Movie
mummies are known for two things: fabulous riches and a nasty curse
that brings treasure hunters to a bad end. But Hollywood didn't invent
the curse concept.
The
"mummy's curse" first enjoyed a worldwide vogue after the 1922
discovery of King Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings near
Luxor, Egypt.
When Howard Carter opened a small hole to
peer inside the tomb at treasures hidden for 3,000 years, he also
unleashed a global passion for ancient Egypt.
Tut's
glittering treasures made great headlines—and so did sensationalistic
accounts of the subsequent death of expedition sponsor Lord Carnarvon.
In
reality, Carnarvon died of blood poisoning and only six of the 26
people present when the tomb was opened died within a decade. Carter,
surely any curse's prime target, lived until 1939.
But
while the pharaoh's curse may lack bite, it hasn't lost the ability to
fascinate audiences—which may be how it originated in the first place.
Birth of the Curse
The
late Egyptologist Dominic Montserrat conducted a comprehensive search
and concluded that the concept began with a strange "striptease" in
19th-century London.
"My work shows quite clearly that the
mummy's curse concept predates Carnarvon's Tutankhamen discovery and
his death by a hundred years," Montserrat told the Independent (U.K.) in an interview some years before his own death.
Montserrat
believed that a lively stage show in which real Egyptian mummies were
unwrapped inspired first one writer, and subsequently several others, to
pen tales of mummy revenge.
The thread was even picked up by Little Women author Louisa May Alcott in her nearly unknown volume Lost in a Pyramid; or, The Mummy's Curse.
"My
research has not only confirmed that there is, of course, no ancient
Egyptian origin of the mummy's curse concept, but, more importantly, it
also reveals that it didn't originate in the 1923 press publicity about
the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb either," Montserrat stressed to the Independent.
But
Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at the American University in Cairo and a
National Geographic Society grantee, believes the curse concept did
exist in ancient Egypt as part of a primitive security system.
She
notes that some mastaba (early non-pyramid tomb) walls in Giza and
Saqqara were actually inscribed with "curses" meant to terrify those who
would desecrate or rob the royal resting place.
"They
tend to threaten desecrators with divine retribution by the council of
the gods," Ikram said. "Or a death by crocodiles, or lions, or
scorpions, or snakes."
Tomb Toxin Threat?
In recent years some have suggested that the pharaoh's curse was biological in nature.
Could
sealed tombs house pathogens that can be dangerous or even deadly to
those who open them after thousands of years—especially people like Lord
Carnarvon with weakened immune systems?
The mausoleums house not only the dead bodies of humans and animals but foods to provision them for the afterlife.
Lab studies have shown some ancient mummies carried mold, including Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus flavus, which can cause congestion or bleeding in the lungs. Lung-assaulting bacteria such as PseudomonasStaphylococcus may also grow on tomb walls. and
These substances may make tombs sound dangerous, but scientists seem to agree that they are not.
F.
DeWolfe Miller, professor of epidemiology at the University of Hawaii
at Manoa, concurs with Howard Carter's original opinion: Given the local
conditions, Lord Carnarvon was probably safer inside Tut's tomb than
outside.
"Upper Egypt in the 1920s was hardly what
you'd call sanitary," Miller said. "The idea that an underground tomb,
after 3,000 years, would have some kind of bizarre microorganism in it
that's going to kill somebody six weeks later and make it look exactly
like [blood poisoning] is very hard to believe."
In
fact, Miller said, he knows of no archaeologist—or a single tourist,
for that matter—who has experienced any afflictions caused by tomb
toxins.
But like the movie mummies who invoke the malediction, the legend of the mummy's curse seems destined never to die.
source : national geographic
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