The mystery of the mummy's curse in the tomb of Egyptian King Tutankhamun

In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter found what he had spent six years searching for: King Tutankhamun's tomb.
According to Business Insider, Mr. Carter's glory and reputation came at a price: On the day Mr. Carter opened the tomb, a snake killed his canary. According to the New York Times, some Egyptian officials saw it as a warning from the spirit of the deceased king not to further violate his tomb. Rumors continued to swirl about the mummy curse that Mr. Carter had unearthed, especially when people involved in the excavation began to die. However, as the decades passed and more and more members of Mr. Carter's team died, scientists began to wonder if there was another reason for the deaths.

In April 1923, Mr. George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, had a fever and cough in a Cairo hospital. When he died on April 5, the lights in the city were turned off. At his home in Hampshire (England), the Earl of Carnarvon's dog, Susie, died a few hours after his owner passed away. The New York Times said his death was due to pneumonia - a disease he suffered from that was initially caused by an infected insect bite caused by a razor cut. But because he had been present at the excavation of King Tutankhamun's tomb a few months earlier, rumors about the curse began to spread. The Earl of Carnarvon's newspaper obituary said that even before he fell ill, there was talk of ancient Egyptian curses, with mystical incantations aimed at anyone who dared to disturb his sleep. Sleep of a Pharaoh - King of Egypt
The day after the death of Earl Carnarvon, the New York Times quoted spiritualist and author of the detective character Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, saying: "An evil spirit may have caused it." the serious illness of the Earl of Carnarvon". Around the same time, Mr. Ernest A. Wallis Budge at the British Museum told the New York Times that curse theories were nonsense. Talk of the curse continued when American financier George Jay Gould died in May 1923 of pneumonia, a few months after visiting King Tutankhamun's tomb. Mr. Philip Livingston Poe, a relative of writer Edgar Allen Poe, also suffered from pneumonia a few months after visiting the tomb in 1923. His illness was included in a study and was believed to be related to the curse. mummy, even though he lived another 47 years. When Mr. Richard Bethell, secretary to archaeologist Howard Carter, died in 1929, many reports suggested that his death was the 9th, 10th or 13th death related to the excavation. .In total, the number of deaths that newspapers attributed to the curse ranged from 9 to over 20 people, depending on whether visitors to the tomb and relatives of the excavators were included. Many deaths attributed to the curse include people killed in car accidents, shootings, house fires, and people who committed suicide. Some have never visited the mausoleum and are merely related to someone who has visited. Even though the mummy curse is an attractive topic in Western media, it is very rare for Western newspapers to report on the deaths of Egyptians in articles about the curse. One of the few people the Western press reported on was Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey, who went to King Tutankhamun's tomb. In 1923, he was shot dead by his wife at the Savoy Hotel in London. In fact, dozens of Egyptians contributed to the excavation of King Tutankhamun's tomb. Because archaeologist Carter never named most of these people in his notes and they were rarely mentioned in the press, it is difficult to know how the excavation work affected their health. like that
Curse of mushrooms?

As decades passed, some scientists wondered if something deadly was lurking in King Tutankhamun's tomb. Is this a mushroom? Two doctors wrote an article in The Lancet in 2003, saying that a common mold called aspergillus may have made the Earl of Carnarvon sick. Aspergillosis can cause coughing and difficulty breathing, but symptoms are more severe in people with weak immune systems. The Earl of Carnarvon initially began visiting Egypt after a serious automobile accident in 1903 damaged his lungs. This condition makes him especially susceptible to mold infection. In a 2013 study, researchers at Harvard University looked at brown spots found on the walls of King Tutankhamun's tomb. These spots appeared when archaeologist Carter first opened the tomb. Microbiologists want to determine whether fungi or other bacteria are responsible for the spots and pose a health risk to people entering the tomb.
Although the analysis found evidence of fungal and bacterial communities, they are no longer active and pose no threat to humans or the paintings. It is impossible to say whether aspergillus or some other fungus contributed to the deaths of the Earl of Carnarvon or the financier Gould. But today, archaeologists wear gloves, masks and sometimes disposable protective clothing to protect themselves from mold. Perhaps the simplest explanation of the mummy curse is that of Frank McClanahan, a doctor who treated the Earl of Carnarvon during his illness in Luxor. According to this doctor, those who died were a small number of the many people who visited the mausoleum. “There are archaeologists coming here all the time from all over the world,” he said in a 1972 interview. If you follow a certain group of people and check back later, you will find that there is a certain mortality rate among them.