The Curse of King Tutankhamun: Part II - Ep. 9

In Part II of Cursed...ish’s King Tutankhamun coverage, Daniel and Angela pick up where the tomb story turns ancient history to archaeology and legend. From Napoleon’s role in fueling Europe’s obsession with ancient Egypt to the Rosetta Stone, Howard Carter’s excavation, Lord Carnarvon’s mysterious death, and the media frenzy that helped create the so-called Pharaoh’s Curse, they trace how a buried king became one of history’s most famous supernatural stories. Along the way, they dig into protective funerary rituals, tabloid embellishments, supposed curse victims, mold and poison theories, and the uncomfortable question at the heart of the whole legend: was there ever really a curse at all, or was Tutankhamun the one who was truly wronged? 

https://time.com/archive/6862937/science-a-curse-on-a-curse/

https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/ancient/were-getting-ancient-egypt-all-wrong-and-its-because-of-european-nationalism/

https://www.auntminnieeurope.com/clinical-news/article/15654128/the-radiologist-and-the-curse-of-the-mummy

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/23321/victims-king-tuts-curse

https://allthatsinteresting.com/king-tut-curse

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-07-30-mn-3981-story.html

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/history/article/tutankhamun-egypt-howard-carter-times-letter-m53zhbbps?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/aug/13/howard-carter-stole-tutankhamuns-treasure-new-evidence-suggests

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-07-30-mn-3981-story.html

https://time.com/3594676/king-tut/

https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/were-six-bizarre-deaths-linked-to-curse-of-king-tut-actually-the-work-of-this-notorious-satanist-6365783.html

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Transcript

Daniel 0:00

He had all those amulets to help protect him. They had all those protective inscriptions everywhere, all throughout his tomb. So he was feeling nice and safe.

Angela 0:08

Yeah, except for it sounds like all those protections, all those little amulets had an expiration date. And I'm Angela Mattis.

Daniel 0:39

So, Angela, last time I left you kind of on a cliffhanger. Let's just go right and get back into it. No time to waste. As you'll remember, where we ended last time, we left King Tutankhamun slumbering beneath the Valley of the Kings, sealed in darkness, armed for eternity, buried the way that the ancient Egyptians believed a king was supposed to be buried, protected, preserved, and left undisturbed, so his soul could continue in the afterlife, an afterlife they believed was as important as life itself. But the king's peaceful slumber in that afterlife had one enemy that the ancient Egyptians could never really have planned for. Another ruler. Not one of the ancient world, but one of the modern world. Well, long before anyone found the first clue to where King Tut's tomb would be in 1922, another ambitious man helped set that story in motion. Not a pharaoh, not a priest, but a conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte.

Angela 1:37

Oh, that little rat. Why, okay. Why do I feel like Napoleon? Like, I honestly don't know enough about Napoleon, but I feel like he's become my little cautionary tale of everyone being like, oh, like, you know, obviously we're in a very messy time in American history and world history, and so people have been making a lot of references to the French Revolution. And I keep being like, yeah, but like 20 years later, Napoleon was back, back at it again. King of King of France. So um I've been thinking about Napoleon lately and how much he just in general sucks.

Daniel 2:11

Well, okay, so now Napoleon did not obviously discover King Tut's tomb, but he did help ignite this obsession with Egypt that we're gonna talk about. Now, Egypt had always mystified people, even the ancients, ancient Greeks found ancient Egypt mystifying people. Yeah, I mean they're interesting as hell. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, even the Egyptians themselves were interested in more ancient Egyptians.

Angela 2:33

Also, yeah, if I had all that badass ancient history, I would also be thinking it was pretty cool.

Daniel 2:39

Yeah, like uh there was uh King Tut's great-grandfather, Thumos IV, he led an expedition or he like funded an excavation of the Sphinx and the pyramids. Like they themselves studied and were interested in ancient Egypt.

Angela 2:52

I'm not surprised.

Daniel 2:53

Soci just like societies through throughout history, especially the Western society, just has been like interested in Egypt and the mysticism around it, their, you know, their traditions, their customs, obviously their riches and everything. So there's this whole idea, it's called Egyptomania, and it's just this idea that people are enthralled by the idea of Egypt. And that had been going on for a long time, but there was a particular wave of it that started after Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798. The meanings of hieroglyphics had also been lost to history. Nobody knew what those what all these crazy pictures meant. Yes, so so they were studying things and really taking tons of guesses, and it's kind of crazy to me that we've they had lost hieroglyphics because most of our letters come from hieroglyphics, like the letter A comes from the hieroglyphic for an ox because an ox started with an A sound, and we just like throughout history it became the letter A. And like the letter M is waves of water because like water used to be started with an M sound, and so it's like weird that we lost those, even though they're the basis of our own alphabet.

Angela 3:55

Also, if everyone throughout time was interested in Egyptian history, because of course it spann thousands and thousands of years, it is interesting that we would lose it because you would think something like that we would have held on to. We would have remembered because it would have been passed down because people had interest in it. So that is like when was the point in time at which it died out? I wonder.

Daniel 4:16

I mean, this is a rhetorical question, but well, I I mean over time, basically after the probably the collapse of the the like remember I was saying there were the three main kingdoms, there was the the last kingdom, there was, and then there was like the Greek, the Greek Hellenistic Egypt, that was the last period of kind of ancient Egypt that was Cleopatra, etc. I guess probably after that, they probably, you know, the Greeks took over Egypt and started making them speak Greek, and Greek became crucial for how they figured out what the hieroglyphics meant. But let's go back to Napoleon for a minute. So he Napoleon, uh, after the French Revolution, they were doing there's a whole bunch of wars going on. No time to get into all of this. Napoleon is uh, you know, topic and topic on top of itself. But um before he became emperor and everything, he started a military campaign. They invaded Egypt. Um, they landed, he landed in Alexandria with 36,000 troops.

Angela 5:09

Like for any political purpose, or was he just that into Egypt of mania?

Daniel 5:13

General like expansionism, yeah. Expansionism, you know, they just wanted to conquer more, pretty much. Um, there's a famous battle, the Battle of the Pyramids. It's kind of like dramatically named that. The pyramids were like way in the distance, barely visible, but they still call it the Battle of the Pyramids. But that was when like the French basically secured control over Egypt of the time and they started administering it, controlling it. There was a lot of fighting back, there were uprisings in Cairo, uh, not great things. But more importantly, during this, Napoleon left because he saw the political uninstability happening back in Paris and he returned to Paris to fanfare. And he was like, I have conquered Egypt and I am amazing. And this was part of his rise to that's when he committed a coup within a coup. There was a coup going on. He was sort of like, you know what? People like me, I'm gonna actually be the one who takes power. I'm way simplifying all of this. But he rode this wave of popular support because of his Egypt campaign. And this Egypt campaign, they sent back all these things, these documents, they did scientific studies. He had like 150-ish people with them doing studies, helping decide how to build the roads and stuff they were gonna use to essentially control Egypt as well. So it's not all scientific wonderfulness, but um, you know, they were doing all this stuff and they were sending this information back to Europe. They published this book called, and excuse my literal French, the Memoirs sur l'Egypte and the Discussion de l'Egypte.

Angela 6:34

You sound like one of those twats, like when you go out to dinner with someone and they're like completely normal, and then all of a sudden they're like, I'm not leaving.

SPEAKER_02 6:48

Yes.

Angela 6:48

I don't hate you on site right now. I'm I honestly just think that was it again. Can I can we get that again?

Daniel 6:57

Le memoirs of Egypt.

Angela 6:59

Okay, you were like giving up like a smoking frog.

Daniel 7:06

My frog. I speak no for it.

Angela 7:08

Yeah, we get it. Yeah, okay. Anyway, memoirs of Egypt, basically.

Daniel 7:12

So yeah, they sent back all this information about Egypt, and people just like it re- you know, people were always uh interested in it, but it made like super, super, super concentrated focus on Egypt. So while Napoleon was there, they found something called the Rosetta Stone. They were fortifying this old fort. The fort had been made of like chunks of old rubble, essentially, and they noticed this inscription on it, and it was in hieroglyphics.

Angela 7:32

Um wait, where was the Rosetta Stone located? Which country?

Daniel 7:36

In Egypt. They found it in a in a a little a little port city near Alexandria, and they realized that there was this inscription on this giant slab of rock. So they they alerted someone and they decided to take it and study it. After Napoleon left his troops in France, they ended up losing to the British and they had to surrender the British a couple years later. So the British wound up with a Rosetta Stone, that's why it's now in the British Museum today. Oh but the Rosetta Stone, it was the same script in hieroglyphics and then demotic, which were two different ways of writing ancient Egyptian, and then in ancient Greek, which was a language that people knew still. So they were able, it took years and years, it was very complicated to figure out. It wasn't like sweet, we know hieroglyphics now, but they understood essentially like the building blocks of hieroglyphics because of the Rosetta Stone.

Angela 8:20

And did their Rosetta Stone, was it meant to be a translation tool, or was it just the same thing written in three different languages? So they were able to take the Greek and then understand what the hieroglyphic hieroglyphics were because they knew what the Greek was saying.

Daniel 8:34

I believe it was just it was like a declaration, so it was something that hieroglyphics were more ceremonial, religious, kind of an ancient old style of writing, and then the demotic was more like the actual everyday writing people were using then. Still official stuff was written in it and all that. And then the Rosetta Stone was written in like the year 190, 196 BC. That was when the Greeks had started coming in and taking over. So they so it was probably one of those things that was like, hey, so everyone can read this.

Angela 9:00

Yes, yeah.

Daniel 9:01

So they discovered it in 1798. It took 20 something years for this guy, Jean-Francois Champignon, to actually figure it out. But once people could figure out what these inscriptions were saying in tombs and everything, it like it the craze exploded and it truly became like a science of Egyptology. So everyone was freaking out by like the 1850s, 1860s, people were just flocking and flocking to Egypt. Tombs were getting just like ripped open.

Angela 9:29

Oh god.

Daniel 9:30

They eventually the governments of European powers, but also of uh, I mean, the Egypt was being controlled by European powers, they started to be like, hey, we need to have some sort of scientific rigor here and uh, you know, some sort of structure. So they started giving essentially rights, it was called a concession, and you had the concession to search certain areas and to like explore it, and then it is an evolving process. But by the time in the early 1900s, it was essentially like you would fund an exploration, the government would give you a concession to search there, and then you and the government would split whatever you find. And so it was just like the way that it worked.

Angela 10:06

For me, of course, all roads and all things in life lead back to the masterpiece that is the mummy. Yes, that was such a I feel like um I wonder how much that was kind of like storytelling within a movie and how real it was that there were all these different teams of people who were literally racing each other. Like, remember the openings, or not like opening, but one of the earlier scenes in the mummy where they are trying to race each other across the river and he's like Rick is screaming at Benny like that they're on the right side. Okay. I don't I wasn't I was paying attention to other things in the movie too much to truly give a synopsis. But well, the short story long is that yes, I think I can imagine what was going on at this at this present time in the early 1900s.

Daniel 10:52

Yeah, they were it was it was not great. And I mean, spoiler alert, even the like the there's gonna be constant examples of like people not following the rules even into the the the the Tut discovery.

Angela 11:04

Oh yeah, because Daniel, have you have met humans? Are you aware of how humanity works?

Daniel 11:09

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So okay, just there's this craze of Egyptology. Everyone is like so interested in finding these tombs and everything. Remember, King Tut had been buried, Tutankhamun had been buried in the Valley of the Kings.

Angela 11:23

And no one had heard of him, like he probably had completely disappeared from history at this time.

Daniel 11:28

A little bit, a little bit. They they did see his name written on things in other discoveries in the Valley of the Kings, but remember there was that little bit of maybe some whitewashing of his history because he was part of that whole going away from polytheism to that like raising Aten the god up, and then he undid that. But there were people who kind of wanted to like forget that the whole thing ever happened. Right. So maybe they maybe, but then also because he died early, his his tomb was never as big or or as obvious. They built it into the floor, remember, because they had to they had to uh get his tomb probably last minute from a different a different source, and it was a non-noble tomb. And remember, they also his burial temple, nobody knows where that is. So that had been lost to history as well. So hit that being back to me. So he he went he went hidden, almost like luckily, because think about it, he wanted to be left alone, he wanted to be able to keep living his afterlife.

Angela 12:22

Yeah, honestly, that was working for him probably for the best for a long time.

Daniel 12:26

And remember, they put remember they had those the the bricks with the magic spells in there to help protect him. He had all those amulets to help protect him, they had all those curses, not necessarily curses, the protective inscriptions everywhere, all throughout his tomb. So he was feeling nice and safe.

Angela 12:42

Yeah, except for us like all those protections, all those little amulets had an expiration date.

Daniel 12:50

Let's get back to the Valley of the Kings in the early 1900s. Okay, there was this other guy named Theodore Davis, he was an American Egyptologist. He was studying the valley for a while, and he, after doing it for like a decade plus, he thought he had found everything. He did see some references to a King Tutankhamun and never found King Tutankhamun's tomb, but he maybe thought it didn't exist or thought it had been totally picked clean by robbers, it was just for some reason was no longer there. And it he famously said in 1912, I fear the Valley of the Kings is now exhausted. And so he he was like, I'm giving up, I'm leaving. And it sort of seemed like no one was gonna keep looking there. But then another guy, his name George Edwards Stanhope Molyneux Herbert or Airbell, I don't know.

Angela 13:36

Maybe wait, is this all one person? Did you just name me one person's name? Yes, okay.

Daniel 13:41

I'm not even done.

Angela 13:42

You like became three different people as you were saying.

Daniel 13:45

So, yeah, so his name was George Edwards Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon. That is his full name, yes. He gets involved with this. He was this, he was a another Egyptologist. He was a man born into a high status family. His dad was, I think, the fourth Earl of Carnarvon. He was styled Lord Porchester at birth, which I see I feel like is such an awful name. It makes you mind. Porchester? Like unflattering.

Angela 14:15

How is this spelled?

Daniel 14:17

P-O-R-C-H-E-S-T-E-R. Porchester.

Angela 14:21

Oh, I was thinking it was like, oh, Porchester. Oh no. I was like, okay, well, he came out swimming in. His friends set him up for success.

Daniel 14:30

Either way, he was in like a rich family, and then he married a woman who there's like she's maybe the like an illegitimate daughter of the one of the Ross childs, but was also wealthy. So like just super wealthy.

Angela 14:44

Because based on all of the Wikipedias I have read in my research, these are the exact kind of people who you crack their Wikipedia open and it's just like a premium event. Yeah.

Daniel 14:54

Yeah, yeah. So super, super rich, and he was interested in Egyptology, and he had hired in 1907, he had hired an Egyptologist and explorer, Howard Carter, to perform some excavation at a nearby mortuary complex uh near Thebes. Howard Carter is kind of like the main explorer of this story. Oh, yeah, like he's the Indian, yeah. He's the Indiana Jones of this story. He was born May 9th, 1874, in Kensington, London.

unknown 15:22

Oh.

Daniel 15:23

And um, he was actually an artist originally. Like that was kind of his early start, was he worked doing artist recreations and restorations of Egyptian tombs and all that stuff. Yeah, so it was very cool. He also had joined a government group called the Egyptian Antiquities Service at points. He was like an inspector for them. They're the people who helped try to make sure all the excavations were cataloging, not stealing things, and making sure that they were doing a good job and all that.

Angela 15:47

That's rather rich of the British government, but love it.

Daniel 15:50

I it was uh it was it went from British to and then like the eventually the Egyptian government, right around the 1920s, they started to get a little more um independence and they started to push back during the discovery of King Tut about like locking them out of the tomb and everything. So it started to be the Egyptian government trying to be like wrestling back the control over this stuff. Um, so it's very, very interesting politics through this whole thing, apart from the curse.

Angela 16:13

Oh, yeah. I mean, I can only imagine.

Daniel 16:15

Yeah, yeah. Great story about Howard Carter. He actually kind of had a falling out with all the elites of Egyptology after an event called the Sakara Affair.

Angela 16:24

That sounds so insufferable in its own self-the elites of Egyptology.

Daniel 16:28

Right, yeah. But apparently, some like drunk French tourists ran into the like a dig that was happening and got into it with some of the local workers, and there was like a kind of a fight that happened. And Howard Carter refused to side against the locals, saying, No, the French people were wrong, and it kind of caused like every all the like European people there to hate him. So he wound up having to go to Luxor and he was like working as a freelance artist and just like kind of scraping by. And that's where Lord Carnivan met him and said, Hey, let's do this, uh, this excavation in uh of this temple. So they were doing that for a while, and then when that Davis guy gave up the Valley of the Kings concession, Carnarvon was like, Let's take this and let's go see the Valley of the Kings, let's see if we can find something they missed. They do that for a while, they had to pause for World War One. Um, so after World War I, they come back and for a couple years, like all these years of digging, they really didn't find anything. And so in 1922, Lord Carnarvon was like, Okay, I can't keep doing this. We're not finding anything.

Angela 17:26

This is like one of those things, I feel like this happens a lot in stories where you know that they like hit the big thing, but you kind of lose sight of the fact that like that is wild. They had to stop for World War I. So that's five five years, six.

Daniel 17:38

Uh and they stopped from like 19, I think, 14 through 1970, or like 1915 through 17. Yeah, the war started in 1913, yeah.

Angela 17:45

They started out already being like, we're just like, you know, hope, prayer, and a dream here. This thing is probably already cashed, but we're still gonna keep looking. That's wild that they kept on going, because I'm gonna guarantee there was funding involved and all kinds of things.

Daniel 18:00

So I guess they almost stopped.

Angela 18:03

That's cool that they ended up finding something.

Daniel 18:06

But well, in 1922, Lord Carnarvon was like, I'm stopping this. We we I can't keep paying this, we need to end this. Howard Carter convinced him I will pay for the there's one more section that of this area. It was near some worker huts and where a lot of like flood debris had fallen. And he said, I will pay for the excavation of this, the clearing of this area, if you keep like paying for the whole like you know, the the the dig to continue. So he agreed to take on some of the costs. Um, so some of the people that helped with this, the the actual physical labor of clearing this were Ahmed Garagar, God Hassan, Hussein Abu Awad, and Hussein Ahmed Said. They were like the foremen of the labor crew, and this was like a a a team of Egyptian laborers who did they cleared all I mean, they cleared literally like tons and tons of rubble, and they were the ones And you naming them doesn't sound ominous to them at all. No, actually, uh the curse does not seem to go after any people of Egyptian ancestry or yeah heritage. These are all Europeans that are gonna be eventual victims. Oh, okay. That labor team was clearing out this area. There were these huts where the workers for other tombs had been built. So there was a lot of like debris, construction rubble, and just stuff from like thousand like hundreds of years of work. And so they were clearing that away and they started digging the way on November 1st, 1922. Only three days later, on November 4th, they uh a team of workers uh uncovered a step leading into the ground, into the the valley floor. Oh, yeah, it's like a uh stone slab step. There's some stories that it was like a water boy or like a single boy digging outside of an approved area to make it seem a little more mysterious. That doesn't seem to be real at all. It was just they were looking, they found it. It's not, you know, it's still amazing. They almost did give up this season, and it was like their last chance, and then they they found this step and they started clearing away, you know, beneath it, and they dug down and it led to a staircase leading to a doorway down at the bottom of a staircase under the valley floor. On that doorway was uh something called a cartouche, it's like an oval shaped hieroglyphic, but it's like a royal name tag. So they saw that and they thought, oh wow, this could be a tomb, you know, a royal tomb. They did not know it at the time, but that was Tutankhamun's cartouche that they did not realize it that day of, but they they realized we have something here, and right.

Angela 20:22

Because I'm assuming throughout the valley they were finding these cartouches in other tombs. So they kind of like knew what they what it was.

Daniel 20:29

And there were mentions of a King Tutankhamun in other places in the valley. They just they thought maybe they had already found his tomb and it wasn't that great, or it was lost. So once they found this, they stopped and Carter sent uh a telegram to Lord Carnarvon, who is back in England, and he sent a telegram saying, at last have made wonderful discovery in Valley, a magnificent tomb with seals intact, recovered, same for your arrival. Congratulations. So they you they they covered it up and and then they waited. And so Lord Carnarvon and some other folks, I'll go through these are like the main people of the the X the excavation team. They all came to Egypt to start really the nearly decade-long process of uncovering everything in this tomb.

Angela 21:10

I didn't realize it took that long. I don't know. I guess I've kind of gotten the movie magic version of it where it's like everything is happening very quickly, and it sounds like it sounds like only one thing happened very quickly, which was that little three-day turnaround. Good for them.

Daniel 21:23

So 19 days later, on November 23rd, after the November 4th discovery of the stair, Lord Canarvran arrived in Luxer with his daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert. One note about her is she was the smallest member physically of the people doing the excavation. So she is the first person who entered the burial chamber, it is said, um, because she was the one small enough to crawl through a little hole that they had made. Um, poor girl.

Angela 21:48

Like, I guess brave girl, but also like, okay.

Daniel 21:52

I know, I would be like, no, thank you.

Angela 21:54

Yeah, like I'm gonna I'm gonna sit back for this one. I'm gonna set this out and let you guys deal with it.

Daniel 21:58

Yeah. So she was there. With her father. Then Howard Carter reached out to a man named Arthur Callender. He was a friend and a retired colleague of his. Carter asked him to help after the initial discovery. He made it there a few days later and he acted as Carter's assistant. There was another guy who was crucial on the dig, Arthur Crutenden Mace. He was an Egyptian excavation staff member of the Metropolitan Museum. His boss at the Met essentially loaned him out to the dig and said, Yes, we want to be involved with this. I'm going to send the, you know, Oh, like in New York City, the Met? Yeah, yeah, the Met. Yes. The Metro. Yes, yes. So he got there in December, December 25th, actually. So he arrived on Christmas Day and he helped with cataloging, preserving, and shipping artifacts.

Angela 22:38

I'm acting like this is such an adorable situation when we're talking about curses.

Daniel 22:42

Yeah, I know, right? Yeah, yeah. Oh, how sweet.

Angela 22:44

How good for them.

Daniel 22:46

Yeah, I know. Uh, he and a chemist, Alfred Lucas, established a makeshift laboratory in a nearby tomb, which I think is insane. So they had this like chemistry laboratory in its ancient tomb that had already been cleared out, which is a little like, ooh, what are you doing?

Angela 23:00

Okay.

Daniel 23:00

Yeah. Again, everybody is just setting themselves up for success around here. And then there was a guy named Harry Burton. He was the photographer. So he is every amazing photograph. There's so many cool photographs of all the stuff they found in there. He was doing this amazing photography work back then. He was using these huge, crazy lights. He would reflect the sun into the tomb and he took thousands of photos. And he was part of like all these photos coming back, helped fuel. There was a media hysteria. The minute that they found out about this tomb, newspaper articles started going crazy.

Angela 23:33

Go at that, yeah.

Daniel 23:34

Like I said, this A team kind of assembled.

Angela 23:36

They started doing the dig, but wouldn't you say they're a C team curse?

Daniel 23:41

Cursed team. Yeah, they were about to be cursed team. Oh my god.

Angela 23:44

Can I get through one single episode without saying something stupid?

Daniel 23:48

But everyone's there. They're ready to actually like open the tomb. They opened the door, and uh they realized that the cartouche, once they fully were like clearing the door away and the frame and everything, they realized it was Tutan Commons cartouche. So they're like, holy crap, we think we found Tutan Commons' tomb. They were pretty confident. The passageway behind that door was a big long hallway filled with like rubble and debris and like old some artifacts with a different king from like much later. His name was over it. So they're like, oh, maybe they used this stuff at the time of this guy to fill this in. And so they what they think is that there were some initial early grave robberies. And they think that back in in ancient Egypt still, they realized the grave robbery had happened, they've put things back, and then they resealed it and filled it back in to try to deter future grave robberies. And they think they would have then maybe intentionally hid the door and the staircase. So there was potentially some intentional hiding of that after some initial grave robberies. And we'll get into the they they find later, they they think they understand how far the first grave robbers got into the tomb from Edinburgh.

Angela 24:50

Oh, that is so interesting.

Daniel 24:52

Yeah, yeah.

Angela 24:52

And because, yeah, of course, I'm sure that everybody in ancient Egypt, even back when these tombs were being filled, like it wouldn't take a whole lot of putting two and two together to realize there is a gold mine under the ground and humans are greedy, we can't help ourselves.

Daniel 25:06

And there were even, I think there's even times. Remember when I said ancient Egypt had those periods kind of like kingdoms and those those instable intermediary periods? During some of those intermediary periods or some of the less stable times, they were just like officially saying, like, we need this gold, and they were like raiding.

Angela 25:22

Oh, I can imagine. I'm sure that those times got pretty dire.

Daniel 25:25

So Tutankhamun being in that underground hidden tomb is like very fortuitous for him. It just kind of was like almost like obviously very unfortunate he died at 18, 19, however old he was. But his his kind of unexpected death helped him stay.

Angela 25:41

Because otherwise, he would have been in the Valley of the Kings, and we would have his everything would have been found much sooner or robbed.

Daniel 25:48

Exactly. And this will be, they're getting into what will be the best preserved Egyptian pharaoh tomb. Like it's debatable, but like widely considered to be the the most well preserved, the most voluminous, the most like just having the most stuff and and being like one of the best examples ever of them. So it was who we would you're right, we never know. So they cleared that passageway and they got to a second sealed door. But they think for sure grave robbers made it first up that first door, they think they made it through the second door as well. So this had already been opened. Like they're if they weren't the first people ever to open this up and be like unsealing a curse, very likely, but they still were, you know, disturbing King Tuts too. Right. Carter, Calendar, Lord Carnarvon, and Lady Evelyn were the four people who opened the second door and went into the the next room. That room will be called the antechamber. It was filled with stuff. Remember, we remember ancient Egyptians thought that they needed to give people what they needed in the afterlife. So it's filled with clothes, everyday items, chariots, fashion things, food, religious texts, just everything you could think they need. So it was just filled with the things.

Angela 26:56

So, like basically a just like clean and clear window into just about everything from those times that you would want to know. Like what was the fashion? What was I'm sure didn't you say they were like a bunch of books and stuff that were in the next tomb as well? So you could probably yeah, yeah. I'm sure it was just an absolute trove of exact information.

Daniel 27:17

Yeah, reportedly uh Carter peered through the second door when they were opening it, and Carnarvon said, Can you see anything? And he just said, Yes, wonderful things. So it's just like they were, they were, you know, they knew they were like, Holy crap, we are finding some amazing stuff. Um, so they made it through this antechamber. A lot of stuff had Tutankhamun's name on it. So they were like, Okay, we're feeling very confident we are in Tutankhamun's burial tomb. Now, remember when I said he was on the bottom of the floor and some natural flooding had helped hide the top as well, because natural flooding had given debris. That natural flooding also meant water had been getting into this uh tomb for thousands of years. So there was apparently like a lot of the wood pieces had been warped and everything was covered in like a pink film.

Angela 28:01

Ew, like mold. Basically, like someone are we gonna be at the end of this episode asking ourselves if it was a curse or just mold poisoning?

Daniel 28:10

There there are that is that is a theory. We'll get to it. But there is ourselves, there was pink slime on stuff.

Angela 28:19

Ew. I would have been like, you know what? No, and turned around and gone back up.

Daniel 28:25

And now remember, so in on top of all the just like everyday goods and all the things he'd need and all like the stuff to help sustain his afterlife, they also had protective items. There were those magic bricks we talked about. They remember there were like four different bricks placed in different corners with spells. There were protective amulets and protective statues throughout. I also found a um 2025 article about some, they think there are these other things that originally they thought they were bases for giant staffs to rest in, but some new archaeologists have thought that they were part of a different ritual to add uh protection from Osiris called the Awakening of Osiris, and it was essentially a different funerary ritual to add more protection on a tut. So it's just like all they were doing was trying to protect him in his afterlife. So they were very serious, like, leave me alone.

Angela 29:17

Okay, I was gonna say, is all this protection like people stay out? Like protection from invasion of this tomb, or was it like protection of your soul in the afterlife so that you can make your full transition peacefully?

Daniel 29:29

It's pretty both. I mean remember we said there were, remember there were those people who did have like you will be cursed and you will not inherit, and you I will like kill you. So those Egyptians did believe in that. There isn't any specific thing like that in Tatsum. We'll get to a there's a whole news article, and everyone thinks there is an inscription, but there is not. There is no actual inscription saying like you're gonna die if you open here. There are protective spells. There are things that they said we want to make sure that he's protected in afterlife. And I mean, I, you know, protective things might take on uh, you know, that aspect. It's it's not clear exactly how they imagined these protective right, uh, these protective magics working.

Angela 30:14

I mean Well, I'm assuming that grave robbing was probably a thing from the very beginning, and he was not the first, you know, pharaoh or anything of Egypt. So yeah, I'm gonna answer my own question, which you have already answered for me, and just say, of course, I'm sure it was protective against disruption of the tomb.

Daniel 30:32

Okay, so they get into the antechamber, and inside there they could see a door, another door going into another chamber. At this point, they were like technically, I think they weren't supposed to open the door. There's a lot going on about what happened because they were supposed to let the official authorities come and do like the first viewing and inspection of everything. But there's this idea that they opened it up and looked in there and made sure that it was like the burial tomb and that it hadn't been robbed. And they supposedly did that, looked in there. There's also some theories that they maybe took some items. We'll get to that later. But they they supposedly resealed it after confirming it was King Tutankhamun's tomb, and then they were like, okay, we have to wait. They saw the shrine and it was inscripted, and they they thought, okay, we have this. So then they resealed it and then they went and waited for the official inspection. But around this time is the first moment that really people started to become scared of a curse because what happened is something it's called the Cobra and Canary story. I've heard two different versions of it, but it essentially comes down to Howard Carter had a pet canary, and sometime, probably they say the day of the first opening, a cobra got into its cage and killed it. And a cobra is the sign of protection among ancient Egyptians, and you'll often see there are you know crowns with cobras on them.

Angela 31:51

Right, yeah.

Daniel 31:52

And this is that moment there's in 1922, does the December 22nd edition of the New York Times relayed this story and said the locals were like terrified of this happening. Yeah. And so there's different stories of how it happened. One, it was at a dinner party, the other, like a messenger had to go run an errand and heard a shrieking cry and went in and saw it. But supposedly, Carter's canary was killed by a cobra, which I mean, from ominous things, I would be like, I am getting the hell out of here.

Angela 32:19

Yeah, because I mean, nobody in their right mind is going into this tomb being like, nothing bad could ever happen. Like, I literally thought you were gonna say when they opened the door to the tomb room, like, like if it were a movie, someone's like skin would have like melted off of their face and like a like an acid breeze would have come out of the room. Um, but it's like, yeah, there's no like I don't understand how people can somehow talk their brains into such a level of hubris that they would go into that and not be like, oh, I'm probably fucked. Like there is definitely going to be some weighing of the scales here. Like, they are not getting out of that thing unscathed, unscathed if they're going to be disrupting an entire tomb. Like, all it takes is a couple spell bricks to make me be like, zoop, out. Bye. Like, I don't, you could grab a couple things from that first room, be on your merry way, and call it.

Daniel 33:11

Yeah.

Angela 33:12

But no, of course, they could not ever do such a thing as that.

Daniel 33:16

Exactly. And this this Cobra and the Curse story is like the beginning of the media frenzy, it really kicks off from here. And Lord Carnarvon had given exclusive reporting rights to a single reporter from The Times, the Times of London, um, Arthur Merton. And there was another reporter named Arthur Weigel, who was a correspondent for the Daily Mail. He was also an Egyptologist, he was also at times worked with that the government agencies. This guy becomes important. He clearly was like pissed about that, the exclusive agreement. And he's one of the people that told this story. And in his story, he claims that the cobra was the royal cobra retaliating against Carter for opening the tomb. So he's explicitly saying this cobra is like. Yeah, this guy was real bitter. Anyway, so by um by February 16th of 1923, the following year, the official inspection of that burial chamber happened.

Angela 34:12

And who inspected it? I guess, like, because you said that the curse doesn't seem to impact Egyptians. Was it Egyptians who did the actual inspection or was it?

Daniel 34:21

Uh at most I would, I'm, I wouldn't, I'm not sure because it seems like a lot of the officials with this group, A, this is when it was kind of changing to be more Egyptian controlled because Egyptian was sort of getting independence in the 19 early 1920s. But it was still like, I mean, Howard Carter was one of these inspectors at one point in his career. So it was probably a mixture of people, but probably a bunch of Europeans. I don't know anything about the team itself who uh who inspected uh they they don't really appear, but that inspection happened, and so they then they were allowed to like fully open everything up. They decided or they realized that um this was the best and most intact burial chamber in the Valley of the Kings.

Angela 34:57

They started like undoing these nesting eggs of shrines, and yeah, like the famous ones that we know of, the famous sarcophagi, yeah.

Daniel 35:04

And so they eventually get down and they they you know it's the sarcophagus, and then the there's like golden coffin after coffin after coffin, and then inside was was Tutankhamun's mummy, and so they they confirmed we have found Tutankhamun's uh burial chamber.

Angela 35:18

I wonder how many years in that was. Like it took them 10 years to excavate the tomb. How long was it when they actually found the mummy?

Daniel 35:25

Oh, though they well, they found the mummy in 1923, they knew it was there, and so that's yeah, they they confirmed it was the mummy was still there, and like it was there, and the world was like so interested in this. Like every discovery was getting reported on, and it was you know a huge, huge, huge deal. Even in Egypt, it started to become like a national pride symbol for them. Like people started to be like, we should take national identity in our past, and it kind of became like a wave of nationalism in in Egypt itself. So Europeans were crazed about it, Egyptians were getting really interested in it as like reclaiming their history and their you know, uh their narrative and all that. So the first entry into the burial chamber was in 1923, but there was also another room called the Treasury, they sealed that off so they could worry about it later. They waited until 1927 to enter that room because they took four years essentially doing the antechamber and the burial chamber.

Angela 36:17

Which is crazy because like I think I struggle with like scale and understanding like the impact. Four years. It took them four years just to get through like rooms of this. Not to say they were so huge, but that's wild that it would have taken them that long to be getting from room to room.

Daniel 36:35

Yep. So they did this official first entrance into the burial chamber in February 1923.

Angela 36:42

And wait, when did they first originally discover everything?

Daniel 36:45

1922. So within a year or November of 1922, so within six months, so November of 1922, they found the step. February 1923, they have got the official inspection, they've gone into the burial chamber, they know Tut is in there, and they say or they yeah, they believe Tut is still in, they didn't actually see the mummy yet, they didn't uncover everything, but they say these are undisturbed shrines.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

Right.

Daniel 37:07

And one day right after that, Lord Carnarvon gets bit in the cheek by a mosquito. Probably not a big deal, but then he's shaving and he cuts that mosquito bite, and then he starts to feel sick, and about a month later, April 5th, 1923, he dies of blood poisoning.

Angela 37:24

Oh my god, like how old was he?

Daniel 37:26

He was 56 when he died, so not old. He was he did have bouts of frail health.

Angela 37:31

So is Lord Carnarvon's death considered to be really with with the exception of this Cobra and Canary situation, is that really like the kickoff of the curse?

Daniel 37:44

Yes, Carnarvon's death is like I mean the canary and the the cobra happened before, but the minute that the guy funding it ended up.

Angela 37:51

Oh yeah, I guarantee that m I mean that would have been sensational. That would have been absolutely I mean it's like I'm sure that was huge.

Daniel 38:01

Let's I've got some examples of the the media surrounding. Ooh, yes. So crazy enough, before he died, but while he was sick, a famous uh famous author, Marie Corelli, she wrote a letter that was published in New York World magazine that said that she suspected that dire punishment was waiting for those that disturbed the sealed tomb. She said, I cannot but think some risks are run by breaking into the last resting place of a king of Egypt, whose tomb is specially and solemnly guarded and robbing him of his possessions, according to a rare book I possess entitled The Egyptian History of the Pyramids, the most dire punishment follows, and rash intruded into the sealed tomb. The book names secret poisons enclosed in boxes in such wise that those who touch them shall not know how they come to suffer. That is why I ask, was it a mosquito bite that has so seriously infected Lord Canavrin?

Angela 38:58

Okay, I am on this girl's side. I have to say I am definitely morally conflicted by the idea of us going and We're essentially I mean, they were raiding these tombs. All I mean for hundreds of years, they were raiding these tombs, and I guess like it is knowledge and learning and whatnot, but at the same time literally what have we gained from disturbing these tombs besides filling up our museums with stuff that we well, we have a we have a better understanding of ancient society. I mean, I guess, but like at such I'm on I'm on the side of like they made it, they did not want these tombs to be disrupted, and it was religious to them and it meant something. And I just feel like um it's like we put locks on our doors for reasons. It's like somebody walking into your home and being like, but no, you have a TV I want. I want to watch your TV. I'm walking into your house and I'm going to take your TV because I want it, and I would be like helpless to stop it because what? Like, that's essentially well, I'll find a way.

unknown 40:07

Okay.

Angela 40:08

Um, but yeah, I don't know. I'm dead and I'm I'm laying on my bed with my hands crossed over my chest and they're just like robbing me blind. That's not, I don't think it's ethical. I mean, I know that the ethical conversation has been had for years and years and years to come, and prior to this as well. But I'm on this chick's side. I like her little letter.

Daniel 40:27

It definitely people were just enthralled by it. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle chimed in saying that he thought that elementals that were conjured to protect the tomb had killed Carnarvon. Arthur Weigel, the guy that I was telling you about, he got involved and said that the day they opened the tomb, he says he had seen Lord Carnarvon joking around and laughing and being like jovial. And he apparently leaned over to a reporter near him and said, if he goes down in that spirit, I give him six weeks to live.

Angela 40:56

Oh god.

Daniel 40:58

So um there were also reports of a matching cheek wound found on Tutankhamun's body that has likely never been. That sounds so sensational, but I'm also I just love like little bits of irony. They were going with it, and they also reports that all the lights in Cairo went out when he died. Also, reports that his dog back in England shrieked out and died at the same time. Crazy things. Oh my god. I know. So the the media was going nuts with this.

Angela 41:30

Oh my god, yeah.

Daniel 41:31

And this is you'll start to see reports of supposedly there was a quote, you know, about this curse saying, quote, death shall come on swift wings to him who disturbs the peace of the king, or something like, they who entered this sacred tomb shall swift be visited by wings of death.

Angela 41:49

So you'll see a grammatical error. It should be he. Yeah, I know. So I'm going to negate that and say it cannot be true. Somebody needed to crack an English book.

Daniel 42:01

Yes, but uh, well, I could debate, you could debate if it's a if it's an object or the subject in that sense of it. I know. Don't just tell Daniel.

Angela 42:14

I'm I'm I'm baiting you. I'm sorry.

Daniel 42:17

Yeah, exactly. Anyway, anyway, so they were going nuts with it. And like that when I was said that there was that thing called Egyptomania, it was basically Tut Mania at this point. Like that's when people know the name.

Angela 42:28

I feel like even into our childhoods, I I don't like honestly, I don't have any recollection of anything else that has come forth from the Valley of the Kings or anything. Um, but like I remember in our own in our childhood learning all about Tut and Tut Mania, and we were kids in the 90s, you know.

Daniel 42:45

Yeah, yeah. I mean, uh the if you think ancient Egypt, it's Tut and Cleopatra are the two from the pyramids, Sphinx. Like though they're synonymous, maybe Ramsey's a little bit, but still, yeah.

Angela 42:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Daniel 42:55

So and but I mean, things like Agatha Christie in 1924, she had a a story, a novella, I believe, called The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb, and it featured a mysterious, some like an excavation dig with people dying mysteriously. There's the mummy, a movie in 1932.

Angela 43:12

I'm sorry, what?

Daniel 43:13

No, not not your movie. I know, I knew I was gonna like I knew you were gonna jump out of your heartbeat and my eyes got wide. Yes, I know, but this was maybe your OG crush could have been Boris Karloff, but in the original The Mummy in 1932, it's an explicit plot point of like a pharaoh's tomb opened up, and then like the curse of the pharaoh kills the people that open it. So it's just like the media loved this idea and they went with it. Lord Carnarvon died, and it was like, I mean, that's pretty the dude died.

SPEAKER_02 43:43

Yeah.

Daniel 43:43

And then, um, so they continue doing a bunch of work. Uh, you know, they eventually unwrapped catalog Tut's body. That remember I talked about they did all the like the eventual scientific studies on how he may have died. That's a butt, you know, all that work was able to be done because of that. Um Um took obviously years and years.

Angela 44:02

Well, I think that work is even still ongoing. There's still news stories coming out about things, findings from the study of his body.

Daniel 44:08

Yeah. Yeah. Um, they but they did all this stuff and it's sort of like, I don't know, leave his body alone. They like un they disassembled his body. So all said and done, I mean, obviously years of work, amazing work done by them. All said and done, there were 5,398 distinct objects cataloged from the tomb. It's estimated that about a quarter of them were damaged beyond repair.

Angela 44:29

So beyond, you know, just water damage, pink slime. Yeah.

Daniel 44:33

Most most of the artifacts today are in the Egyptian museum in Cairo, which is great. Uh, they it's which is about one-sixth of the museum's total exhibits in Cairo are from Tutankhamun's tomb.

SPEAKER_02 44:45

Oh.

Daniel 44:46

So all this work was going on, and but the story of the curse can like was obviously things happen. I'm just gonna run down a list of the supposed victims of the curse of by my case by case. The most notable, besides obviously Lord Carnarvon, the main guy, was probably Arthur Cruton Mace. Remember, I we talked about him and he was one of the main workers. So he had been working there for years, he worked on the excavations for years. He he left the team in 1924 because his health started to fail him. And he eventually he went back to England and also spent time in the French Riviera trying to trying to like recuperate his health, but he died of pneumonia in 1928. Also, Mervyn Herbert is Lord Carnarvon's half-brother. He traveled to the tomb for the first opening in November of 1922. There was like, you know, a big media ceremony and everything, so he was there for it. He died in Rome of pneumonia caused by malaria in 1929, also at a young age. So years later, but a young age. Um, also, Aubrey Herbert, another of Carnivorin's half-brothers, so he never visited the tomb, but only five months after Lord Carnarvon passed away, he also died at a relatively young age. Apparently, he had uh eyesight issues. He, I think he was fully blind or nearly blind, and apparently a doctor suggested that he have all his teeth removed to help his eyes, and then complications from what the I know.

Angela 46:07

I was like And he was like, sounds plausible, Yanko.

Daniel 46:12

Yeah, he had an infection and died from that.

Angela 46:14

So that happened-the curse, not a curse related to anything Egyptian, just a curse of man's own misunderstanding of the human body and how things work.

Daniel 46:25

Yeah, wild. Um, another another person, George J. Gould, an American businessman and railroad executive, he visited the tomb uh on while on vacation in Egypt in the early 1920s. Pretty much immediately after visiting, he fell ill and contracted pneumonia. He went to the French Riviera as well to try to rest, but then died uh a few months later in May of 1923.

Angela 46:48

Wait, how do they think that Kegentut died? What if he died of pneumonia?

Daniel 46:52

They think, remember, they there's evidence that he had malaria, infectious malaria, and there's evidence of that bro the broken bone, which probably likely led to many health or you know, healthcare.

Angela 47:04

Like pneumonia.

Daniel 47:06

Um, so just a little weird. Uh another guy, Richard Bethel, he acted as a secretary on the excavation and was on the what the initial team. He had a series of mysterious fires in his home, uh, where he had been storing some items that he from the tomb that he had taken. But then he eventually died in November of 1929 at a gentleman's club in London under a suspected smothering. And there's like there are those reports that some people think that do you ever know, have you ever heard of Aleister Crowley?

SPEAKER_02 47:38

No.

Daniel 47:39

He's a whole other we can't get into Aleister Crowley now, but this really weird fucking guy, this like occultist, like religious leader, there's people who think he didn't like the Tut Mania because it was like he wanted those religious ideas for himself, and he there's people who think he tried to make the curse real by murdering. This is just like wild speculation. There's no evidence he got involved, but there's people who think he maybe murdered Richard Bethel to like effectuate the curse in reality.

Angela 48:05

I have a sexy little question. What exactly was this man's mother by in a gentleman's club?

Daniel 48:13

I don't know.

Angela 48:13

I don't know.

Daniel 48:14

I don't know.

unknown 48:15

Nope.

Angela 48:16

I'm going to embellish the story in my head that he just got a little too much, too much of the the good stuff.

Daniel 48:23

Maybe. Okay, well, Richard Bethel's father, Lord Westbury, so these these were some fancy people. Um, his dad died by suicide only a few months later, and he reportedly in his apartment at the time he, I think, jumped from his apartment, he had artifacts from the tomb that his son had given him. Um there's another Sir Archibald Douglas Reed, he was a radiologist who was invited to come x-ray Tutankhamun's body. But he, because he was an early radiologist, he was suffering from radiation dermatitis due to exposure of radiation to his hands. So he went to Switzerland to try to rest up and feel better before he went to Egypt. Um but he died of complications. So just being invited to uh to work out.

Angela 49:08

That one's a stretch.

Daniel 49:09

I'm just these these are the things that the newspapers went with. They talked about like Tutan commons scientist dies. Um then there's Hugh Evelyn White. He was a British archaeologist who definitely who visited and probably assisted with some of the excavations. He at least visited for sure. Um he died by suicide in a taxi on the way to be a witness about the death of a woman that he knew, and he allegedly wrote saying that the curse had come to get him finally and it was like ruining his life.

Angela 49:39

Um I'm not gonna pry any like my brain is like committed suicide in a taxi, but I don't want to know.

Daniel 49:47

So much of this seems just like wild, wild, irresponsible reporting, to be honest. But I it's it's so hard to uncover what you know was happening. Um another guy, Aaron Ember, he was a friend of many of the people who worked on the excavations. He was a fellow Egyptologist, and he had supposedly gotten some items from them. He and his whole family and their maid all died in a horrible house fire in their Baltimore home in 1926. And he was reportedly working on a manuscript at the time called the Egyptian Book of the Dead. So he is also considered one of these like famous people getting a little too close to it and then dying. Um, another suit, Sir Bruce Ingham, he received a paperweight from Carter that reportedly had a mummified hand in it, which is just like inside. I don't know. I feel like this can't be true, but I saw it in multiple places noted. So that's what people said.

Angela 50:43

Well, I mean, if we recall back to the absolutely unassailable hubris of these men, yeah, something tells me that a mummified hand inside of a paperweight isn't far outside their scope of ridiculous.

Daniel 50:54

Yeah, but then they also supposedly had a bracelet inscribed saying, Cursed be he who moves my body. So I think this one might be just nonsense from newspapers and tabloids. He didn't die, but his house did burn down. And then when it was being rebuilt, it flooded. So he got fire and water.

Angela 51:11

Wait, what did the bracelet say?

Daniel 51:13

It said, Cursed be he who moves my body.

Angela 51:16

I feel like I could modernize that phrase into like a sweatshirt, and it could mean like cur. I don't know, I'm not gonna go down this path.

Daniel 51:28

Good lord. But no, I wanted if you got a paperweight with a mummified hand in it, I'd be like, okay, this is going on my top of my regifting list.

Angela 51:37

Like, no, you don't know this is going on the top of my like maybe we need to take a break in this friendship list.

SPEAKER_02 51:43

Yeah, yeah.

Angela 51:44

Like, if you gave me a mum, like a paperweight with a mummified hand in it, I would just be like, I don't know this person at all. Dang it's kind of weird.

Daniel 51:53

Like, oh my god.

Angela 51:54

I would literally go to our entire friend group and be like, guys, I think it's time that we maybe part ways. And I would be warranted.

Daniel 52:03

I mean, valid. Okay, two final people I saw mentioned as as victims of the curse, but I mean, already some of these were getting very specious at best. One of them is Arthur Weigel, that reporter.

Angela 52:17

Um, apparently the one who was pissed or the one who was chosen.

Daniel 52:20

The guy who the one who said that he said if Conarveran's going down like that, I give him six weeks to live. Um they say that uh because he was constantly reporting on this and talking about the curse, that he he died in 1934, so 12 years after the discovery, but at age 53, he died early. I couldn't find his official cause of death, but many people just like to say that he's like kind of the one of the final victims of the curse. It kind of like finished by going back and getting him because he was the one who talked about it. And then the final would be Howard Carter, who I can't even imagine why anyone would say he himself was a victim, but some people like to claim just the fact that he died in six he he died in 1939 at the age of 64, a little young, but not really. Yeah. And some people say it's the curse, but it's like, I don't know about that. The only thing I would say that he's kind of being cursed in his own way is that his like reputation is kind of becoming that people are starting to look at some of the stuff he did and like and and like you know, and and uh be more critical of like the way they handled some of the stuff. And for example, in 2022, a Guardian article came out that uh had some revelations from letters from people that like made it very clear that Howard Carter had stolen, uh officially stolen and kept items and like given them to people. And there was a guy he gave a stolen artifact to, and then that guy showed it to another, you know, scholar that he knew, and that guy was like, Oh, this is stolen from King Tuton Commons tomb. So in a letter this guy wrote to Howard Carter that eventually became known, he the guy he he wrote, which to me is like the shadiest little like you fucked up, and I'm so pissed at you, but I'm the classiest person. He literally says, I deeply regret having been placed in so awkward a position, which I think is just like the nicest. But like, why did you do this to me?

Angela 54:13

Like, I oh the guy who received the stolen item. Yes, the guy who received the item was like, I regret being put in this awkward space if like he ran it through AI a few times, like he probably started with something so like so gnarly, and it was like make this more professional, make this nicer.

Daniel 54:34

Yeah, yeah.

Angela 54:34

So I mean, he's kind of just in general, like people are starting to be a little more critical, as yeah, as they should be, because I mean, as I have clearly previously already stated my stance on this.

Daniel 54:45

But um, so in the end, it I to me it seems like it it's just the media saw a couple people die. I mean, a couple people die of of malaria and pneumonia.

Angela 54:56

I'm a little pissed because I feel like I feel like I think if I were King Tut, not to say I am in any way, shape, or form, but if I were King Tut, I would be definitely pulling some much shistier cursed shit.

Daniel 55:14

Yeah, I I agree. I think if it was a true curse, it would be more than a couple people. I there's a there's a quote.

Angela 55:21

I don't think I've mentioned this, but there's a movie that came out in the late 90s, and in that movie There's a curse of the movie. All about a curse that is unleashed when a team of excavators goes and they try to uncover it was um it was it wasn't a pharaoh, but it was like his high priest who had fallen in love with the have you heard of that movie before? He fell in love with the pharaohs who starts in the mood! Could it be could it be a guy like Brandon something? But you know what is interesting, and I am not j Brandon Daniel. Don't speak ill.

Daniel 55:59

I'm just messing with you.

Angela 56:00

No, but isn't it interesting though that her name is Evelyn, Rachel Vice? Yeah, yeah, and there is a character whose eyes, like he's blinded. Granted, he keeps his teeth, but he is blinded by like the the mummy is taking all of the different things to regenerate his body by like we've all seen this movie. So I don't really need to keep explaining.

Daniel 56:24

Remember, he needed his senses. Remember, we had that opening of the mouth ceremony back in the last episode that gave you your senses in your afterlife. Yeah, that they those movies they kind of they obviously they like took huge license, but they some of the stuff they were doing was they were taking from his dad.

Angela 56:38

Yeah, I feel like I feel like King Tut should have popped a DVD or two into the old DVD um player and gotten some better ideas. I like the I like the trick with the with the pneumonia, but Tut babe, like okay.

Daniel 56:54

One thing though, I did there were people who tried to say it could have been like an infectious agent. Remember that pink slime?

Angela 57:00

Yes, yeah.

Daniel 57:00

I there was a 1985 LA Times article literally titled Curses Fungus Dispels the Myth of the Curses of King Tut 2. Perfect for us. But uh all the reading I really did on that, there's no real there's no like real consensus that there's any proof that there was anything that could have done that.

Angela 57:18

Look at how detrimental black mold is, and this stuff has been festering for a thousand years.

Daniel 57:23

Okay, but of the two there's a pretty important statistic here. Uh, there was a uh this guy, Herbert Eustace Wicklock, the curator of Egyptology for the Met and a friend of Howard Carter, he said, of the 26 people present at the opening of Tutankhamun's burial chamber, six had died within ten years, while twenty were still alive. Of the 22 people present for the opening of his sarcophagus, only two had died. And of the 10 present at the unwrapping of the mummy, we are all still alive. So he was just kind of saying, like, look at the numbers. There is a tomb that was uncovered in 1973 in Poland of King Casimir the Fourth. A team of 12 people, 10 of them died shortly after, and that was they proved or very likely they found a specific spungle four that killed them.

Angela 58:08

So it is I was gonna I was gonna say we could do an episode, which we could.

Daniel 58:12

Yeah, I mean we could still get that that story was. I mean, that tab is opened on my page. I it was an interesting story. There's just, I mean, we're already far over time now. But I do want to give you, I want to give you one final important thing that just is some breaking news that just happened about wildly, Angela. Like very recently, within a month, there was a letter that came to light from Howard Carter that talked about King Tut's curse. So I can't believe we just happened to be talking about it. So timely, yes. Right. And apparently he said he had been all talking about another friend of theirs, someone else who had died, and you know, expressing his grief over that person's death. And then he said, I fear I must admit that I have not the same sentiments with regard to Weigel. In fact, his death is a real blessing. For although he was a clever writer, he was cunning, his inventions had no basis and thus a menace to archaeology. Those of them for temporary excitement and amusement at the expense of others. The Tutan common curse was his invention. Oh he was never at the opening of the discovery, he was the last of the correspondents to arrive several minutes afterwards. But enough of this venom, I must direct a more pleasant subject. So he Howard Carter basically just saying, Arthur Weigel made this shit up, he reported it all, it's not.

Angela 59:40

Yeah, which I agree because honestly, a lot of it does sound a little like this curse sounds a little light on the ground. It's sort of as like a ger like a newspaper wanting to sell papers. It's their dream to be able to attach like cursed happenings to something like this. I think when we uh talked last on the last episode, we were saying that there's so much of this cursing and so much of this is prevalent that I am hopeful that maybe there was some sort of magic that no longer exists in the world because I don't think that they would have continued on and built such a strong practice and tradition around it if nothing had ever happened. Although we talk about this in every single episode that, like, is something happening because of a curse or just because bad things happen in the world. So who's to say it could just be an absolute, you know, like snowball of things over many thousands of years? I'm gonna say I don't think it's a curse, but I wish it was. So that is, I think, the true for me. I like example of cursed-ish. What do you think?

Daniel 1:00:49

So to me, I I do not believe there is no Pharaoh's curse. If they cursed anything, I think it was protective. They wanted to make sure Tutankhamun had what he needed to successfully complete what he needed to do in the duot to have his his parts of his soul cut reach, you know, peace, completion, and to to to essentially move on. I the only curse I see here is frankly, I think Tutankhamun got cursed. People disrupted his slumber. I I feel like I don't obviously believe in that religion, but I still feel bad that what they wanted for him and what he would have wanted for himself got messed with. And I I will say what one good thing about it is his story, obviously, is great. I mean, people being interested in ancient Egypt, if we treat it with respect, is a good thing. If we treat it with admiration and and the you know, treat it like something that we shouldn't disturb, we shouldn't steal and plunder and you know, turn into and commodify and all that. I think that's good. I think it's good for us to have a better view of the world and the history of humanity. But I I it bums me out that they hauled his body out and ripped it apart. And I know I, you know, I just am clint conflicted on that. But I will say there is one very, very good thing that I it it helps me feel a little bit of peace about that whole conflicted part. I feel is his body is still in the tomb to this day. They did leave his body in the tomb, so he is resting where he should be.

Angela 1:02:20

And I guess I think it's still better, yeah.

Daniel 1:02:22

Yeah, and I guess I just hope he's, you know, if somehow it turns out that religion is the right one, I hope he's having a successful afterlife and doing what he needs to do in that afterlife. So, you know, I not really a Pharaoh curse, but I I hope he's not being cursed by what we you know modern people have done to him either.

Angela 1:02:39

Yeah.

Daniel 1:02:40

I guess that really is cursed-ish.

Angela 1:02:42

Yeah, maybe cursed, maybe not.

Daniel 1:02:44

See you all next week. Cursedish is an ish media production. It explores stories of alleged curses, historical mysteries, and supernatural claims. While we do investigate the history and the evidence behind these stories, ultimately you should decide for yourself what to believe. If you have questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share, send us a hex at uh oh at cursedish.com. That's uh oh h all one word at cursed all one word.com.