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It is a succession of macabre coincidences that ended up creating a myth. It all started in 1923, when Howard Carter, an English archaeologist, discovered the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in Egypt. Six years later, 22 explorers from the team that participated in the excavations were dead, including the English lord George Carnarvon, financier of the group. This served as a hook for journalist Arthur Merton, also English, to resurrect an old Egyptian legend about the bad luck reserved for those who disturb the mummies: the so-called curse of the pharaoh. Carnarvon, however, fell victim to an infection caused by mosquito bites. It also didn’t take long for scientific explanations to emerge for the other deaths. “Since the site was closed for three millennia, the most accepted hypothesis is that there was fungal contamination”, says Egyptologist Antonio Brancaglion, from the University of São Paulo (USP).
On the other hand, in 1969, one of the only survivors of the Carnarvon expedition gave an interview to an English TV saying he did not believe in such a curse. While leaving the studio, he was in a serious car accident and almost died. Eta, strange world!
Read too:
– What was the life of a Pharaoh like?
– How was the death of a Pharaoh?
– Who was Tutankhamun?