Curse

Curses are invocations of evil spirits or evil forces for the purpose of causing harm to a person or an object. From the earliest times to the eighteenth century, cursing was a common practice; the typical words used for a curse have varied widely throughout history, but the most common are simple epithets like “The devil take you!” or “A pox on you!” Such curses might not be delivered with evil intent, but if something bad then happened to the cursed person, the one who uttered the curse was sometimes held responsible. For example, during the witch hunts of fourteenth- through seventeenth-century Europe and America, a person whose curses seemed connected to another’s misfortune was often arrested, tried, convicted, and executed for practicing witchcraft, even in the absence of any other evidence.

Fatal Curses

Most people think that these simple curses, exclaimed in the heat of the moment, do not actually cause harm. However, believers in the supernatural say that curses associated with certain magic rituals can kill because they have a great amount of magical power. Skeptics, however, say that such curses can kill only if the target of the curse believes it can. This, skeptics say, explains why, for example, Australian Aborigines often collapse, sicken, and die after being cursed. Skeptics also cite the case of speedboat racer Donald Campbell, known for his belief in omens, who saw a portent of death and shortly thereafter was killed in an accident during a race.

Certain objects, places, and events are also said to be cursed because they bring bad luck to anyone who comes in contact with them. For example, some people believe that the 1982 movie Poltergeist was cursed since several people associated with its production died in unusual ways after the movie was made. These people include two of the leading actresses: a teenager who was murdered and a little girl who died of a rare intestinal blockage. After these deaths occurred, some believers in the curse speculated that its cause was somehow related to the fact that some of the skeletons used as props in the movie, which was about angry spirits, might have been real.

Ancient Egyptian Curses

Perhaps the most famous curses, however, involve ancient Egyptian tombs. The ancient Egyptians entombed their dead with their earthly possessions, believing that these objects would accompany the dead to the afterlife. When the deceased was a king or other notable person, these objects could be quite valuable. To protect them from tomb robbers, Egyptian priests would put curses on items placed in the tomb or on sealed doorways. For example, one curse said, “As for him who shall destroy this inscription: he shall not reach his home. He shall not embrace his children. He shall not see success.” Another warned, “As for any man who shall destroy these, it is the god Thoth who shall destroy him.”

According to some people, the most deadly of these ancient Egyptian curses was the curse of King Tut. King Tutankhamen was an Egyptian pharaoh, or king, who died in approximately 1450 B.C. To foil tomb robbers, King Tutankhamen’s body and his vast treasure were placed in a hidden underground tomb, and his priests performed a magical ritual to place a curse on anyone who might disturb it. On a curse tablet that they left in the tomb, they carved the words “Death shall slay with his wings whoever disturbs the peace of the pharaoh.” On the back of a tomb statue they carved another warning related to the curse: “It is I who drive back the robbers of the tomb with the flame of the desert. I am the protector of Tutankhamen’s grave.”

The tomb remained undetected until 1922, when an archaeological team found its hidden doorway, broke inside, and removed many of the treasures. Just two months after this violation, the man who had financed the archaeological expedition, Lord Carnarvon, died of a mysterious fever, and within seven years eleven other people associated with the expedition had also died, usually under mysterious circumstances. By 1935 the press was reporting that between twenty-one and thirty-five sudden, unnatural deaths could be connected to the curse of King Tut. In 1966 the media added one more such death to its tally, when Mohammed Ibraham, Egypt’s director of antiquities, was hit by a car shortly after giving permission for some of King Tut’s treasures to leave Egypt for a museum exhibition.

Many of the people said to be victims of the curse had been in direct contact with the tomb and/or its artifacts, but others had only been in contact with members of the expedition. Most succumbed to an unidentified illness that produced a high fever and/or a coma or paralysis. Consequently, some scientists believe that the tomb and its artifacts might have been infected with some sort of communicable disease, or that a deadly fungus, mold spores, or other plant toxin might have been present in the tomb. Others speculate that the ancient Egyptians might have painted the walls of the tomb and some of the artifacts with a poisonous substance, perhaps derived from reptile venom, much as they booby-trapped certain pyramids with wires that, when disturbed, would drop rocks on would-be robbers.

Indeed, other cursed Egyptian tombs have been associated with mysterious illnesses. For example, in 1942 American archaeologist George A. Reisner was exploring a pyramid when he was struck with paralysis, collapsed, and fell into a coma; he died without regaining consciousness. Similarly, in 1971 British Egyptologist Walter Emery was struck with partial paralysis while excavating a tomb and died the next day. Two other notable Egyptologists also died after a strange paralysis, Jacques-Joseph Campollion in 1827 and Karl Richard Lepsius in 1884.

Skeptics say it is coincidence that several Egyptologists have died of similar illnesses and point out that far more people have remained alive long after disturbing a cursed tomb or touching its artifacts. In fact, the person who discovered and was the first to enter King Tutankhamen’s tomb, archaeologist Howard Carter, lived seventeen years after his discovery, dying in 1939 at the age of sixty-four, and Lord Carnarvon’s daughter Evelyn, who also had entered the tomb, died in 1980 at the age of seventy-nine. Alan Gardiner, who translated hieroglyphics in the tomb, lived to the age of eighty-four, and archaeologist Percy Newbury, a friend of Carter’s who often visited the tomb during its excavation, lived to the age of eighty.

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