The Curse of Tutankhamen

The ancient Egyptians were so obsessed with the Cult of the Dead that they turned the fruitful valley of the Nile into a Valley of Death. A soul could not enter the blessed region of Osiris unless the body remained intact in the place where he lived on earth. To violate a tomb or remove a mummy from its coffin was a terrible act of desecration. So the solemn ceremonies of the entombment included some awful curses, inscribed upon the walls of the death chambers. This also was the case in the 14th century B.C. with the splendid funeral of Tutenkhamen, an unimportant sovereign who died when he was eighteen.

On 4 November 1922, Howard Carter, the archaeologist whose expedition in the Nile Valley was financed by Lord Carnarvon, discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen. As Frank Usher relates it in his article Ghosts of Ancient Egypt: "A story had been told for centuries that Akhnaton had chosen Tutankhamen to succeed him because he possessed some kind of supernatural powers, and that these powers had protected his sacred tomb throughout the ages."

When he heard of the imminent opening of the tomb, the famous occultist Cheiro wrote urgently to Lord Carnarvon. He begged him not to defy the curse and enter the forbidden tomb. Cheiro even send him a telegraph, saying that Lord Carnarvon would suffer sickness and would not recover if he entered the tomb: "Death will claim him in Egypt!"

Carnarvon was impressed, but Carter would not listen. He had no intention of giving up years of hard labour because of an ancient curse that had to frighten the superstitious and the ignorant. On 22 February, 1923, Carnarvon first entered the tomb, followed by Carter. They found Tutenkhamen in a splendid sarcophagus of blue and gold; the mummy case was inlaid with gold and lapis lazuli.

Carter immersed himself in the fascinating excavations which occupied him until 1924, completely undisturbed by the curse. He died in 1939 at the age of 66.

Lord Carnarvon however, was bitten by a mosquito and died in Cairo on 5 April, 1923. A few years later his brother committed suicide and his stepmother diead after another mysterious insect bite...

More Egyptian Hauntings:
http://www.socyberty.com/History/The-Hand-of-an-Egyptian-Princess.584663