The Curse of Tutankhamun

When archaeologist Howard Carter breached the sealed tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings in 1922, he uncovered treasures beyond imagining and, according to legend, awakened a deadly curse. The story took hold when Lord Carnarvon, the expedition's wealthy patron, died in Cairo just months later from an infected mosquito bite. Newspapers reported that at the moment of his death the lights of the city flickered out and his dog howled and dropped dead back in England. Whispers spread of an inscription warning that death would come on swift wings to whoever disturbed the pharaoh's rest, and journalists eagerly tallied every subsequent misfortune among those linked to the tomb. Skeptics point out that Carter himself, the man who actually opened it, lived on for more than sixteen years, and that the death rate among the excavators was unremarkable. Yet the curse of the pharaohs proved irresistible, blending ancient Egyptian awe of the afterlife with modern fascination, and it endures as the most famous malediction ever attached to an archaeological discovery.