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Curse of the Pharaohs (Mummies)

The Curse of the Pharaohs refers to an alleged curse believed by some to be cast upon any person who disturbs the mummy of an ancient Egyptian person…especially a pharaoh...this curse, which does not draw any kind of line between common grave robbing thieves or egg-headed archaeologists, allegedly can cause misfortune, illness or death…many writers and documentaries have said that the curse is 'real' in the sense of being caused by scientifically explicable causes…causes such as bacteria or radiation…such stories as the disturbance of a site of the dead and their ramifications remain fascinating…


Here are some deaths popularly attributed to ‘curses’…


Note that the tomb was opened in November of 1922…


Lord Carnarvon, a financial backer of the excavation team was present at the tomb's opening…he died in April of 1923 after a seemingly simple mosquito bite became infected; he died 4 months and 7 days after the opening of the tomb…then there was the most unfortunate Prince Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey of Egypt who died in July of 1923 when he was shot dead by his wife…a Colonel Herbert, who happened to be Carnarvon's half-brother, became nearly blind and died in September 1923 from blood poisoning…Sir Archibald Douglas-Reid who was the radiologist that x-rayed Tutankhamun's mummy, died in January of 1924 from a ‘mysterious’ illness…Sir Lee Stack, Governor-General of Sudan, died in November of 1924: assassinated while driving through Cairo…a member of the excavation team, died in 1928 from arsenic poisoning…George Jay Gould I, a mere visitor to the tomb, succumbed in May 1923 after he developed a high fever following his visit…there are these and other suspicious deaths that have occurred and cannot be denied by ‘science’…there are occasional instances when genuine curses appeared inside or on the façade of a tomb warning others not to open them…but these men of science proceeded and some paid with their lives. 


There are those who are absolutely convinced that the ancients could concentrate upon and around a mummy certain dynamic powers…those of which we possess very incomplete notions…and that these powers were almighty and could if so desired, put a curse on those who for example, disturbed the holy resting place of a pharaoh or a spiritual leader…it is said even today the spirits live in the hills of Egypt and although some curses have weakened over the course of time…others remain quite potent…so says Dr. Muller in ‘The Mummy’ and he is probably right…whether these curses work might depend on the mind of the one who is afflicted with such a terrible curse …psychosomatic if you will…people who believe in curses might suddenly find themselves pre-occupied and it may lead to some kind of accident…a mild cold could become a full blown case of pneumonia as one may be frightened that the evil curse is happening to them…men of science are less inclined to believe such things, but sometimes something unfortunate things do happen and then the curse is blamed for something different altogether…then again, maybe there are cases of curses that actually have been activated and are quite real.