King Tut’s tomb was discovered 100 years ago — and unleashed a ‘curse’
November 5, 2022 9:26 AM Subscribe
Recent studies have suggested a more mundane — and organic — explanation for the deaths of tomb explorers (archive.ph link)
This post was deleted for the following reason: poster's request -- Eyebrows McGee
Ugh. I hate being negative right out of the gate, but this story, which was circulating in the 80s, at least, is pretty old news... and kind of irrelevant.
The excavators of Tutankhamun's tomb lived reasonable lives for their time and died of well-attested causes. of the three major European figures in the story, Lord Carnarvon, the first to die, had had poor health for most of his life, largely from a near-fatal auto accident. There is little evidence that other people who worked on the site died in any greater numbers than usual (of course, many of them were Egyptian workmen, whose medical histories were not particularly likely to be recorded, so who knows?) Anyway, tomb mold may have been a contributing factor, but it didn't have much impact, if it was.
The whole "mummy's curse" angle is Orientalist claptrap. Of course the ancient Egyptians didn't want their tombs robbed, but they mostly relied on subterfuge rather than magic to accomplish this. If I remember correctly from conversations with an Egyptologist I interned for, there are example of tomb curses, but they are more along the lines of "if you are reading this, I hope you break your leg and die, asshole" than "death will come on swift wings" or whatever wasn't written in Tutankhamum's tomb.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:23 AM on November 5, 2022 [20 favorites]
The excavators of Tutankhamun's tomb lived reasonable lives for their time and died of well-attested causes. of the three major European figures in the story, Lord Carnarvon, the first to die, had had poor health for most of his life, largely from a near-fatal auto accident. There is little evidence that other people who worked on the site died in any greater numbers than usual (of course, many of them were Egyptian workmen, whose medical histories were not particularly likely to be recorded, so who knows?) Anyway, tomb mold may have been a contributing factor, but it didn't have much impact, if it was.
The whole "mummy's curse" angle is Orientalist claptrap. Of course the ancient Egyptians didn't want their tombs robbed, but they mostly relied on subterfuge rather than magic to accomplish this. If I remember correctly from conversations with an Egyptologist I interned for, there are example of tomb curses, but they are more along the lines of "if you are reading this, I hope you break your leg and die, asshole" than "death will come on swift wings" or whatever wasn't written in Tutankhamum's tomb.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:23 AM on November 5, 2022 [20 favorites]
Argh. Honestly, if you take anything away from this, go read up on Ancient Egypt, a really rich culture that spanned millennia and which is badly presented in (at least Western) cultural imagination. We have an image of a brutalized society obsesses with death, when they really loved life so much they never wanted it to end. There are so many great stories -- the workmen who went on strike because their ration of eye makeup was cut, the myths of Horus and Set which revolve around an argument over exactly who jacked off who during a camping trip, the love poem with the line "with you, I am happy, even without beer." Really, there is something for everyone. And the myths, covering such a long time, are a mix of the mundane and head-scratchingly odd, partly, because, unlike, for example, Greek and Roman myth, there wasn't too much systemization, so myths from different times and places tell similar stories very differently.
If your tastes are more modern, the European "noticing" of Egypt in the 19th C has some really gross elements, but also features some genuinely interested and interesting scholars who did some amazing scholarship to recreate an understanding of a variety of writing systems and sorting out a history that had become hopelessly muddled over thousands of years. It also gave us the diaries of Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert, who were in Egypt at roughly the same time. She was enchanted by the ancient monuments and disgusted by the living people, while he was quite the opposite.
And this is leaving out the Medieval and Modern history of Egypt itself, leaving Europe aside. There is as much art and learning and politics and treachery and drama as you could care to read about.
Sorry for the rant, but: Egypt: it's really neat and derseves more than "oooh, mummy's curse!"
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:37 AM on November 5, 2022 [24 favorites]
If your tastes are more modern, the European "noticing" of Egypt in the 19th C has some really gross elements, but also features some genuinely interested and interesting scholars who did some amazing scholarship to recreate an understanding of a variety of writing systems and sorting out a history that had become hopelessly muddled over thousands of years. It also gave us the diaries of Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert, who were in Egypt at roughly the same time. She was enchanted by the ancient monuments and disgusted by the living people, while he was quite the opposite.
And this is leaving out the Medieval and Modern history of Egypt itself, leaving Europe aside. There is as much art and learning and politics and treachery and drama as you could care to read about.
Sorry for the rant, but: Egypt: it's really neat and derseves more than "oooh, mummy's curse!"
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:37 AM on November 5, 2022 [24 favorites]
the European "noticing" of Egypt in the 19th C has some really gross elements, but also features some genuinely interested and interesting scholars who did some amazing scholarship to recreate an understanding of a variety of writing systems and sorting out a history that had become hopelessly muddled over thousands of years
And then there was the Great Belzoni. Good fun. Check him out.
posted by BWA at 10:57 AM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
And then there was the Great Belzoni. Good fun. Check him out.
posted by BWA at 10:57 AM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
GenjiandProust - what a fantastic comment. I would love to know more about the Ancient Egypt you know. Any suggestions on where I should start? Thank you!
posted by kristi at 11:41 AM on November 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by kristi at 11:41 AM on November 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
Related: the History of Egypt podcast has a new 6+ hour compilation episode on the Tomb of Tutanchamun.
posted by UN at 12:38 PM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by UN at 12:38 PM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
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posted by y2karl at 10:11 AM on November 5, 2022