Legend dictates that anyone who disturbs the remains of a pharaoh is placed under a curse that will inevitably lead to their death.
So the demise of Lord Carnarvon, who financed the Tutankhamun dig in 1922, a year after he first gazed upon the tomb, unleashed a public sensation.
But despite dogged ru-mours of other ‘victims’ of the curse in subsequent years, the truth is somewhat removed from the myth.
Lord Carnarvon was the first and highest-profile victim of the supposed curse of Tutankhamun.
In April 1923, he died of blood poisoning after a mosquito bite became infected.
At the time of his death his dog reportedly howled for his master and dropped dead in England while the lights of Cairo went out.
Newspaper reports soon carried the news of his ‘mysterious’ death.
They also carried the wording of the curse which was claimed to be engraved outside the entrance ofthe tomb: “Death shall come on swift wings to him who disturbs the peace of the King.”
Unfortunately, there is no evidence that such an inscription existed, with many believing it was merely the result of an excitable journalist.
More deaths seemed to compound the belief that a curse existed.
George Jay Gould, a railway executive, died of pneumonia on May 16, 1923, after contracting a fever in Egypt during a visit of the tomb.
Likewise, Lord Carnarvon’s personal secretary, Richard Bethell, perished months after the tomb was uncovered.
But it appears early death was the exception rather than the rule.
A 2002 study printed in the British Medical Journal looked at the survival rates of those associated with the the tomb between February 1923 and November 1926.
In all, 44 Westerners were identified by Howard Carter as being present in Egypt during the dates, 25 of whom were potentially exposed to the curse.
Research found that of those 25 people identified at being at risk, the average age of death was 70 years.
Most lived on for 20-plus years after visiting the tomb.
The study’s author, Mark Nelson of the department of epidemiology and preventive medicine at Monash University, Australia, concluded: “An Egyptian archaeological dig in the 1920s was inhabited by interesting characters and it was this and the circumstances of the archaeological find of the modern age that has kept the myth of the mummy’s curse in the public eye.” (PA)