📜 LEGEND · EXP. Nº0270
ACTIVE
The Curse of Tutankhamun
The curse of Tutankhamun was manufactured by a press pack that had been locked out of the story.
Where does the legend of The Curse of Tutankhamun come from?
- Location
- Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt
- Kind of legend
- Curse
- Coordinates
- 25.74, 32.601
- Last updated
LOCATION
What is the legend of The Curse of Tutankhamun?
On 4 November 1922 Howard Carter's Egyptian workmen, led by the rais Ahmed Gerigar, uncovered a cut step in the Valley of the Kings, and within three weeks a stalled provincial dig was the biggest news story on earth. Then, in January 1923, Lord Carnarvon sold the news rights to a single title: The Times of London paid £5,000 up front and left him most of the resale profits, so every other correspondent at Luxor — the Egyptian papers included, working on Egyptian soil — had to buy the news of Egypt's greatest discovery from a British rival, hours late. Unable to report the tomb, they reported around it. The curses the papers printed were rewritten from harmless texts: a line reading "I am the one who prevents the sand from blocking the secret chamber", and the Book of the Dead spells on the golden shrine of the burial chamber, written to secure the king's eternal life. And when Mark Nelson ran the survival figures as a cohort study in the BMJ in 2002, the 25 people exposed had died at a mean age of 70 against 75 for those not exposed — a difference with no significance at all.
What is the history of The Curse of Tutankhamun?
The curse of Tutankhamun has a documented author, and the man who named him was Howard Carter.
On 4 November 1922 the Egyptian workmen of Carter's dig, led by the rais Ahmed Gerigar, uncovered a cut step in the rubble of the Valley of the Kings. Within three weeks the step had become a staircase and the staircase a sealed door, and a stalled provincial excavation was the biggest news story on earth. Correspondents from every major paper in Europe and America travelled to Luxor and camped at the mouth of the tomb.
Then Lord Carnarvon, who had financed the dig for years without return, made the decision that turned the press against him. In January 1923 he sold the news rights to a single title: The Times of London paid £5,000 up front and left him three quarters of the profits from reselling the story worldwide. Every other reporter at Luxor now had to buy the news of Egypt's greatest discovery from a British rival, hours late — the Egyptian press included, working on Egyptian soil.
They needed something The Times did not own. Unable to report the tomb, they reported around it. Among the excluded was Arthur Weigall, a former Inspector-General of Antiquities in Upper Egypt who had returned as a correspondent for the Daily Mail and knew the country well enough to make atmosphere read like evidence. Omens began to appear in print: Carnarvon's canary taken by a cobra on the day the tomb was opened, ancient warnings against breaking seals. In March 1923 the best-selling novelist Marie Corelli wrote to the New York World that "the most dire punishment follows any rash intruder into a sealed tomb", citing an obscure volume she said she owned.
Three weeks later, on 5 April 1923, Carnarvon died in Cairo. He had opened an infected mosquito bite while shaving; it became blood poisoning and then pneumonia. In an ordinary news cycle that is an obituary. In this one it was a confirmation. Arthur Conan Doyle, by then a committed spiritualist, told reporters the death might be the work of an "evil elemental", which he defined as "a built up, artificial thing"; the Australian paper The Argus reported the malign influence of the dead pharaoh as if it were established.
The same coverage erased the people who had actually found the tomb. Carter's Egyptian foremen and workmen appear constantly in Harry Burton's photographs and almost never in the captions. Weeks after Weigall died in January 1934, Carter wrote privately from Luxor: "The 'Tutankhamun Curse' was his invention."
Timeline: the documented record of The Curse of Tutankhamun
- 4 November 1922 The Egyptian workmen of Howard Carter's dig, led by the rais Ahmed Gerigar, uncover the first cut step of the staircase leading down to KV62. The world's press begins to converge on Luxor.
- January 1923 Lord Carnarvon sells worldwide news rights to The Times of London for £5,000 plus three quarters of the syndication profits, shutting out every rival correspondent — including the Egyptian press.
- March 1923 Novelist Marie Corelli writes to the New York World that "the most dire punishment follows any rash intruder into a sealed tomb", quoting an obscure book she claims to own. It is published weeks before Carnarvon falls ill.
- 5 April 1923 Carnarvon dies in Cairo of blood poisoning and pneumonia after opening an infected mosquito bite while shaving. The excluded press has its confirmation.
- April 1923 Arthur Conan Doyle tells reporters the death may be the work of an "evil elemental"; The Argus in Australia reports the malign influence of the dead pharaoh as established fact. Stories that cannot be checked — the lights of Cairo failing, Carnarvon's dog dying in England — enter circulation, one of them sourced to his son, who was in India at the time.
- 21 January 1934 Weeks after Weigall's death, Carter writes from Luxor to Helen Ionides: "The 'Tutankhamun Curse' was his invention. Believed out of pique — a sort of vengeance." The letter surfaced at auction in 2026.
- 1939 Howard Carter dies, sixteen years after entering the burial chamber. The man with the greatest exposure to the alleged curse outlived almost everyone who wrote about it.
- December 2002 Mark Nelson publishes a historical cohort study in the BMJ: of 44 Westerners identified in Carter's records, the 25 exposed died at a mean age of 70 against 75 for the unexposed. No effect on survival is found.
- January 2019 The Getty Conservation Institute and the Egyptian antiquities authorities close a decade of work in KV62. The brown spots on the wall paintings are confirmed as microbiological but dead and unchanged since the 1920s, undercutting the idea of a living fungal hazard in the tomb.
Is there a rational explanation for The Curse of Tutankhamun?
The curses printed in 1923 were made out of texts that say something else. The Egyptologist David P. Silverman, quoted by Joshua J. Mark, traces two of them. An "innocuous text inscribed on mud plaster before the Anubis shrine in the Treasury", "I am the one who prevents the sand from blocking the secret chamber", reached the newspapers as "...I will kill all of those who cross this threshold into the sacred precincts of the royal king who lives forever". The inscription on the large golden shrine in the burial chamber was printed as "They who enter this sacred tomb shall swift be visited by wings of death", and Silverman's verdict on it is that "the texts on this shrine come from The Book of the Dead - a collection of spells intended to ensure eternal life, not shorten it!"
The survival figures are no kinder to the legend. In December 2002 the physician Mark Nelson published a historical cohort study in the BMJ, using Carter's records to identify 44 Westerners in Egypt during the excavation. Twenty-five had been present at one of four decisive openings, the first on 17 February 1923. Their mean age at death was 70, against 75 for the unexposed (P=0.87); mean survival after exposure was 20.8 years against 28.9 (P=0.95). The odds of dying within ten years came out at 1.38 (95% CI 0.20 to 9.6) — a range so wide it means nothing. Carter, who opened the tomb himself, lived until 1939. The curse lists work by counting only deaths: anyone linked to the tomb who died was added, and nobody who survived was ever subtracted.
The fungal hypothesis is more serious but unproven. Aspergillus flavus and A. niger are real pathogens with durable spores that can kill vulnerable people. In the tomb itself, what has been found is the residue of dead microbes. The brown spots on the burial-chamber paintings were already there when Carter entered in 1923, according to the Getty Conservation Institute, which had them analysed by Ralph Mitchell's laboratory at Harvard. In 2011 the laboratory reported melanins, "characteristic byproducts of fungal (and sometimes bacterial) metabolism", with no living organism matched to the spots, and concluded that "the microbes that caused the spots are dead". When the Getty and the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities closed their decade of work in January 2019, The Art Newspaper reported that DNA tests and chemical analysis showed the spots to be microbiological in origin but dead, and that enlarged photographs from the 1920s showed the darkened areas had not spread. Carnarvon died of blood poisoning from a mosquito bite that became infected after he sliced it open while shaving.
Can you visit The Curse of Tutankhamun?
KV62 is in the Valley of the Kings, on the west bank at Luxor. The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities gives the same hours for the valley and for the tomb, 06:00 to 17:00 on all seven days, and prices them apart: the valley at EGP 750 for a foreign adult and EGP 375 for a foreign student; the tomb of Tutankhamun at EGP 700 and EGP 350. Egyptians pay EGP 60 and EGP 40 for the same two tickets (egymonuments.gov.eg, consulted 9 September 2026).
The room itself is nearly bare. The Art Newspaper, reporting the close of the Getty Conservation Institute's decade of work in January 2019, wrote that the tomb "houses only a few objects including the mummy of Tutankhamen, a sarcophagus and a gilded wooden coffin". The Getty's project page lists what that decade left in place: replaced visitor walkways, protective barriers, lighting, ventilation, signage. It records that "a visitor carrying capacity was established and a visitation policy crafted to avoid overcrowding in the tomb". The brown spots on the burial-chamber paintings are still there: the excavation team noted them in 1923 and their nature and origin, in the Getty's wording, "have never been fully ascertained".
The ministry's page for the tomb puts at approximately 5,000 the artefacts found stacked inside it. The Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza has Tutankhamun Galleries of its own, and its official ticketing site — the only one, by its own statement — says that a ticket "includes access to the Tutankhamun Galleries, Main Galleries, Grand Hall, Grand Stairs, Khufu's Boats Museum, commercial area and exterior gardens". Those galleries open at 09:00 every day and close at 18:00 on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday; on Wednesday and Saturday they close at 21:00, with last entry an hour before closing. Tickets carry an entry time that does not limit how long a visit lasts; they are single-entry and non-refundable. Personal photography is barred in designated areas of the Tutankhamun Galleries (visit-gem.com, consulted 9 September 2026).
Sources consulted
- Howard Carter, «Howard Carter Autograph Letter Signed on "The 'Tutankhamun Curse'" (Luxor, 21 January 1934, to Helen Ionides)» — RR Auction, lot description and transcription, 2026 archive
- All About History Team, «The Facts Behind the Curse of Tutankhamun: Fake News from Beyond the Grave» — All About History, 2017 web
- Joshua J. Mark, «The Mummy's Curse: Tutankhamun's Tomb & the Modern-Day Media» — World History Encyclopedia, 2017 web
- Mark R. Nelson, «The mummy's curse: historical cohort study» — BMJ 325(7378):1482-1484, 2002 academic
- Christina Riggs, «Photographing Tutankhamun: Photo-Objects and the Archival Afterlives of Colonial Archaeology» — Max Planck Research Library, Photo-Objects, 2019 academic
- Nancy Kenney, «Getty wraps up conservation effort at King Tutankhamen's tomb» — The Art Newspaper, 2019 newspaper archive
- Caroline Perry (SEAS Communications), «Tut, tut! Microbial growth in pharaoh's tomb suggests burial was a rush job» — Harvard Gazette, 8 June 2011, 2011 web
- Getty Conservation Institute, «Scientific Investigation to Understand Issues in the Tomb (Conservation and Management of the Tomb of Tutankhamen)» — getty.edu, project page, 2026 web
Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-07-29 · How we verify our content
📎 Source: Enigma Atlas
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