Why the Curse of Tutankhamun Might Be Real

hey 42 here in november 1922 howard carter came up on the final resting place of a little-known egyptian pharaoh known as tooting car moon when carter carefully removed the outer door and stepped over the threshold he became the first human being to do so in well over 3 000 years though carter didn't know it at the time tooting car moon's tomb was to become one of the greatest archaeological finds in the history of mankind right up there with the terracotta army the remains of pompeii and the rosetta stone news of the incredible discovery hit the headlines as the attention of the world's media trained itself squarely on the valley of the kings in egypt near to what was once thebes it was the crowning achievement of carter's career something that would see him immortalized amongst archaeologists but from the moment he first stepped inside the pharaoh's tomb rumors began to spread that his actions had unleashed a terrible curse punishment from beyond the grave that would be dished out to all of those who had there to disturb the long dead pharaoh plenty of people thought it was nonsense including carter himself but then quite suddenly people started dying a few months before this remarkable moment in the history of archaeology howard carter found himself standing in downton abbey well sort of the grand manor house was actually called high clear castle and it was home to the fifth earl of carnarvon rather than the seventh earl of grantham but 88 years later it will be selected to serve as the home of the fictional crawley family in everyone's favorite period drama which is actually pretty apt because as it happened carter found himself at the center of his own little drama that day in 1922. you see the fifth earl of carnarvon was his benefactor the man who'd been financing carter's archaeological expeditions in the valley of the kings for the previous seven years during which time carter had turned up next to nothing of archaeological interest admittedly the outbreak of the first world war had somewhat hampered his efforts but that didn't change the fact that carnavan had invested a lot of time and money into the venture in return for diddly squat well i say diddly squat carter's years in egypt had yielded a few odds and ends scraps of linen and shards of pottery mostly it wasn't much but many of these items shared something strange in common they were inscribed with a single word the name of an egyptian pharaoh whose remains had never been located tutankhamun you don't need the powers of a pharaoh to preserve your hair and keep it healthy all you need is keeps who've kindly sponsored this video i've had people close to me start to lose their hair as early as their twenties and it's always been an obsessing experience if you're in the same boat then you're not alone did you know two out of three guys will experience some form of male pattern baldness by the time they're 35 but the best thing you can do to prevent hair loss is take the initiative now and do something about it whilst you've still got hair left i really like keeps because it makes treatment super easy by delivering your hair loss medication every three months so you can say goodbye to awkward doctor visits and waiting in pharmacy checkout lines there's a reason that keeps has more five star reviews than any of its competitors and hundreds of thousands of men trust them for their hair loss prevention medication if you're like me you're probably not ready to lose hair just yet but prevention is key the faster you act the faster you see results and the sooner you start using keeps the more hair you'll save so if you're noticing that you're losing your hair do something about it for a limited time go to keeps.com forward slash 42 or click the link in the description to receive 50 off your first order as far as carter was concerned it was proof he was close but lord carnarvon had asked carter to join him at high clear castle to tell him it was over that he would no longer be financing digs in the valley of the kings carter was almost frantic practically begging carnavan to give him more time and that show of passion paid off because carter came away with a deal one more year if he didn't uncover anything of note in that time his funding would be cut and all of his hard work over the years would have been for nothing as it turned out carter wouldn't need anywhere close to a year he resumed his search for the tomb of tutankhamun on november the 1st 1922 and three days later he found it the team was going over old ground near the previously discovered tomb of ramesses the six when one of carter's men stumbled over a large piece of rock being a former archaeological dick site there was plenty of rubble lying around but unlike the rest of the loose rocks this particular chunk was partially buried beneath sand and mud it turned out to be the top of a very long staircase that disappeared beneath the ground until it ended abruptly right at the door of tooting car moons tomb carter called for lord carnavan at once and when the earl arrived the two men got a front row seat at the opening of what was basically the world's most exciting unit on storage wars but unlike storage wars tooting car moon's tomb wasn't full of soils mattresses and 80s pornography no it was packed almost to bursting with around 5 000 priceless artifacts including a dismantled chariot finely carved figurines priceless jewelry ancient weapons and one standard issue egyptian mummy ensconced in no fewer than three nested sarcophagi the last of which was made of solid gold somewhat ironically considering the almost immediate rock star status tootin car moon enjoyed around the world off the back of this rediscovery of his mummified body he wasn't actually all that important in his own time at least as far as pharaohs go and whilst he would become famous for unleashing a curse on the men who found him it seems the boy king who was only 19 when he died may have suffered from a curse all of his own a cripplingly small gene pool if you've watched my video on the dangers of inbreeding you'll know making babies with close family members is a bad idea and not just because of the funny looks you'll get at the hospital unfortunately for king twos his parents apparently hadn't watched my video on inbreeding because they were siblings if only they'd subscribe to the channel anyway as a result of this rather unfortunate brother and sister action tutankhamun was born with a wide range of both physical and mental disabilities perhaps that's why he was pissed off enough to unleash a deadly curse when his not-so-eternal slumber was shattered three and a half thousand years later randomly enough the first life snuffed out by the curse of tooting car moon taken on the very day the tomb was discovered was that of howard carter's canary it was stationed in a bird cage hanging outside his door and its untimely demise served as an appropriate warning of the danger that was about to come it was a messenger boy who stumbled across the grizzly scene coiled in on itself inside carter's birdcage was a huge cobra the cage's previous occupant hanging from its mouth efforts were made to save the poor bird but by the time the alarm was raised the canary had already passed on to a better place well the cobra small intestine it was a creepy event made even creepier by the all-too-obvious connection to the recently opened tomb you see that very same day the team had found two statues guarding the entrance to a still-sealed chamber within the tube fought to hold the pharaoh sarcophagus the statues were large and imposing depicting tutankhamun himself and each wore a golden crown adorned with a urease that's the ancient egyptian symbol of divine authority and it just so happens to be in the shape of a cobra as far as omens went it was a bad one but carter and his men were made of stern stuff after all you don't get a gravedigging gig in egypt by being superstitious the group were a little shaken but whilst a few whispered about a possible curse most were certain it was just an unfortunate coincidence and a coincidence it may well have been but that didn't save lord carnavan it started with nothing more than a mosquito bite on the earl's cheek a few months after the discovery of the tomb it was a small wound the kind we've all experienced on a warm summer's evening itchy and annoying but no big deal lord carnarvon probably fought the same but when he nicked that very same spot while shaving later that evening he opened up the wound just enough to let the blood start seeping out and infection creep in he was dead from blood poisoning within two weeks a little more than four months after becoming one of the very first people to step foot inside tutankhamun's tomb in another spooky coincidence when the pharaoh's body was first examined during an autopsy six months later a strange lesion just like an insect bite was found on its cheek at this point people started to take notice at 56 lord carnavan was not a particularly old man and his death from what seemed to be a minor injury was unsettling those first whispers of bad omens and curses that had started after the incident with the cobra soon became full-blown rumors of an ancient and terrible curse that made headlines in newspapers around the world and the deaths just kept on coming in may 1923 financier george j gold succumbed to the effects of a fever he'd contracted whilst in egypt he'd begun to show symptoms of illness not long after visiting the newly discovered tomb of one tooting car moon a man called arthur mace was next dead from arsenic poisoning in 1928 he'd been an important member of carter's excavation team carter's secretary died a year after that smothered in his sleep in a posh club in mayfair by an assailant who was never caught as those connected to carter and the excavation continued to drop like flies people began to speculate as to just what was behind the deaths the papers spoke of a written curse scrawled across the wall of tutankhamun's tomb in weathered hieroglyphics death shall come on swift wings to him who disturbs the peace of the king sir arthur conan doyle author of the sherlock holmes mysteries had his own theory suggesting invisible elemental guards left to defend the long dead pharaoh might have been responsible whatever it was it seems as though carter and his team were being targeted by something so what became of howard carter himself the man who discovered the tomb in the first place and ultimately the person responsible for disturbing the pharaoh's peace what terrible fate did the curse have in store for him hodgkin's lymphoma which killed him at the age of 64. a good 16 years after he first entered tooting car moon's tomb hmm okay yeah that does kind of mess with the whole curse angle a bit doesn't it and now i come to think about it he wasn't the only one to escape the mummy's wrath by living to a ripe old age and dying of natural causes in fact of the 58 people known to have been present when the tomb was first opened only eight died within the following 12 years and one study by well-known scourge of the paranormal james randy found that those supposedly struck by the full force of the curse survived on average for 23 years after the tomb was discovered okay so maybe that's because there was only so much of the curse to go around a bit like a supernatural version of a poisoned mouse trap deadly but it could only take so many victims before it ran out that could be it or you know the whole cursed tomb thing could just be one gigantic pile of ancient egyptian camel [ __ ] just a thought as it turns out there's actually a pretty straightforward explanation for the curse of twosome car moon one that doesn't require any hocus pocus threatening hieroglyphics or any of those invisible elemental sentinels conan doyle suggested we're guarding the tomb although on that last one i must admit i do kind of love the irony of an author still famous today for creating one of the most ruthlessly logical characters ever to grace popular culture was himself and absolute fruitly anyway before lord carnavan sadly passed away he'd been a pretty astute businessman he'd sunken a huge amount of cash into his search for the tomb of tootin car moon over many years so when he finally found the damn thing he wanted to make a little return on his investment and the first way to do that was to sign an exclusive contract with the times newspaper back in england for rights to report on the excavation times journalists were allowed to access the tomb and the pictures and articles they printed had their newspapers flying off the shelves back home having been entirely denied access to the site the other newspapers had nothing to print about the remarkable events taking place in the valley of the kings and so they did what newspapers always do when they have nothing genuine to report on they made something up while some egyptian tombs did indeed have curses scribbled on their walls and entrance ways king toot's tomb wasn't one of them that apparent curse reported in some newspapers about death and swift wings and all of that nonsense was simply made up most likely by some journalist with aspirations of becoming a horror writer basically the curse sold papers and so the press kept hyping it up every chance they got after that the whole thing was mostly just confirmation bias a few of those involved with the excavation did indeed die some in unusual circumstances but most didn't take any large event in history and you'll probably find at least a handful of those attending kicked the bucket not long afterwards lord carnarvons was arguably the only somewhat unusual death coming as it did so soon after the discovery was made but in reality there was nothing mysterious about his demise you see back in 1903 he'd been involved in a bad car accident and his health had never really recovered in fact the only reason he got interested in egyptian tombs in the first place was thanks to his doctor's advice to dodge winters in downton by jetting off some place warm on account of his poor health that warm place ended up being egypt and carnarvon became fascinated by the local culture a passion which eventually led to his patronage of howard carter carnavan was killed by a mosquito bite simply because his immune system was weak to begin with and he wasn't able to fight off the ensuing infection as for the mark they found on the mummy's face that seemed to correspond to the bite it was just a coincidence and besides it seems nobody could quite remember whether it was actually on the same cheek as the bite that did it for lord carnavan and since he'd already been dead half a year when they discovered it there was no way to actually find out so could there have been a curse lurking in the tomb of tutankhamun well never say never but uh no absolutely not but before i go i can tell you about a real cursed tomb if you like you know just so you don't feel shortchanged this grumpy looking chap is kasamir iv who was grand duke of lithuania and king of poland during the 15th century he died in 1492 the same year columbus discovered the new world for europe and he was laid to rest beneath warrell castle in krakow where he was to remain undisturbed for 481 years it was a team of scientists who broke that piece when they were permitted to enter the tomb to examine the ancient king's remains as well as having a good poke around they had plans to restore the crypt to its former glory but they would never get the chance because whilst old kasamir may not have achieved the same fame as a certain ancient egyptian pharaoh he really knew how to do a good curse of the 12 scientists to enter the team four were dead within the week and the rest didn't hold out much longer 10 died prematurely in all and of the two that survived one suffered serious health problems for the rest of his life now that's how you do a cursed tomb textbook stuff kasamir although i'm afraid once again the reality here probably doesn't quite live up to your expectations because whilst kazumi's tomb absolutely did contain a curse there was nothing supernatural about it no this curse was something scientists could capture and study something to which they gave a name and that name was aspergillus flavis a type of fungus that produces aflatoxins which can prove fatal to humans when inhaled or ingested the deadly fungus was grown unhindered in the rotten wood of the king's coffin for almost 500 years when the scientists entered the tomb disturbing the air just enough to release a cloud of lethal spores all around them in the process so remember curses may not really exist but killer mushrooms certainly do thanks for watching thanks again to keeps for sponsoring this video don't forget to try it out using the link below

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 2,134,249

Keywords: curse, ancien egypt, history

Id: Kcf6L-p4rqg

Length: 20min 16sec (1216 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 05 2021