The
Pharaoh's
SECRET
You find a room of gleaming treasure—filled with gold and ancient artifacts. It is unlike anything anyone has ever seen. Would you jump for joy? Or would you worry the treasure was cursed?
Our story begins a century ago. The pharaohs were long gone by this time, yet the world was about to be frozen with fear: the fear of the Pharaoh’s Curse.
Two British men were in Egypt looking for a lost pharaoh’s tomb. They spent day after day in the hot and dusty Valley of the Kings, where many of the New Kingdom pharaohs were buried. Most of these tombs had already been uncovered and found empty, but these two men were tenacious. Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon believed one pharaoh was still buried in the Valley.
That pharaoh was Tutankhamun.
UNCOVERING THE TOMB
Let’s jump back a moment, by just a few thousand years. Tutankhamun was the most powerful known ruler on the planet when he was only a young boy. King Tut, as he is commonly known, died surprisingly young— when he was still a teenager. After his death, he was hurriedly buried in a rather small underground tomb. The pharaohs who followed him were not particularly fond of his family members.
Their names were scrubbed from history, and Tutankhamun disappeared from memory. While this all sounds rather unfortunate for poor King Tut, it worked out well for him in the long run. Nobody stumbled across his tiny little tomb for thousands of years, and few remembered his name to go looking for him. While the burial spots of the more famous kings were constantly found and looted, Tutankhamun’s tomb and treasures remained peacefully hidden away.
That was, of course, until Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon, along with the help of their Egyptian team, finally found the lost tomb.
What they saw inside gripped the world. “Wonderful things” was how a starstruck Howard Carter described his first peep into the golden tomb. Soon enough, the whole world was wonderstruck. This was the first time anyone had found a pharaoh’s tomb that hadn’t been robbed during ancient times, and the first time people could see a pharaoh’s treasures.
Long forgotten, King Tut became an instant celebrity. And where there are celebrities, there is gossip.
WAS THE TOMB CURSED?
Not long after the discovery, Lord Carnarvon died from an infected mosquito bite. The story then took a dark twist. To some, it was a magical twist. Newspapers immediately said King Tut had cursed Carnarvon as a punishment for entering his tomb.
But was it true?
Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter had only allowed one newspaper to visit the tomb, worrying that reporters would damage the site and its heap of treasures. The whole world, however, wanted to read about the most exciting discovery in history, so other newspapers had to find a way to write about King Tut’s tomb without being allowed to see it. What was their solution?
They made stuff up. The newspapers started writing outlandish things about curses and black magic. These tales terrified and excited the world into buying their papers. And it worked!
One Newspaper printed a photo of hieroglyphs on the tomb wall and said the writing meant, "Death shall come on swift wings to whoever disturbs the tomb of the pharaoh."
People read this and remembered the winged mosquito that killed Carnarvon. “The curse must be real,” they thought! In reality, the hieroglyphs mention nothing of the sort. The writing in the photograph praised the god Anubis, but to this day, people still believe a deadly curse was written in the tomb.
Many other strange deaths were linked to the curse. A boy, a prince, and other people mysteriously passed away, but few of them had anything to do with opening Tut’s tomb. In fact, most of the people who first entered it, including Howard Carter, lived to a ripe old age.
REAL CURSES AND MAGIC
While Tutankhamun’s curse might not be real, magic and curses were thought to be a normal part of daily life in ancient Egypt. There were tombs, particularly in the earlier periods, whose walls were covered with curses for people who misbehaved. These earlier tombs often had a public space above them where family and friends could give gifts.
These curses, therefore, were not about keeping people away from the tomb. They were about making sure visitors had good manners. Bad manners ranged from stealing from the tomb to simply bringing food the ghost didn’t like.
The tomb of a man named Petety cursed poorly behaved guests. If the guests did anything bad, they would be attacked by ferocious animals: “Anyone who enters this tomb and does evil there … the crocodile, hippo, and lion will eat them!”
In ancient Egypt, magic was mostly used for healing and protection. Sometimes, people used magic to protect themselves against curses. In an ancient village near the Valley of the Kings, not long after Tutankhamun’s day, a man wrote a letter about his magical statue disappearing. He had used it for protection magic, but he was worried that if someone had stolen it, they might use it to curse him.
TOMB ROBBERY AND PUNISHMENTS
Tutankhamun’s tomb is unique because all other royal tombs were looted and emptied during ancient times. Many pyramids had secret entrances, winding tunnels, and hidden doors to ward off thieves. And yet, all of these maze-like tombs were discovered. Documents from ancient courtrooms tell us the stories of these robberies. In one document, a thief admits his crime: he found an old pyramid of an earlier king. He gathered seven of his friends and formed a crew. Each had a useful talent, such as a stonemason who could drill a hole into the pyramid and a ferryman who could be the getaway driver. They snuck into the pyramid at night, and like Carter and Carnarvon, saw wonderful things inside.
The thief described all the gold and silver they found there, as well as the mummies of a king and queen, which they set on fire!
After the dry, oily mummies burned to ash, the thieves could then easily sift through the ash to find the golden amulets that were hidden inside.
The thieves were caught and put on trial, though not before bribing their way out of jail with some of the riches they had stolen. These trials are the reason why their story, and others, are known today. Punishments varied, but looting a royal tomb could earn one a grizzly fate. The thief’s body would be placed onto a large wooden spike, and gravity would impale them on it for all to see. The Valley of the Kings had its own guards who would watch the area, safely walled by cliffs, for bad behavior. In fact, Tutankhamun’s tomb was discovered soon after his death, but the guards caught the thieves. They weren’t able to steal anything, but one thief managed to leave a fingerprint in a jar of King Tut’s ointment.
Ancient Egypt could be a scary place for a criminal. In the earlier periods, law enforcers used police baboons where today we use police dogs!
LEARNING HIEROGLYPHicS
What can people learn from this story of ancient thieves, cruel curses, lost treasure, and strange rumors? The newspapers were able to invent tales about the Pharaoh’s Curse because they knew their readers probably would not be able to read the hieroglyphs in the picture. But nowadays, anyone can learn how to read ancient Egyptian writing.