In 1923, a man helped break into the tomb of a king who had been dead for more than 3000 years, and just eight weeks later, he was dead too. And allegedly, the lights of Cairo flickered out at that exact moment, and his own dog howled and dropped dead on the other side of the world at the same exact time. And as more names were added to the list, the whole world started whispering the same question. Had the Pharaoh woken up? Is the curse of the mummy actually true? Well, today we're going to dig into the real story. Ancient Thebes, who under torture confessed to stripping a king's corpse and setting his coffin on fire. Priests, who spent seven days preparing a body for a journey that we still don't fully understand, and weirdly enough, Europeans who ground up mummies and swallowed them as medicine. Luxury dinner parties, where the entertainment was unwrapping a human corpse, and a modern researcher who claims that the curse of the mummy might still be lurking inside the tomb itself. I actually don't think the curse of the mummy is a hoax. I actually think that the truth is just not what we're led to believe. So sit back, relax, and welcome to History Camp. What's up, dude? And welcome back to History Camp. My name is Mark Gagnon, and thank you for joining me in my tent where every single Wednesday we explore the most interesting, fascinating, and controversial stories from all history from all time forever. Yes, that is what I do here in this very tent, is I try to understand everything that's ever happened. I go through the eons of written history, and I just zone in on a moment, and I go, "Hey, you know what? I actually have been wanting to learn what the whole hull of blue about this guy is." And today we're going to one of my favorite places in the entire ancient world, and that's Egypt. Now, before we jump in, I want to say a few things. Thanks to you, pal. I want to say thanks to you for tuning in, because every time you click comment, like, or interact with our content, you tell the overlords that control the inner webs, "Hey, Mark's a good guy." And they're doing a good job over there at the campsite, so you know what? Let's show this to more people. Let's help the show grow, and that is why my dreams are coming true. That is why I even have a show, and I'm able to do this every single week. So, thank you so much. You are the reason the lights are on the tent and the fire is burning here at the campsite. Now, I also want to thank my good pal. Christos Barlogo, boss. How are you, my friend? What's up, everybody? Christos, have you seen the mummy? Yes. With Brendan Frazier. Brendan Frazier, of course. Brendan Frazier? Yes. Okay. Brendan the show. Brendan Frazier. Okay. He's a great actor. I haven't seen the movie, but I have ridden the ride, so I feel like he had the gist of it. Yeah. Now, did you know that the movie is based off of a real kind of curse? Yes. The curse of the mummy. But this is not just a Hollywood fiction. There's an actual history and a story behind this type of curse. I'm looking forward to hearing it. It goes deep. It is crazy. Now, if you're not familiar, the curse of the mummy is a story that's been told over and over again. Okay. You probably are most familiar with the Hollywood blockbuster, but it's been featured in newspapers and novels and it's normally told this way. Okay. This is the version you probably, you're probably familiar with. There's an archaeologist. Okay. And it's late at night. He's got a flashlight or maybe just a torch. And he breaks into a ancient Pharaoh's tomb at a pyramid somewhere and then the dead king wakes up angry. Either literally or sort of spiritually. And one by one, everyone who dared to step inside the king's chamber starts dropping dead. Well, the real history here is actually way cooler and actually spook here than the legend. And that's what we're going to kind of go through today. We're going to go through what ancient Egyptians actually believed happened after they died and why they went to such extraordinary lengths to protect their dead specifically the high class dead, like the pharaohs. And go through what actually happened to the criminals who robbed them and how one discovery in 1922 followed by one mysterious death made the entire world wonder if a 3000 year old king was like taking revenge. And even though this story starts all the way back around ancient Egypt, our story will begin with a man named Howard Carter. Now Howard Carter is one of the most famous archaeologists of all time. He's a British archaeologist and by 1922, he had been working in Egypt for like 30 years. And it started when he was like a teenager. He was like sketching tomb paintings and then worked his way up to being an excavator. He was brilliant and meticulous. And by most accounts, sort of difficult to work with. He was not really like a like a people person. He was not interested in like making a bunch of friends. He was obsessed with one idea. And the idea was pretty simple. That's somewhere in the valley of the kings. Like the most famous sort of landmass in Egypt where all the great pharaohs and kings are buried. That there is a royal tomb that no one has found yet. Specifically the tomb of this kind of obscure boy king named Tutten common. Now most experts said that he was wrong. They were like he was crazy, right? Like if Rogan's podcast existed at the time, you could imagine that you know a young Howard Carter would go on there and be like guys I'm telling you. King Tut's tomb is out there. And I'm going to find it. And all the comments would be like this guy as a hack. This guy is a grifter. There's no way that you know the valley had been picked over for over a century. It's the deserts graveyard of Egypt's new kingdom pharaohs across the Nile from modern day Luxor. And the land is what basically everyone called exhausted. They were like look we've been excavating this place for like a hundred years. There's no way anything is there. But Howard Carter had a financial backer. His name was George Herbert. And he was the fifth Earl of Carnarvan. And he's basically a English aristocrat. He's a lover of horse racing and cars and his health was actually never the same after a bad car crash back in 1901. He was going a I mean a head whipping 19 miles an hour probably. I'm assuming cars in 1901 didn't go that fast. Horsepower. Am I off on that? How many horsepower do they have in 1901? 37. You think so? Top speed. Is this a factor? This is a creastos fact. That's a creastos fact. Okay. So basically doctors sent him to Egypt for the warm dry air and we're hoping that that would like help him recover from this car accident. And this guy George Herbert basically got an archeology bug. And so for years Carnarvan, Lord Carnarvan, George Herbert, same guy basically funded Howard Carter. And for years Carter was just out there digging and finding nothing. Just a lot like rocks maybe like a piece of pottery here and there. So by the summer of 1922, Lord Carnarvan was ready to kind of pull the plug in this whole thing, right? He's like, dude, I'm pumping a ton of money into this guy playing in a sandbox in Egypt when I could be spending money on horses and women. And this whole thing is going absolutely nowhere. And on top of that, there's a, you know, World War one had just ended. So like, the economy is like falling apart in England. But Carter was able to talk him into one more season of digging. He was like, look, just give me one last window where I can just kind of putts around and find something. Now, there's a famous story about that season. And to be clear, it is a legend. But if you know anything about me, folklore is my favorite thing ever. I don't care if we can substantiate this or not. I'm going to tell you the story. Basically, Carter came back to Egypt that fall and he supposedly brought a yellow canary with him. And his foreman reportedly called it a golden bird, which means it's like a good omen. So the worker said that the bird would lead them to a tomb full of gold, hence like the golden color of this bird. And then on November 4th, 1922, just days into the season, there was like a young boy that was on the crew that was helping out. And he scrapes away some debris and he hits something hard. It's a step cut into the bedrock. So they're all like, what is this? They start digging. And then one step becomes two and then five and then 10 and 12 and 16. They discover an entire staircase leading down into the hillside. And at the bottom, there's a plaster doorway and it is stamped with seals and Carter standing there. He can't believe it. And then he does something a little unusual. He has the whole thing buried again and then fills the staircase back in. And then he sends a telegram back to England. And he says, at last, we have made a wonderful discovery in the valley, a magnificent tomb with seals intact, recovered same for your arrival. Congratulations. He was going to wait for the guy paying the bills. Yeah, that's how smart Howard Carter was. He was like, look, we could just break into this thing right now and like discover maybe the most fascinating achievement in Egyptology in the last 50, 100 years. But he was like, I'm going to wait for the guy that's actually funding this whole thing because you know, that's kind of the whole reason he's funding this so that he can have a thrill of uncovering an Egyptian tomb. So while he waits, the story goes that a messenger comes running from Carter's house with terrible news, a cobra had gotten inside and slid into the bird cage and swallowed his prized golden bird. Now you can kind of see the metaphor here, but I'll break it down. The cobra was slash is the symbol of Egyptian kingship. Faros would wear like rearing cobras on their foreheads coming out of like their third eye. You've probably seen images of this goddess meant to spit fire at the king's enemies. Like, it was very important symbolic to the ancient Egyptians. So the workers, the story says, they took this very seriously and they interpreted it as the king sending a message from beyond the grave. And we're going to come back to whether that happened. The truth is that's kind of complicated, but I'll explain later. Anyway, as the story goes, Lord Kinarven arrives on November 23rd with his daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert. So they pull up to where they were digging and they redig the staircase and then they dig up a corridor that's just like packed with rubble and then they hit a second sealed doorway. You should pull up an image of the doorway. It's like one of the most famous images in Egyptology. It's absolutely amazing. So then on November 26th, 1922, Carter ships a small hole into the right corner of the door and all of this hot air rushes out and he pushes a little candle through and
He leans in and takes a look. And at first you can't really see anything, right? Like the flame is kind of flickering and there's dust and his eyes are trying to adjust, but just behind him, Lord Conorven, he just can't take it anymore. He leans over and he's like, can you see anything? And Carter gives one of the most famous answers in the history of archeology. He's looking into this little gap, into this tomb that's been untouched for 3,000 years and says, yes, I see wonderful things. Gold everywhere. Gilded couches carved like animals, dismantled chariots and boxes and vases and statues, two life-sized black and gold guardian statues standing on either side of yet another sealed door, like their bodyguards guarding this ancient site. They had finally found it. The only royal tomb in the valley ever discovered with its burial still in place, it is the achievement of Egyptology, maybe of all time. But here's what's easy to miss with all that gold. None of this stuff was treasure, at least not to the people who put it there, like every chair and box and figuring, it had a job. This was not like decorative. All of these pieces had a purpose to the ancient Egyptians. The room wasn't a vault or like a cache of gold. It wasn't a bank. It was a machine of spiritual technology built and designed to keep one teenage king alive forever. So let's leave Carter and Lord Cunarvin there for a moment, okay, candle kind of trembling in the dark with gold kind of shining back at him from every corner of the room. We're gonna actually travel back 3000 years before that to a quiet workshop on the banks of the Nile, where there's a group of priests and they're bent over the body of this dead teenage king. And for the next 70 days, they have a job. And everything, his body, his soul, his eternity, it depends on them getting every single move in this sequence. Right. Hey guys, we're gonna take a break really quick 'cause I wanna give a quick shout out to one of our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Maud. Maud prescribes a once or twice daily Maudafinil drink that can keep you energized, focused, and alert throughout the entire day. And here's how it works. Energy drinks with caffeine temporarily block adenosine. This is the chemical that makes you feel tired and it builds up and when the caffeine wears off, you get that crash. But Maudafinil works differently. It engages multiple pathways in your brain, including dopamine, noripinephrine, histamine, andorexin to achieve steady energy and alertness for 10 to 12 hours. Maudafinil was invented in the 1970s and since then, it's been used by some of the highest performers on and off the planet. Yeah, soldiers, pilots, and even astronauts aboard the International Space Station have used Maudafinil in high-stakes situations where concentration and alertness literally could cost you your life. And now it's available through mod.com to qualifying patients. Visit mod.com, that is mod.com for a free consultation and get 10% off your first order, plus free shipping with the promo code Gagnon. That is the promo code,
[email protected]. See their website for important safety information and we thank Maud for sponsoring the pod. Now let's get back to it. So, King Tut, the guy that we're talking about, was a real kid. He took the throne at around nine years old and in a moment of complete chaos because his predecessor very likely his father, the Pharaoh Aknotin, had basically tried to abolish Egypt's traditional gods and replace them with one god, the sun disc, which honestly is a whole nother episode. It is a fascinating episode where he fused himself as the Pharaoh with the priestic class trying to represent kingship and godship. A crazy move that happens all the time in history where the ruling class and the priestly class kind of merge into one to create total power, which also creates a ton of chaos. Regardless, but when Tut was in charge, he kind of rolled it all back. The old god's returned and then around 1323 BC. This is ancient ancient history. At roughly 18 or 19 years old, he just died suddenly. And to this day, we don't exactly know how or why. And the moment he died, a clock started ticking because in the ancient Egyptian spiritual belief, death was not the end. It was seen as a transition, a very kind of tenuous and dangerous transition. And if the living didn't do everything right in the exact right order, the dead could just be lost in the spirit world, which you don't want to lose a king. It's specifically a young king who kind of died this untimely death. And so that brings us to the real purpose behind mummies. At its simplest, a mummy is a preserved body. But for Egyptians, preserving the body wasn't about trying to keep grandpa looking nice. It was actually about survival. They believed that the dead needed a body. They needed the physical vessel of the soul, an anchor for the self, because Egyptians didn't think of a person as like a body and a soul. They thought that human beings were like a bundle of parts. So first, you have your Ka, which is your life force. And it needs to be fed with food and drinks like a bunch of other offerings that are left at the tomb. And then you have your Ba. This is your personality, often drawn as a bird with a human head. And it could fly out of the tomb during the day. But it had to come back to a physical body at nighttime. And if everything went right, the Ba and the Ka reunited. And you became an Ak. This is a transfigured, glorified spirit. And then there's your name. Your name wasn't just a label. It was a part of you, of your mind, body, soul, of this entire sort of spiritual framework. And as long as your name was spoken and remembered, you existed. It's a little bit like Coco, in a way. You know how Coco, like, you die in the spirit world if people forget you for the final time. So as long as your name was being uttered, then you continued to exist. So if you wanted to erase someone's name, like, chisel it off a wall, you weren't just insulting them. You were literally killing them again, put them in the dirt, and then scrub off the dirt. You know what I'm saying? You're basically, you're not coming out of the spirit world. I don't know exactly how it all works. I don't know if the spirit God's like, hey, terrible news. You've actually been knocked off the wall, and it's been 90 days. The terms of our agreement are your soul's gone. Regardless, that is why mummies and shrines and all that stuff is so sacred and so prevalent in ancient Egypt. It's not just like, over honoring the king, right? You can think that there's been a lot of kings in history, but there's specifically one culture that was like, super big on mummies. Like, it's literally caring for their continued existence in the other realm. No, let me be clear. There's other cultures that do mummies in a way. But obviously the most famous is the Egyptian boys. Now, here's what the process of making a mummy looks like. And again, this is not just preserving someone. This is preserving the vessel that holds the spirit. So for roughly 70 days, embolmers washed the body and removed all of the organs that would rot fast. So think like liver, stomach, intestines, lungs, things with like bacteria and stuff. You got to get rid of those. The brain was usually pulled out through the nose and tossed out because they kind of thought the brain was like useless. The brain is kind of irrelevant. The heart though, the heart's important. Your brain can stop, but your heart can't stop. They didn't really understand how biology works, but that's what their interpretation was. I'm pretty sure they like poured in like a, they kind of mulsifier or something into your brain that like caused your brain to like turn to like goo. And then they like pulled out your nose with a hook. It's kind of brutal. We're gonna get demonetized for that. It's Egyptian history, okay? Don't censor me. Anyway, Egyptians were big on the heart, okay? They believe that the heart is where everything happened. That's not only where you move blood around, but it's also how you think and how you feel and how you remember. And you would need it later in the afterlife and we'll get to that in just a second. But then the body was packed and covered in this substance called natron. This is a natural salt that basically took out all the moisture and they would leave you there for weeks. And then after a few weeks, they would apply oils and resins and layer after layer of linen with these protective amulets tucked into all the wrappings like a, like a spiritual armor. And the organs that were removed weren't, they weren't just tossed away. I was maybe being flippant earlier. They got their own tiny containers. These are called canopic jars. And basically in King Tut's case, instead of jars, his organs were placed in four miniature golden coffins inside an alabaster chest inside a gilded shrine guarded by four goddesses with their arms spread out. It's a whole thing. And that is the whole vibe of the burial situation, by the way. Protection inside protection inside protection, right? It's like, okay, we got the organs preserved inside a protective jar inside a protective tomb with protectors around it. It was all about protecting from the outside world. Well, what are they protecting it from? You're probably obviously thinking like looters and, you know, raiders and stuff like that. But it wasn't just that because Egyptians believed that after you died, you had to travel through a dangerous underworld full of monsters and gates and rivers and gatekeepers who would only let you pass if you knew their names. So people were buried with spells collected on papyrus scrolls in what we now know as the book of the dead. It was basically like an instruction manual for how to get through the labyrinth of the afterlife. And it was there to basically help you on your journey. And then at the end of the journey came a final exam. You would basically stand in the hall of judgment before Osiris, the god who had himself been murdered and brought back to rule the dead. And your heart would be placed on a scale and weighed against a single feather. This is a feather of Mahat, which literally means like truth and justice and like the right order of the universe. And if your heart was at balance, right? Like if your heart was as light as a feather or lighter, then you would be sent to paradise. Like this is the eternal version of like Egypt. It would just be like beautiful rivers and fields of reads forever and life was amazing.
It was like the Egypt on its best day that was like the rest of your eternity. But if your heart was heavy with wrongdoing and malfeasance and evil and it was heavier than a feather, then it got tossed to omit. This is the devour. This is a monster that's like part crocodile, part lion, part hippo. The most ferocious thing you could ever imagine if you were like an ancient Egyptian living on like a Nile River. And basically this timera of evil animal thing would devour your heart. It literally would suffer your heart and you would suffer what Egyptians call a second death. Not hell, you were just gone. It was just annihilationism. Your existence just ceased. And that was the ultimate Egyptian nightmare, not dying, not the torture. It was being unmade. It was being completely forgotten. So you can see the the premium on legacy and permits. And that was the ultimate thing. Hey guys, we're going to take a break really quick because we have a new sponsor that I am legit so stoked about. 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And it's got all these amazing illustrations. You can do wires and transformers. How do you set up a transformer? It's awesome. Like the illustrations are beautiful. The information's really easy to read. It's just like a fun coffee table book. Low key. If you have like a son who's like 15, this is like the dream book. I had a book like this when I was a kid and I was like a teenager and I was like I read the whole thing like five times. It's awesome. What I love about it is how it actually makes you appreciate how much knowledge we've accumulated as a species like as humanity. And apparently, I'm not the only one who finds a fast name. The project raised over $2.3 million through crowdfunding. It's just a beautiful collectors piece and it's a perfect gift for someone who's obsessed with history or science or understanding the world and how it works. You can check out the book using the link in the description and use the code Gagnon 10 for 10% off. This is an amazing Christmas gift. I highly recommend it. If you have someone that you know that listens to this show, if you're a if you have a boyfriend or a wife that likes the show, they're probably going to love this book. So check it out in the description. Use the code Gagnon 10 for 10% off. So think back to King Tut's Tim, right? The food that they found was there to feed his car. All the little figurines called the shop teas. They were over like 400 of them in this one particular tomb. They were servants who would like magically do the chores of the king and the afterlife. Now there's boats you probably see in a bunch of these types of model boats. You can actually see them at the the Met here in New York City. They were for traveling with the Sun God and then all the chariots and the beds and the sandals and the gold mass that would basically be there. It would help him it would help his spirit to recognize his own face and know where to rest back into his physical vessel. Everything there was kept in perfect condition in order for him to be whole and fed and named and protected in the afterlife for eternity. You can see how elaborate the system was, right? You have a king that dies and they have 70 days to put all of this protection and structure and painting and planning and all of this stuff. Now what could possibly make it go wrong? Well, you know, it's not the time. You have 70 days in the priest that's their whole job for that 70 days. Like, hey, we have to get the former king in order. The desert was actually pretty good at preserving stuff and the gods didn't really intervene. The biggest threat to a Pharaoh's eternity and to its legacy was literally other humans. So think about it. Egyptians built tombs like fortresses for the soul. They would bury their richest people with gold and oil and linens and all the stuff I just explained and the workers who dug those tombs knew exactly where they were and exactly what was on the inside. And like most laborers doing grave dig and work, they weren't the best paying jobs, you know, sometimes they weren't paid at all. And from almost the moment that those fortresses were sealed, people were like, wait, there's a bunch of golden hair. Think about it. You're like an ancient grave digger. Your job is to dig holes in the ground so that Pharaohs can be in there and you're you're the one sealing up this giant, like, tomb full of gold and you're getting paid like a couple cups of rice. You're like, hey, dude, we're the only ones that know where the tomb is. We know where the booby traps are and we know that it's full of gold. What are we doing? So immediately, people start bragging into them. So around, like, 1,110 BC during the reign of Ramses, the ninth Egypt was going through an economic crisis and tomb tomb robbery in Western Thebes got so bad that the government literally launched like an official investigation. Like, I know this sounds crazy. Like ancient history. You're like, dude, they had governments that were doing investigation. The ancient Egyptians, like many ancient societies that had large like metro areas and like big agrarian systems to grow food, they had pretty sophisticated governments. So in this case, even in this time, they were sending inspectors with job titles, tomb by tomb to check on the buried royals and some of the records from those trials actually survived in documents now known as the tomb robbery papyri. One of them, the Leopold Amherst papyrus, which sounds like not a real thing, but it's based off the people that were kind of discovering it. It records the confessions of eight men led by a stone basin from the temple of Amun named Aman Panepher, who said that he had fallen into the habit of robbing tombs with a buddy and you know, six more accomplices. They basically would break into the pyramid tomb of an old king named Sobek Msov, which was a burial that was already like 500 years old at the time. And he describes the entire robbery in detail. Again, this is an ancient robbery. He said that they tunneled through the rock. And then they found the king's mummy lying there with ambulance and gold all over his body and a gold mask over his face. And they basically were like, look, we jacked it. We copped the whole thing. We got sticky fingers. Hey, thanks very, very much. How you doing? And then they found the queen. They stripped her to and they went to a trial. And they basically said that the gold that they had taken totaled about 32 pounds. And then according to their confession at the time, they set the coffins on fire. Now to be clear, it seems like a pretty open and shut case. You're like, I mean, we have an ancient court document of an ancient confession of an ancient criminal robbing an ancient tomb like what else do we need? The confession should be taken with a little grain of salt because the papyrus also mentions how it was obtained. The men were examined with beatings. So this was a confession probably extracted under torture, which as we know, confessions under torture are not really the most accurate. We should question the the very similar to of these types of confessions. But the broader picture is backed up by the physical evidence. So when modern researchers examined Royal Mummies, they found certain wrappings like ripped open or limbs kind of like snapped off or like chest kind of like ripped into and caved in all likely by thieves digging for the amulets and the treasures that were hidden inside. So when we talk about the terror of disturbing the dead for ancient Egyptians, it wasn't just a like a spooky campfire story. It was happening all the time and was like a legitimate governmental problem. It was brutal and financial and it was seen as one of the worst crimes you could possibly do even in their day. And this is where the actual curses come from. Some Egyptians did write curses and threats on their tombs. Specifically in one old kingdom tomb, there's an official name Kentinka and basically it warns that anyone who enters his tomb in an impure state, meaning like ritually unclean or even just with bad intent will be seized by the by the neck like a bird and then judged by the great god. So even in that time, they were like, hey, don't jack my shit. Other tombs warned intruders that the gods would punish them and that they would have no heirs that their own burial would be denied that they would face judgment in the afterlife for that they would never exist. So yes, the curses in the sort of historical sense, they were real. But notice what they're actually like. They're not necessarily booby traps or anything like that. I mean, granted there were some booby traps, but they're more like a moral and religious warning from a culture that saw robbing a tomb as attacking someone's literal existence in the afterlife, which brings us back to our boy King Tut because here's the secret of his perfectly preserved tomb. Okay. When they got there, they actually noticed that it had already been robbed at least twice, maybe more times. It was probably just within a few years of the burial. Again, this is an ancient robbery like this guy's like Howard Carter is discovering the tomb in like the 1920s. Okay. It was probably robbed a couple years after he was buried, basically 3000 years ago. So thieves broke in and they grabbed everything that they could carry like oils and perfumes and linens and small metal objects. Again, it was pretty close to after the burial. So everything was still there and officials discovered the break ins and then cleaned it up and then filled the entrance corridor with limestone rubble to block it and then reseal the doors and then robbers, maybe the same robbers came back again and tunneled through the rubble. So archaeologists can actually see
the tunnel. It's like the discovery is so fascinating because you're discovering an ancient tomb and an ancient crime scene and an ancient crime scene cover up slash fix. Plus another ancient crime scene, all in one discovery. So officials caught it again. They patched it up and then re-sealed the tomb once more. Fun fact here. Archaeologists actually found three sets of seals on the doorway, which means that the tomb was closed three separate times, which indicates that it was broken into at least twice. Again, maybe more. So when Carter walked into the anti-chamber, part of why it looks so chaotic with furniture kind of jumbled and boxes spilled, it's probably because ancient officials had kind of hastily shoved everything back after the thieves were caught, or maybe robbers like destroyed it or disturbed it again in the meantime. And the robbers never actually reached the king himself. That's a very interesting point of this entire thing. They never got through the doors of the shrines around his coffin. So as a result, King Tuts body stayed completely protected. And then a couple centuries later, workman digging the tomb for a later Pharaoh Ramsey's the sixth, they dumped their debris right on top of King Tuts entrance and completely buried it even further. So think about that. Like this thing was meant to kind of be like secretive and preserved. And then while they're digging a tomb for Ramsey's, they end up covering up King Tuts tomb so fully that it's basically like locked into this place and no one finds it until Howard Carter. So after that, Tuts tomb basically vanished from memory. And it's kind of ironically what saved him. So for over 3000 years, no one touched him. So again, there's those two robberies that probably happened in ancient Egyptian antiquity. And it kind of stayed that way until February 1923 when Howard Carter took down the wall to the burial chamber and found a gilded shrine that is so big that it filled the entire room. But just eight weeks later, the man who paid for this whole thing, the man who supported the project through thickened, financed it, believed in it, made it all happen. He himself was dead. So as the story goes, Lord Kinarven got a mosquito bite on his cheek. While he was shaving, he basically nicked the bite with his razor and then the cut got infected. And then the infection spread into his blood. And then at that point, he developed pneumonia. And in 1923, before antibiotics pneumonia, it's not great to have. It could absolutely kill you, especially a man who had already been in not the best health for 20 years. Remember he had a car accident back in 1901. So he was moved to a hotel in Cairo, his family rushed to his side. And on April 5, 1923, he was dead. Now medically, there's not really mystery what happened. Okay. Doctors at the time knew exactly what killed him. They were like, look, he got bit. He got infection. The infection spread. He died. It happens. But it's not the whole story because people said, hey, look at the timing of this whole thing. The guy had just made it possible to open the most protected hidden and sacred tomb on earth. And then all of a sudden, just like that, a very wealthy, well-known man is just gone. The whole world was tuning in to this massive discovery that he was a part of. And the narrative became that this guy disturbed the Pharaoh and that all those curses and warnings were finally being unleashed. So months before Kunarven died, the best-selling novelist Marie Carelli, who was very into the cult, the occult and was just like a very interesting writer, she published a warning in the press that dire punishment awaited anyone who broke into a sealed tomb. She claimed that she had an old book describing secret poisons in royal tombs. And so, when the news broke that Kunarven was dead, she looked like a prophet. She was like, hey, I just said this a few weeks ago. And then of all people, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle weighed in. Like literally the guy that created Sherlock Holmes, one of the most famous writers of this era of British society. And by this point, Conan Doyle was a devoted spiritualist. And he suggested that elementals like ancient protective spirits created by Egyptian priests may have been set loose after the tomb was opened. And all of this was just the beginning. There were all kinds of other things that reportedly happened that people were linking to the curse. Like the lights in Cairo supposedly went out at the exact moment of Kunarven's death. Now in fairness, Cairo's power grid in 1923, you could say is not exactly reliable. Like it's possible that this happened, but also blackouts in the area kind of happened a lot. But as the story goes, there was a blackout the exact moment that Kunarven died. Now, Kunarven's son claimed that his dog Susie howled and died in England. He says at the exact same second that her master died. So you can imagine Kunarven dies in Cairo. And at the same exact moment, the dog in England howls and then dies. Now the exact same time and moment is impossible to verify, but that's what he himself claimed. And now maybe the creepiest part of this entire thing. November 1925, when King Tut's mummy finally gets unwrapped and examined, doctors notice a lesion on the king's left cheek. And people later claimed that it was the exact same spot where Kunarven was bitten. Now, the curse seemed to be pretty real, right? Every death they got attached to King Tut's tomb became evidence. So take, for example, George J. Gould and American Railroad tycoon, you probably heard of George Gould, if you're familiar with like, you know, early American like gilded age rich people. He visited the tomb and then died of pneumonia just a few months later. Aubrey Herbert, Lord Kunarven's half brother also died in September of 1923 of blood poisoning after surgery, just a few months after Kunarven himself. And then of course, Prince Ali Kammel Feime Bay, a young Egyptian aristocrat who was said to have visited the tomb was shot dead by his wife in London, Savoy Hotel, that same July. And then Richard Bethel, Howard Carter's secretary and one of the first people who went inside the tomb died in 1929 at a London Jailman's Club. And the reports said that he was found in bed, possibly smothered. And the list just kept on growing. Even family members got spooked. So, for example, Lady Evelyn, who had been there that very first night later told newspapers that she offered to release her fiancee from their engagement, afraid that the curse of the mummy might spread to him by marriage. So was the curse of King Tut's mummy really killing people? Well, as part of that question, I think there's another one we have to consider. If Tut was taking revenge on the people who disturbed him, why did he skip the guy who disturbed him the most? So like some of the people who were the closest to disrupting King Tut's tomb, they didn't appear to be affected by this curse at all. Like, for example, Howard Carter, the guy that we're talking about who's the person that was like, I'm gonna find King Tut's tomb. I'm gonna dig it up. He digs it up, fills it back in, digs it up again. He's the one that gets all the credit for doing this. He was the first person to look inside the tomb. He literally opened the burial chamber. He just mantled the shrines. He opened the stones sarcophagus and all three coffins and then stood over the body of the king himself. He spent 10 years basically in that tomb cataloging more than 5,000 objects. Well, he also died. But in London, on March 2nd, 1939 of lymphoma at the age of 64, more than 16 years after he made the discovery. Like, yeah, maybe the curse gave him lymphoma and he died 16 years later. But just, I mean, 16 years at the age of 64 is like, not bad for a British explorer back in the 1930s, you know? Lady Evelyn, for example, right? She literally climbed into the tomb with her father that first night. She lived until 1980 and she didn't die until like her late 70s. And then Harry Burden, the photographer of this whole expedition, he spent years in the tomb shooting around like 1400 glass plate photos. He lived until 1940. So in the 1930s, there was an American Egyptologist named Herbert Winnlock, who did the math to try to figure out once and for all, like, if there could be a numerical evidence of a curse. And he found that of the 22 people present when the tomb was opened literally the 22 people that were there in 1922, only six of them had died by 1934 over 12 years in the 1920s. And if you compare it to the standard deaths of the time, it was a pretty normal death rate. And then in 2002, a doctor named Mark Nelson took it further and published an actual study in the British medical journal. He used Carter's own records to identify 25 westerners who were present when seals were broken or when the sarcophagus and the coffins were opened and then compared them to westerners who were just in Egypt at the time, but were not at any of those moments. And funny enough, the exposed group lived an average age of 70 and the comparison group 75. So the difference was too small to really mean anything statistically. So his conclusion was, hey, there's no link between the tomb and like the curse of the mummy and early death. But believers in the curse are still out there. And these days, there's a lot of them that have actually traded the supernatural for science. So their argument goes like this, the curse was real. It just wasn't magic. This is fascinating. So they're basically saying a tomb seal for thousands of years becomes a breeding ground for toxic molds in bacteria. Now, believers point to an eerie parallel. So in 1973, researchers in Krakow opened the tomb of the 15th century Polish king, Casimir IV. And within a short time, several of them reportedly died. And as the story goes, a dangerous mold known as Aspergolus Flavus was later found inside. Back to 2024, a researcher named Ross Fellows went even further trying to document this whole thing. So he wrote in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, basically that field Egyptologists had suffered and. unusually high rate of deaths matching blood cancers, the same kind of illness that's caused by like high radiation previously measured in ancient tombs. He even pointed to an ancient writing translated as threatening that whoever breaks into the tomb will die of illness that no doctor can identify. Now that's an interesting detail because remember how Howard Carter died. He died of lymphoma that is literally a blood cancer. So the believer's best case is simple. Hey, the curse isn't just supernatural. It's it's supernatural and scientific and physical and that's why it's so deadly. Now the catch of this whole paper is that the paper describes these this refined uranium known as yellow cake and it's hazardous waste being buried underground, which is a claim that mainstream Egyptologists haven't really embraced. And of course, the man who spent the most time breathing the tombs air lived another 16 years. So maybe he was exposed to this, you know, radiation. That's actually what caused the blood cancer. And maybe the Egyptians knew about this and that's what they were talking about. We can't really know, but there's another detail here that's important to think about the canary. Remember the golden bird? Well, some say that the bird wasn't killed by a cobra at all that it was simply just given away to a friend. Others suggest that a snake really did come in to get it, but maybe it was planted by someone who wanted the foreigners to leave the valley. Honestly, we'll never really know for sure. Now here's the thing, the mummy's curse actually didn't start with King Tut. So in 1827, a British writer named Jane Loudon actually published a novel called The Mummy and basically in it a Pharaoh comes back to life. And then in 1869, Louisa may Alcott. Yes, the author of Little Woman, if you ever read that book in school, wrote a short story called Lost in a Pyramid or depending on the publishing date, the mummy's curse. You have to understand Victorian Britain was obsessed with Egypt and more specifically mummies and not really in like a respectful way because for centuries before that Europeans had literally ground up Egyptian mummies and sold them as medicine. Like they sold them as a substance called mumia. And then also in the 1800s, wealthy people would buy mummies as souvenirs and they would hold like unwrapping parties, like literally stripping the bodies in front of dinner guests for fun. Like everyone would sit around at dinner and they would bring an old mummy out. And while they were eating, they would have a guy like unwrapping parts of the mummy and giving away ambulance to all the people that were there. So maybe on some level, the Western world had a guilty conscience of how it had treated and kind of rated the tombs of the Egyptian dead. And when a rich English Lord died after opening a Pharaoh's tomb, it felt like the ghosts of ancient Egypt finally got their revenge. And here's where the curtain gets pulled back even a little more because the same year that Howard Carter found the tomb, 1922, Britain formally ended its protectorate over Egypt. So on paper, Egypt was independent though British influence was obviously still everywhere. That's how colonialism goes, right? In the past, foreign excavators often got to take home a share of what they found, but not anymore. Egypt's government now basically autonomous. They've said, Hey, the king is ours. After years of fighting, including a period when Carter was locked out of the tomb entirely, Egypt kept everything. Every single object. So King Tut became a symbol of Egyptian national pride and he still is today. His full collection is displayed together at the Grand Egyptian Museum knew the pyramids of Giza. Tut himself still lies in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings and that is the only Pharaoh that is still resting where he was buried. Now, what about the curse? Well, that never quite died either. So in April of 2021, Egypt held a massive televised parade to move 22 royal mummies across Cairo to a new museum with kings and queens all riding in like custom vehicles. And in the weeks, right before it, a giant container ship got wedged in the Suez Canal, a deadly train crash hit Southern Egypt and a building collapsed in Cairo. And sure enough, people looked at all of these events, some of which you probably remember you remember the Suez Canal, all these people at the time started looking. They were like, Hey, is this related to us moving all these mummies? Is this another curse of the mummies? Like a hundred years later, the same story and same ancient protective spells are being talked about, keeping outsiders away and kind of in a way, keeping their kings alive. So the question is, is the curse of the mummy real? Did King Tutankhaman curse the man who dared to disturb and enter his tomb? Well, many of the ancient Egyptians did leave behind warnings and curses. They put spells on the walls and the secret names of the gatekeepers and words pressed against the king's skin beneath the linens and there were instructions and protections to basically keep the dead king alive as long as possible in the spirit world to help him on a journey that no living person was ever supposed to witness. Now, the truth is, we still don't fully understand what the priests believed was exactly happening during the 70 days in the dark. We don't know what they thought they were holding together exactly or maybe they didn't even know and they didn't maybe even know what they feared would happen. They just knew that something bad was imminent. And somewhere in that desert, there are royal tombs that have never been found. Their seals may still be unbroken even by tomb raiders. Their kings may still be waiting exactly where they were left. And maybe the curse of the mummy was only ever a spooky story or maybe the Egyptians understood something we've lost about what we bury and why some things are meant to stay buried forever. And ladies and gentlemen, that is a brief summary of the curse of the mummy. I mean, what a fascinating kind of tale. I'll be honest, I actually think the bacteria in the mold explanation makes a lot of sense. I like that. How so? I mean, it's an ancient tomb, a little moisture breaks in. You develop a pathogen that develops like some type of bacteria that's in this enclosed space for three thousand years. No human being is exposed to it. No one has any type of immunity to it. There's a dead body decaying right in that room. And then you go in there three thousand years later. Yeah, you get a little get a little cough cough mold. All of a sudden that's going to take you down. It's going to give you a immunocompromise. And then all of a sudden you catch a little sickness, a little pneumonia that your body might be able to fend off. But because you have immunocompromisation from all the information from this mold or novel pathogen that developed in this tomb, all of a sudden, by the Bing, you can't handle it. You die. And maybe that's the actual curse. I also love the radiation part that like you have like this radiation underneath and inside the chambers. I mean, they have reported like high levels of radiation, which is why a lot of people talk about the ancient power plant theory that hey, this thing is like a radiation hotbed. This thing is like cooking up radiation all the time. Some people think it's the uranium that's buried in there. Again, it's not really accepted, but they have detected like high levels of radiation. So is it possible? All the people spending a lot of time there do get radiation poisoning that then affects their organs and they die. I mean, think about Howard Card. He gets lymphoma, which very easily could be caused by radiation. Pretty crazy. I mean, what do you think, Jesus? Sounds like you don't believe in a curse. I'm saying I do believe the curse, but I also think the curses could use scientific means to get there. What are you saying? It's not a curse at that point. It's natural brother physiological. If I say Christos, I curse you with an illness. And then two weeks later, you get a fever. What's the difference there? That's more God not a mummy's curse. Yeah, but the mummy's curse has to consult of Cyrus. Like what? What's a king to a god? What's a god to a king? What's a god to a non-believer? Is that how it goes? You go and I'm saying, okay, they got to go to a Cyrus and Osiris is the one that actually doles out all the punishment. And if you know anything about the raw tapes, maybe Ross involved as well. I mean, he's talking to humans, right? Sure. All of a sudden start coming full circle. I'm just saying, if I'm going to go into a to a mummy's tomb, I'm probably going to bring an N95. I'll probably mask up a little. And if anything, I feel like that'll protect me more than more than like some type of blessing. Yeah. I don't know. What do you think? Are you going to go deep into a mummy's tomb? I wouldn't. Why not? I don't have the intestinal fortitude for it. Are you thinking you're going to get a king toaster revenge? Yes. In your small dozens. And also Montezuma's revenge. Oh, double time? Yeah. The bubble guts. Yeah, you got to be careful. Yeah. I don't know. What do you guys think? Do you think do you like the scientific explanation? Do you like the scientific and the supernatural explanation? Do you like one of the other or neither? And you have your own cooking up that you would like to share with us. Please drop a comment YouTube Spotify. I read all that. I might not even get back to you, but I will read it. I promise. Okay, but I do have stuff to do. I got a kid. I got I got stuff going on. So please drop a comment. Even if I don't respond, we'll be productive to someone here at the campsite. Also, if you like mysteries, specifically like mysteries involving the Colt and crazy deep dives and what happens and what's going on in this crazy world. We're great news, camp, gag on this place for you. That's the main channel where I do interviews of people way smarter than me, really fascinating conversation, specifically about mysteries, conspiracies, the esoteric and the unknown. Also, if you like religious deep dives, we talked a little bit about religion today, but if you want specifically like modern religions, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, etc. Well, religion camps the place for you. And if you just like to rock with history, Bible, great job. You're in the right place. History camp is where we drop every type of history deep dive and it comes out once a week. So make sure you comment, like, subscribe, all that good stuff. Thank you all very much. And I will see you in the future. Talk with the past. Peace.
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