death, in his home in England, Carnarvon's pet terrier lets out a blood chilling, horrible, vile howl and dies.

As Carter is examining the mummy of the Boy King two years later, he notes that the mummy has a scar on his cheek. The same exact spot where the late Lord of Carnarvon was bitten.

The news media has always been a way of influencing the way people think. And they did not miss the opportunity on the findings of the tomb of Tutankhuman. But I think the death of Carnarvon was a mass media frenzy, overshadowing the importance of the young Pharaoh. It stirred a propaganda of evil and tales of an ancient curse. Rumors of this curse spread from one continent to another.

One headline was;

"Curse of the Pharoah"

Some newspapers reported that Carter and his team uncovered an ancient tablet that was inscribed with this deadly curse. The tablet was never found.

Hypothetically this tablet read;

"Death will slay with it's wings whoever disturbs the peace of the Pharaoh"

"They who enter this sacred tomb shall swift be visited by wings of death"

"Death shall come of swift wings to him that toucheth the tomb of the Pharaoh"

And from another source, "supposedly found in Tut's tomb was a small clay tablet upon which there was placed an oil lamp. The tablet supposedly says;

"It is I who hinders that sand from choking the secret chamber. And who repels him who repels the bearer of the desert flame. I have caused the path to be mistaken. I am for the protection of Osiris."

It may not be a curse but it is a protective spell. Another one found on a tomb at Memphis is;

"Doer Doer, Passerby, Passerby, Do not look this way. Beware the great Door."

Caranarvon was not the only one to succumb to the so called curse. More than a dozen people who were directly or indirectly involved met thier untimely demise.

As with everything, there a hundreds of accounts.

Carter's former teacher, Edouard Neville dies in 1926.

Another former teacher and friend of Carter, Professeur Lafleur, dies two weeks after his arrival in Egypt of an unknown sickness. As well as Arthur Weigal.

Richard Adamson, last of the original team. This is really wierd. One day as he was chatting about the curse and writting it off as drivel, his wife dies less than 24 hours later and his son is in an airplane crash with a broken back. It is said that in or around 1969, he had an interview on British television where he dismissed and notion of a curse and called it "superstitous nonsense". Later that same evening leaving the studio, he apparently gets into a serious car accident, nearly being decapitated, ...he is later quoted as saying; "Until now I refused to believe that my family's misfortunes had anything to do with the curse. But now I am not so sure".

Lord Carnarvon's wife Almina also died from an insect bite in 1929. As well as the nurse taking care of her.

Lord Carvarvon's younger brother Colonal Aubrey Herbert inexplicably dies, and as the Lady Almina, his nurse dies too.

Arthur Mace,from the Metropolitan Museum of New York, one of the expedition leaders working on the treasury and one of the few people present during the official opening of the tomb. Apparently he takes a boat back to the U.S. and falls sick with pneumonia falls into a coma and dies before ever reaching his destination.

George J. Gould, an american business man, died within 24 hours after the opening of the tomb of a high fever.

A rdiologist, who lead the autopsy, collasped of exhaustion and died of an unknown cause.

Sarah Ben Ham who analyzed the mummy, died sometime later.

The French Egyptologist Georges Benedite fell at the entrance of the tomb and died immediately, his death was followed by that of Mario Passanova, the Italian archaeologist who also died suddenly. Joel Woolf, a British industrialist was another visitor of the tomb died of an unexplained fever.

Richard Bethal, Lord Carnarvon's secretary, died of an unknown cause. I remember reading somewhere that when they were driving the hearse, they accidently hit a young boy who died at the scene.

Then Bethal's father, Lord Westbury, wrote a suicide note blamming the curse and jumped to his death from the top of his London home.

Oxford Archeaologist Hugh Evelyn-White, One of the first to enter the tomb also commited suicide in 1924 leaving a note saying "I have succumbed to a curse which forces me to disappear."

English scientist, Archibald Douglas Reed died. He was in charge of taking X-rays of the mummy when the next day he took ill, after 3 days later he died.

Papyrus Expert, Bernard Greenfield died in 1926.

American Egyptologist, Aaron Embers. Died in 1926 in a fire trying to save manuscripts he had been working on for over ten years. The manuscripts were from the Book of the Dead.

John Maxwell (I'm still doing research on this gentleman)

Cairo archaeologist, Achmed Kamal

American Egyptologist, William Henry Goodyear

A government employee investigating the tomb falls ill after a few days from entering the tomb. He returns to Cairo only to die a few hours later.

As news would spread far and wide, people were in a frenzy. Some so fearful of the curse that they returned everything they had taken from Egypt. It is said one even returned the arm of a mummy.

Muslim New Year in 1939, the Museum of Cairo consented to lend the war trumpets to a radio station, which had been in their care for sixteen years. The car, which transported them from the Museum to the Radio station, was involved in an accident and the driver was killed. The trumpets were undamaged. A few minutes later the musician who was about to play one of them fell dead, in front of the microphone.

In or around 1967, Mohammed Mehri or Ibrahim, who at the time was the Director of the Department of Egyptian Antiquities of the Cairo Museum suddenly died of cerebral hemorrhage. The strange thing about this case was he just finished signing an agreement with the French to let the treasures of Tut to travel to Paris. Five years later the same fate awaits the next director in 1972, Gamal Mehrez. He too signed an agreement to let the treasure travel to London. He also died of cerebral hemorrhage as they were moving the Golden Mask. Four weeks earlier he was interviewed and disputed the curse. "All my life, I have had to deal with pharonic tombs and mummies. I am surely the best proof that it is all coincidence."

The treasure did leave and with again, dire circumstances follow. I have read that even the flight crew did not escape the curse.

The flight's crew members all felt heavily the curse in the years to follow.

Flight Lieutenant Rick Laurie suffered a heart-attack in 1976 and died, after having complained of "horrible visions and nightmares". The flight engineer, Ken Parkinson lived through a number of heart -attacks. They happened every year during precisely the same time as the flight had commenced, until his final… and fatal one, in 1978. Flight Lieutenant Jim Webb lost everything he owned during a fire. Death and misfortune haunted all the crew-members. One person, after two heart-attacks "confessed" in tears that he had partaken in a poker game on the sarcophagus… "

So you tell me, is this coincidental or was there an evil entity at work on behalf of the curse? How is this all explained? Carter lived on for another seventeen years, was he the only one to escape the curse of the young Pharaoh?

Glitter text title from

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Snake from

Hieroglyphic Background from

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Snake Divider, Crystal Ball and Ankhs freely available online