Curse of the Pharaohs
/What does the film industry, Louisa May Alcott, and King Tut have in common? Mummy’s curses! We dig into the history of the Curse of the Pharaohs, how they are viewed in the west, and how Tutmania changed Egyptology and the world.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of death, illness, racism, desecration of bodies, slavery, forced labor, grave-robbing, sexual assault, and animal death.
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
- Editor: Bren Frederick
- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
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About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
[theme]
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia. Now, Amanda, I have to assume that most of us here on the show and listening to the show are probably quite familiar with the bisexual classic 1999's, The Mummy.
AMANDA: Oh, of course. Now, I was fortunate enough to watch this in my adulthood, well after knowing that I was bisexual, so I knew it would be a feast, and it sure was. But I know for a lot of folks, this is the bisexual awakening, or the "Why choose?"
JULIA: Now, Amanda, I'm actually really excited to talk about this today, because I want to talk about movies. I want to talk about archaeology, and I want to talk about curses.
AMANDA: Hell yes.
JULIA: But before we get to all of that, Amanda, did you know that 1999's The Mummy is technically a remake?
AMANDA: I didn't.
JULIA: So it is based on the Universal Classic Monsters film, The Mummy from 1932.
AMANDA: No kidding.
JULIA: Now, in this version of the film, which takes place in 1921, an archeological expedition led by a guy named Sir Joseph Wemple finds the mummy of an ancient Egyptian high priest named Imhotep. They didn't change that part for the 1999 version.
AMANDA: I was like, "That is a little familiar."
JULIA: Imhotep, much like in the remake, had been wrapped like a traditional mummy, but instead of actually going through the mummification process, he was buried alive. And important to our episode, Imhotep was buried with a casket with a curse on it.
AMANDA: Hmm, hmm, hmm.
JULIA: Now, in this version of the movie, The Mummy is brought back to life when an assistant reads aloud from the, quote-unquote, "Scroll of Thoth," which is nothing. The time period in which this is set and also when it was produced, is interesting and important for a couple of reasons.
AMANDA: Tell me more.
JULIA: First off, it's 1932, Amanda. What was going on in 1932 in the United States?
AMANDA: Oh, you know, flapper age coming to an end, roaring 20s, settling down. Uh, we— the economy's picking back up again, and everybody is certain that the Great War is not going to repeat itself.
JULIA: Oh, Amanda, we're three years into the Great Depression at this point in time.
AMANDA: Oh, great. Yep, that happened, too.
JULIA: And generally, movie studios in the United States are struggling. Many are also attempting to keep up with the times as the industry begins to transition out of the silent film era and start utilizing sound in film.
AMANDA: Sure. Talkies. That'll get people to spend their remaining nickel on something.
JULIA: It's the talkies. So it was as theaters across the country were attempting to convert their setups from silent films to incorporating sound that the stock market crashed, and suddenly all of these studios and theaters are trying to, essentially, recoup their investments, right?
AMANDA: Okay. Sure.
JULIA: Things are not looking good for the film industry and for the big studios in general. They're usually referred to as the Big Five, right?
AMANDA: The MGM, et ceteras.
JULIA: Yes, exactly. You know who's not part of the Big Five?
AMANDA: Oh, is it Universal Horror?
JULIA: Universal is not.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Universal, in fact, knew what audiences wanted to see during this time, and the answer was horror.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So a little bit of behind the scenes sort of establishment of the Universal Monsters universe, let's say. Technically, the Universal Monsters, which arguably saved the movie industry as we know it, started in 1913 with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. However, a lot of these early horror films that we now consider part of the canon of the Universal Monsters were silent films. The studio hit its stride with the first of its horror films to incorporate the new sound technology, when Universal paid $40,000, and again, this is in the 1920s, $40,000 for the exclusive rights to Bram Stoker's Dracula.
AMANDA: Hmm. What a good investment, y'all.
JULIA: But an incredible risk during this period of time, Amanda. That kind of investment—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —in the beginning years of the Great Depression, that could have easily sunk them, right?
AMANDA: Good Lord.
JULIA: But audiences were flocking to the theaters. One, because there was some name recognition for Dracula at the time. Two, it was that new technology. And three, Universal did this sort of smart thing where they dropped the cost of their tickets, hoping that they would increase the bulk of tickets sold.
AMANDA: Got it.
JULIA: Dracula is a success, and with the success of Dracula, Universal rushes to make more movies. The following year, they made Frankenstein, and after that, The Mummy.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Now, the interesting thing about all of this up until this point is that before The Mummy, each of the Universal monster movies, even the silent films, like Hunchback of Notre Dame and Phantom of the Opera, had been pre-existing stories that were then adapted into film.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: The Mummy was our first, quote-unquote, "original monster," though the plot—
AMANDA: Really?
JULIA: Yeah, I know. Isn't that wild?
AMANDA: What?
JULIA: They literally, like, hired a guy and they said, "Find us some mummy-related fiction." He's like, "Can't find anything, so we're just gonna have to write something."
AMANDA: God.
JULIA: I will say, however, the plot was most likely inspired by the very notable opening of Tutankhamun's tomb.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Now, remember when I told you that the plot of The Mummy, it took place in 1921.
AMANDA: Aha.
JULIA: Tutankhamun's tomb was opened in 1922, so you can probably see where this is going.
AMANDA: Right on.
JULIA: So a little more context for you, Tutankhamun, probably more popularly known as King Tut, had been Pharaoh from 1332 to 1323 BCE, which was the late 18th Dynasty and historically, was well-known for restoring ancient Egyptian polytheism after a period of time where Aten was worshiped as a singular deity.
AMANDA: No way.
JULIA: Which was extremely unpopular at the time, and the reversion back to polytheism, like a whole pantheon of gods, was extremely popular in Egypt.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: He was so beloved in his time for his diplomatic missions and societal and religious restorations that he was one of the few Pharaohs in ancient Egyptian history that was actually worshiped as a deity in his lifetime.
AMANDA: Damn. That's amazing.
JULIA: Usually, it was reserved for after they had died, right?
AMANDA: Totally. That's pretty incredible.
JULIA: What's also incredible, Amanda, was he was an incredibly young ruler. He was either eight or nine when he came into power, and he was only 18 when he passed away.
AMANDA: No way. What?
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: I would have said, for certain, we had like four or five decades of his rule compared to his current pop culture footprint. But I have a sense that we're probably gonna know why that happened by the end of this episode.
JULIA: You are, indeed. Amanda, also the fact that he was just very beloved during his time is why we have so much information about him as well.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So I think that also is why he is so persistent to this day, right? It's part of the reason. It's definitely not the whole reason, but it's part of the reason. So the construction of his tomb started before his death, which was traditional. It wasn't like they were like, "This guy's gonna die any second." But it was not completed by the time that he passed away. So the tomb that we're going to be talking about in this episode, the actual, like, tomb of King Tut that was opened during the 1920s was located in the Valley of the Kings, and it was theorized that the tomb that he was inevitably buried in was originally meant for essentially like a rich but non-royal individual that was then adapted to his use to accommodate his early death.
AMANDA: Cool. Wow.
JULIA: Yeah. Isn't that wild? God.
AMANDA: Especially given the timescale of these builds, like I really— one of my, you know, dad interests that I think I'm going to adopt later in life is, like, the, uh, you know, architecture of the ancient world. The Seven Wonders. I want to know how physically all of them were made because, listen—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —I've laid a few patios and driveways in my life. I've built a few sets with your husband, uh, and—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —I could not fathom moving a block of limestone the size of me.
JULIA: Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, usually the answer is, uh, slave—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —or forced labor, but—
AMANDA: Oh. Oh, yeah, Julia, and that shit has not finished, but, uh, you know, I want to read some diagrams about it, I think.
JULIA: That sounds good. So, Amanda, in some ways, this is the reason that it was so well-preserved for so long, right? This tomb was low in the valley, which caused the entrance of the tomb to be essentially hidden by debris, which therefore spared it from being stripped of its valuables, as many of the other tombs were in the Valley of the Kings, uh, by the seventh or eighth century BCE. Essentially, like new rulers came in, they said, "There's too much wealth going on in those old rulers that we didn't like. Let's use some of that for ourselves."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So it remained, essentially, untouched, other than what we can assume was some original grave robbing that happened right after Tutankhamun's death. It stayed sealed after that, until 1922 when it was unearthed by a team led by Lord Carnarvon, whose real name was George Herbert, and Howard Carter. Now, Lord Carnarvon was a British Earl, and Carter was also British. Considered himself an Egyptologist.
AMANDA: Julia, what Brits didn't in the 1900s?
JULIA: Don't worry, we're gonna talk about it. It's okay.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: They're gonna get roasted. It's fine.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: There was a media frenzy around the tomb, quote-unquote, "discovery." I'm gonna call it a discovery. I guess we can call it a rediscovery. You know, I'm gonna use some of the language that was used during the time period. It's not necessarily reflective of how I feel about Egyptology and archaeology during this time period, but— you know?
AMANDA: Yeah. And I would highly, highly encourage any folks who are not aware of, like, repatriation movements, to look that up, because there is so much great work being done right now about, like, restoring the literal artifacts that have been stolen from these countries. Um, and also just deconstructing the whole idea that we should, uh, you know, take things from places that don't belong here, put them in big institutions paid for by billionaires. Um, so there's a whole world out there. I highly encourage you to look it up.
JULIA: With the, quote-unquote, "rediscovery," there is a media frenzy which kicks off what has been dubbed Tut-mania.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And inspired a slew of, during this time period, Egyptian-inspired fashion and goods, essentially.
AMANDA: And those are the kinds of things that when Amanda sees them in a thrift store, we are picking it up and taking a picture.
JULIA: Yeah. Absolutely. But what caught the attention of the public, as much as the rediscovery of this tomb, was the fact that Lord Carnarvon died less than a year after the tomb was discovered.
AMANDA: This is the guy. Okay.
JULIA: And this is where the rumors of the curse of the tomb began.
AMANDA: Let's go.
JULIA: But before we dig into specifically the curse of King Tut as it was referred to, let's talk about mummies curses in general, Amanda. So when we're referring to this trope, we're talking about an alleged curse that is cast upon anyone who disturbs an Egyptian tomb that has a mummy in there. I'm gonna say, it doesn't matter the intention of the person robbing it, because in all aspects, they are still robbing it. They are not leaving the artifacts in the tomb where it belongs.
AMANDA: Yeah. However noble those, you know, pillagers might have thought they were doing, like, for history or for the public. And who was the public? The white British public.
JULIA: Exactly. So whether it was for, quote-unquote, "scientific research, historical research," or to just rob the place, it will bring ill fortune of some kind. Sometimes that is just bad luck. Sometimes it's illness. And of course, gotta include some death in there.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And there are some examples of ancient Egyptian tombs that have engraved or written curses within them, but they were, I would say, on a whole, fairly rare. This also makes a lot of sense, from what we learned in Denial isn't just a river in Egypt, right, Amanda? Like we know how important preserving the bodies of the dead was for ancient Egyptians, so the idea of desecrating a tomb was pretty much unthinkable, and also, the idea of writing about desecrating a tomb was considered like you're going to create it into a reality simply by writing it down.
AMANDA: Hmm. For sure.
JULIA: It's bad vibes to even talk about it, right?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: It was not common, but there are a few fairly early examples of these warnings. So for example, in the tomb of Ankhtifi, who is a nobleman from the ninth and 10th dynasties, there was a warning in his tomb, quote,
"Any ruler who shall do evil or wickedness to this coffin, may Hemen, who is a local deity, not accept any goods he offers, and may his heir not inherit."
AMANDA: Let's go. That'll cover all your bases.
JULIA: "I don't want your family to get anything past me. You're desecrating my tomb because you want my riches? Fuck you. No more riches for you past this point."
AMANDA: "No more riches for you and your sons and your grandsons, bitch."
JULIA: Exactly. So there is another popularized warning, you know, because we got really into this idea of curses, and we were trying to validate the idea of the curses, so we were looking out for them. So there's another popularized warning from the sixth dynasty on a tomb, and it reads, "As for all men who shall enter this my tomb, impure, there will be judgment and end shall be made for him. I shall seize his neck like a bird. I shall cast the fear of myself into him."
AMANDA: Oh, shit.
JULIA: That imagery of, "I shall seize his neck like a bird." Fuck. That's good.
AMANDA: Julia, I'm gonna tuck that in my pocket for the next time, um, I need it—
JULIA: There you go.
AMANDA: —because that is powerful.
JULIA: Yeah. That's sexy. I'm into it. I like it a lot.
AMANDA: It's a sexy curse. Curses are sexy. Like, I'm sorry.
JULIA: They're scary, but in a sexy kind of way, you know?
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So all of these are from the Old Kingdom, and there are a few surviving tomb, quote-unquote, "curses" that come later. Though, again, they are much less common, but much more severe, I would say.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So a lot of times, they will invoke the wrath of the gods, such as, uh, destruction from Sekhmet, who we know, loves destroying people.
AMANDA: Listen, Julia, we know that, uh, our girl needs the barest excuse to make some destruction happen.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: You can just give her like a sip of wine, and she's like, "I'm good to go."
JULIA: Let's go. Let's fill these rivers with blood, baby.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Bring it on. Here's another example from this period, which is, "Cursed be those who disturb the rest of a pharaoh. They that shall break the seal of this tomb shall meet death by disease that no doctor can diagnose."
AMANDA: To be fair, that is probably how most people die, so I think that is very likely to happen. I love this as a curse.
JULIA: While we have some evidence of the belief that desecrating a tomb could provoke the ire of the gods, what was it, Amanda, that got Europeans and Americans so riled up about mummies and curses? Keep in mind, that hieroglyphs from these tombs were not being translated into English or other European languages until the early 19th century.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. Thank you, Rosetta Stone.
JULIA: But before that, there was an oral tradition that spread word of misfortune associated with the handling of mummies, which obviously makes sense, again, for the context of Egyptians continuing on the legacies and cultural beliefs of their ancestors, right?
AMANDA: Also, like there are decomposing bodies in there, like I wouldn't put the odds at zero that there might be some microbes and you might get a, you know, fungal infection.
JULIA: Oh, we'll talk about that. Don't worry, Amanda. Don't worry.
AMANDA: Cool.
JULIA: Also, we have some oral traditions that spread to Europe. For example, there is an account from an Egyptologist named Louis Penicher who wrote in 1699 about a rich Polish traveler who had purchased two mummies in the city of Alexandria and was transporting them via boat back to his home country.
AMANDA: Uh, with total respect, I don't often, as an American, hear about rich Poles in history, so let's go.
JULIA: It was reported that while the mummies remained in the cargo hold of the ship, there were multiple accounts of two ghostly specters that were seen on board multiple nights. Now, conditions on the ship grew worse. People were stressed out, as we know, sailors extremely superstitious.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And then the ship was hit with what was described as an unabating storm.
AMANDA: Oh, shit.
JULIA: Apparently, the crew was near mutiny and insisted that the mummies be thrown overboard.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: Now, when they finally did throw the mummies overboard—
AMANDA: Uh—
JULIA: —the storm finally subsided and they were able to make it back to shore.
AMANDA: And then they dusted their hands and said, "Well, we did that, and, uh, I know the person who paid us did get the thing he wanted. But hey, he's alive."
JULIA: Amanda, did you know there's a mummy on Long Island? I just want to do a quick aside here.
AMANDA: Whoa. I mean, no. I didn't know that. Where is it?
JULIA: It's at the Vanderbilt Museum in Centerport, and I didn't know that. Jake and I just happened to stumble onto the house museum. We went on a tour. We're going through the house. One of the guys said, "Yeah, okay. So the nursery is over there, and obviously, like, the mummy is there." And I was like, "I must have misheard this man. Excuse me?" And then we walked in, I'm like—
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: —"That's fully a mummy. Wow."
AMANDA: Classic Vanderbilt behavior, am I right, Anderson?
JULIA: One of the Vanderbilts just bought a mummy. Classic. It was Kissam. It was William Kissam, Amanda, II.
AMANDA: William Kissam, no.
JULIA: William Kissam II.
AMANDA: Kissam is not back in Spirits.
JULIA: William Kissam II, who, famously, if you listen to our Idle Hour episode, was the one who went on a honeymoon at idle hour and then it burned down. It might have been the mummy's curse. Who can say?
AMANDA: You know, Julia, not to criticize your research and reporting, but you didn't mention whether or not there was a mummy in the house that he honeymooned in and then burned down.
JULIA: It wasn't. It was at the other house that was on Long Island, in North Shore.
AMANDA: Oh, sure. Okay, okay. This is good.
JULIA: Okay. I didn't mean to go on this total aside. I just wanted to share it's funny to buy mummies and then bad things happen to you.
AMANDA: You correctly guessed that I needed the William Kissam update.
JULIA: So from here, we see the incorporation of this mummy's curse in a few stories that I think are worth noting. And keep in mind, these are all predating the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb, right? So the first was a story written by Jane C. Loudon, who anonymously published The Mummy!, with an exclamation point, : or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century in 1827.
AMANDA: If I saw that, Julia, on a bookshelf, I would buy it. No questions asked.
JULIA: I know. Right?
AMANDA: It's giving Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd century.
JULIA: It is. Oof, God. Okay. So in this story, the mummified body of the pharaoh Cheops, who ruled during the Fourth Dynasty. So it was a real ruler, a real pharaoh.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Is brought back to life through advanced technology, waves hands, reanimated in the year 2126.
AMANDA: Let's go.
JULIA: Now, this story was inspired by the public unwrappings of Egyptian mummies that happened in 1821 in Piccadilly.
AMANDA: A crazy thing, a crazy thing.
JULIA: I know. Absolutely wild to be doing as a public spectacle. Inspired by that, and also, more than likely that we don't have any proof of the matter, was probably inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: However, there are some scholars that believe that the first mummy's curse plot— because that's not really a mummy's curse. That's just like a mummy coming back to life story.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But the first mummy's curse plot might have actually been from Louisa May Alcott.
AMANDA: No. How'd she get in this?
JULIA: This is a, like, somewhat forgotten and then rediscovered story that she wrote in 1869, titled Lost in a Pyramid or the Mummy's Curse.
AMANDA: She said, "Little Women? Enough of them. Let's do one big dead man."
JULIA: I have to look up when Little Women came out, because I want to see if this is pre or post-Little Women. Hold on.
AMANDA: She said, "These little women are always embroidering. You know what's basically one big embroidery project? A mummy."
JULIA: Amanda, it was published the year that the second part of Little Women came out.
AMANDA: Julia, I know that you and I share productive procrastination tendencies. You're working on the thing that you should be working on, and you're like, "Well, what if I clean my entire house instead?"
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: This was her, clean the house instead.
JULIA: I think it's just so funny that— like, I said it was a somewhat forgotten, lost story, and then it was rediscovered, I want to say, in, like, the 1990s or something like that.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: But the idea that it got lost because Little Women was, like, so much better than it is so funny to me.
AMANDA: They're like, "Yeah, the sick one, she's really looking bad right now. The Mummy!"
JULIA: The Mummy, though. Okay. There are a few other smaller, lesser known bodies of work that may have actually been our first Western mummy's curse plot. There's another one that is titled The Mummy's Soul, which was anonymously published in 1862, author still unknown. We don't know who wrote it.
AMANDA: Cool.
JULIA: And then another one, titled After Three Thousand Years, which was published by Jane G. Austin in 1868. Now, what's interesting about these is both of these stories actually feature female mummies who take revenge upon the men who desecrate their tombs.
AMANDA: Fascinating.
JULIA: I love that, feminism, I guess.
AMANDA: I love it, too. I think there's also just, like, a suppressed desire to be, like, dominated by a woman in a lot of this authorship. And, like, now you can pay big lady, like that's great.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: But back then, you had to be like, "What if the mummy was a lady, and really hot and [22:47]?"
JULIA: Well, I will say, Amanda, one of them was anonymous. And usually women would publish anonymously.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: And the other one, who we know is the author, was also a woman. So I like this idea, too—
AMANDA: The sapphic desire to be stepped on by a big lady. I don't know, I don't know.
JULIA: That, or I like this idea, too, of like, because these are, like, revenge stories about the—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: —desecration of tombs, like we can make a comparison to, like, sexual assault or something like that, right?
AMANDA: 100%. There are lots of ways that, uh, women in society at this time are denied justice, and fiction and art, as always, has been a way of claiming that justice before we can actually do it in society.
JULIA: I like that. I'm gonna take that as my read of these stories. But we could also do sexy, big lady mummy steps on me.
AMANDA: Either way, we support women's rights wrongs and writings.
JULIA: So the fact, Amanda, that there are so many stories around this period about mummies indicates to some scholars that there might have been some sort of, like, mummy curse fiction work that has been lost to time, but might have acted as an inspiration for some, if not, all of these works.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So there's just so much literature that we've lost to time, and some of it might have been inspiring mummies curse stories for us.
AMANDA: I wish.
JULIA: So, Amanda, this is the situation. This is the scene as it lies when Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon opened Tutankhamun's tomb after thousands of years, right? And we will get to the results of the opening of that tomb just as soon as we get back from our refill.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
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AMANDA: Hey, everybody, it's Amanda, and I would love to start this refill by thanking our newest patron, Janushka. Thank you so, so much for taking some of your money and helping to support this podcast. We literally could not do it without you. Thanks as well to our supporting producer-level patrons, Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Hannah, Lily, Matthew, Rikoelike, Scott, and Wil. And our legend-level patrons, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Michael, Morgan H., Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, and Bea Me Up Scotty. If you would like to have your name read as we thank you for becoming a patron, and if you would like to take advantage of benefits, like monthly bonus urban legends, like director's commentary written down almost like liner notes for every episode, like printable recipe cards of alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails for the last almost 10 years. You can join at patreon.com/spiritspodcast. 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That's three and a half million pounds so far, and that's everything from picking up plastic bottles littering our shorelines to cleaning up their own packaging supply chains, manufacturing. They're really trying to do the work to eliminate single-use plastic and generally contribute to a better and more ecologically sound manufacturing process overall. I really love their water bottles. Now, that we're in sort of full back to school swing. There is like a camping spork I use every day. I have some bags by them, both my duffel bags and my just, like, daily backpack. I love their insulated steel straw tumbler. I have the one with, like, the cute, little ocean on the side. They even have something called a Desert Chill Enamel 12 Ounce Tumbler that I use for my coffee every morning, with adorable little picture of, uh, like the Mesa and a cactus on it. So good. And they are genuinely wonderful to work with. 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JULIA: Amanda, we are back. And for this cocktail, I am crafting something that I'm calling the Mummy's Curse.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Which is inspired by a French cocktail called Monstre Verte or the green monster.
AMANDA: Cool. Love them both so far.
JULIA: I think you're gonna like it. Uh, you're gonna have a little bit of absinthe in this bad boy, but the main liquor is gonna be a dry gin. Then you're gonna add a little bit of green Chartreuse, because, of course, some lime juice, and then basil leaves, Amanda. And so you've—
AMANDA: Ooh.
JULIA: —got this sort of herbaceous, kind of creepy, kind of cool cocktail.
AMANDA: I gotta tell you, the basil in my garden is hanging on there, and I have some purple basil, which I think would be—
JULIA: Ooh.
AMANDA: —a beautiful contrast to this green Chartreuse.
JULIA: That could be the curse aspect of it.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: It's kind of sexy. I like that.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: With these in hand, Amanda, imagine it's 1922, in the Valley of the Kings is Howard Carter, his patron, Lord Carnarvon, and a workforce of Egyptian foremen and porters. Only four of which Carter actually bothered recording the names of. So I will read them to you now, Ahmed Gerigar, Gad Hassan, Hussein Abu Awad, and Hussein Ahmed Said.
AMANDA: Fucked up, dude.
JULIA: Fucked up. Wish we had the rest of the members of this team. We don't, unfortunately. So a little more context for you. Carter had been, prior to this dig, working for the Department of Antiquities, which was a department of the Egyptian government that was meant to preserve the artifacts of Egypt, but at the time, uh, had a history of favoring European and American Egyptologists and, quote-unquote, "adventure seekers" over Egyptian historians and archaeologists. For example, Amanda, the Director of Antiquities at the time that they were doing this dig, was not an Egyptian man, but instead a French Egyptologist named Pierre Lacau.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: The Department of Antiquities at the time also operated on a system that was called Partitch or the division of fines. So essentially, a patron such as a museum or a private collector could fund an Egyptological dig, in order to get, usually, half of what was found, and then the other half would go to the Egyptian Museum, which was run by the antiquity service. Now this seems—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: —I guess, good in some ways, because it is going back to Egypt, except when you find out that the museum would frequently sell these objects, usually deemed, quote-unquote, "less important" by these French Egyptologists running the department—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: —to tourists to collectors, to foreign museums. You could, as you can guess by what we've talked about so far in this episode, buy mummies from the Department of Antiquities, and then the money went mainly to funding the department, which was essentially lining the pockets of these foreign Egyptologists working for the Egyptian Government.
AMANDA: Damn, dude.
JULIA: So this is the state of what is going on with archeological digs during this time period, and the background that Howard Carter is coming from. So Carter was originally funded by a wealthy American benefactor whose name was Theodore M. Davis. You're gonna hate this man by the end of this conversation.
AMANDA: Let's go.
JULIA: Davis funded Carter, and Carter used that funding to essentially search the Valley of the King, starting in 1900.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: He had some mild success. He found a couple of tombs, a couple of interesting artifacts. Nothing groundbreaking, though, right?
AMANDA: He's like, "Oh, hey, boss, your money is being used really well. I promise I'm eventually gonna find something. Uh, love you."
JULIA: And so also, Carter was in the area, and this is in Upper Egypt, because he was sent there by the Department of Antiquities. However, he was transferred out of the area by the antiquity service in 1904. Davis had been paying the Department of Antiquities for the exclusive right to dig in the Valley of the Kings, right?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And so he continues funding these digs in the Valley of the Kings, even though Carter is no longer involved. Davis is an asshole. He wants results. Davis puts so much pressure on his excavators that the, quote-unquote, "discoveries" that they end up making end up being poorly documented and also did incredible damage to the sites that they were digging.
AMANDA: Oh, I'm sure people died. Like, I'm sure this was not a good scene.
JULIA: Yeah, it's not a great situation for the people involved, but it's even more so not a great situation for the respect for the sites that are being dug.
AMANDA: Totally.
JULIA: So, in fact, one of the excavations that he funded was handled so badly that even though we know it was the tomb of a royal family member, someone who is related to Tutankhamun, and these are people, because they are royal family members who are well-documented historically by the ancient Egyptians. Davis' crew did so much damage that the identity of the tomb's occupant is still uncertain. We still don't know who it is.
AMANDA: It's so fucked up to remind yourself, as you're doing a great job, doing, Julia, that like, these are people's grave sites. These are people's resting places, uh, as far back as we have, you know, become a species. We have, uh, marked, venerated, respected the dead.
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: People coming in to treat these as, I don't know, banks or a buffet, uh, is, like, fucked up on 14 different levels.
JULIA: Yeah. I mean, listen, I don't think if we would be doing this in, let's say, England, right?
AMANDA: Yep.
JULIA: But because they are non-Europeans, non-white people, we're cool with just grave robbing.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Because it's in the name of science or history. And clearly, Amanda, and please note the incredible sarcasm of this statement, "Because we're white people, we are better at maintaining history than other people."
AMANDA: It's paternalistic, imperialistic, and ultimately capitalistic, in a way that kind of hits every bingo card of the isms with which we analyze history.
JULIA: Davis' funded digs did indicate, however, Amanda, that there was some sort of unfound royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings. But because he was so bad at management, he declared that, in 1912 that, quote,
"The Valley of the Tombs is now exhausted."
AMANDA: Oh, my God. This is like, "We have to buy a new remote. I can't find it."
JULIA: It's so bad. It's so bad.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: So Howard Carter, though, comes back into the picture because he believed that there was something to be found. So he ends up leaving the antiquity service in scandal, essentially, in 1905. Basically, he had been working on an archaeological site, a group of French tourists forcibly, like, entered this closed site, and he has them forcibly removed by Egyptian guards, which causes an international scandal, because how dare those Egyptians touch those French people.
AMANDA: Ay.
JULIA: It was around this time, however, that he met Lord Carnarvon, who was an English Lord and a collector of Egyptian antiquities who would, as we know, become infamous. It was Carter who pushed Carnarvon to buy the rights to the dig site at the Valley of the Kings when Davis gave it up in 1914. Now, this is also, I would say, a weird time politically.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Especially for Egypt. So World War I made the first few years of digging and surveying extremely difficult because there's a war going on.
AMANDA: Yep.
JULIA: Following the war was the Egyptian Revolution in 1919, which then led to the Declaration of Egyptian independence in 1922.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So that is the year that they opened the tomb.
AMANDA: Damn, dude.
JULIA: At this point, then, the antiquity service now has to essentially answer to an Egyptian Minister of Public Works, still being run by a French man. But the British now, notably, have influence over the Egyptian government during this time.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: You can see kind of how that might influence the things that happen later.
AMANDA: I see. It's all connected, bro.
JULIA: So Carter and Carnarvon spend literal years, literally just sifting through debris in the Valley of Kings in order to get to the bedrock, right?
AMANDA: Jesus.
JULIA: This is natural debris, like sand and silt that has built up over time, but it's also debris left by previous excavations, because again, Davis sucked.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So we already know that Davis was a messy bitch. It was a lot of work as a result. By the middle of 1922, there was only a small amount of debris remaining. But after eight years and a bunch of political turmoil, Carnarvon was ready to essentially give up, right? He was ready to hand in the rights back to the Department of Antiquities and call it quits. But Carter believed that they were close to something, even going so far as to offer to fund the cleaning of the final area of debris himself.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: Carnarvon is like, "Man, you seem heated about this. Seems like you're feeling it. We'll give it one more season."
AMANDA: Huh.
JULIA: So this final season begins November 1st, 1922, which is early. They were trying to avoid, like, tourists, essentially, trying to make their way into the Valley of the Kings while they're working.
AMANDA: Got it.
JULIA: On November 4th, one of Carter's Egyptian workers, again, one that we didn't save the name of, which fucking sucks, my guy.
AMANDA: God.
JULIA: Uncovers a step in the bedrock, which is the beginning of the tomb entrance staircase. Carter, very excitedly, telegrams Carnarvon, who was in England at the time, pauses digging until he can arrive on November 23rd.
AMANDA: Oh, that's a big ask. Like, "Man, drop everything. Get here right now. It'll take you almost three weeks, but like this is it."
JULIA: I will also say he brought his daughter with him, which is very interesting.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: She did not suffer from the curse.
AMANDA: Rad.
JULIA: By November 26th, they had uncovered a sealed doorway.
AMANDA: Jeez.
JULIA: And then this is Carter's words, how he describes this moment, "With trembling hands, I made a tiny breach in the upper left hand corner. Darkness and blank space, as far as an iron testing-rod could reach, showed that whatever lay beyond was empty, and not filled like the passage we had just cleared." Because they found evidence of a door that had been breached and then resealed, which is the evidence that we have that the tomb was broken into early right after Tutankhamun was buried.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And that's the only other, like, people who have entered this tomb, right?
AMANDA: Jeez.
JULIA: "Candle tests were applied as a precaution against possible foul gases, and then widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in. Lord Carnarvon, Lady Evelyn, and Callander," who might be one of the workers, but I'm pretty sure is one of the English workers that he hired, not an Egyptian worker, "standing anxiously beside me to hear the verdict. At first, I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber, causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold everywhere, the glint of gold."
AMANDA: I know it's terrible, and yet, like I picture National Treasure. I get goose bumps. Like, it is a pretty incredible experience as appreciators of history to set eyes on something that no one has set eyes on for thousands of years.
JULIA: Listen, we're not immune to the propaganda of Egyptology.
AMANDA: Yeah. Yeah, dude.
JULIA: So I can go on to describe the rest of the dig. Those details aren't really super important to what we're talking about here today. But in the rediscovering of the tomb of Tutankhamun, Carter launched what we consider the modern era of Egyptology, for better or for worse, right?
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: The magnitude of the find had Carter calling in other archaeologists to assist, such as Arthur Callender, who I mentioned before, and James Henry Breasted. And this is where, supposedly, things start to get weird.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So Breasted shared a story later, years later, right? About how Carter had, after the opening of the tomb, sent a messenger on an errand to his house. When the messenger arrived at Carter's home, he heard what he described as, quote, "A faint, almost human cry." He entered the home, and when he got inside, he saw a bird cage, which typically held Carter's pet canary.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But instead, the messenger saw a cobra within, with the dead canary in its mouth.
AMANDA: Holy shit.
JULIA: Now, Amanda, the cobra, as a symbol for the Egyptian monarchy was seen as the first, quote-unquote, "sign" of the curse.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Again, keep in mind, Tut-mania is raging across Europe and the United States. So this account of the canary and the cobra was even written up in the New York Times with an article that published on December 22nd, 1922.
AMANDA: Damn. This is like rapidly rolling down the hill.
JULIA: In early March of the following year, 1923, British novelist Marie Corelli wrote a piece in New York World Magazine claiming, quote-unquote, "Dire punishment," quote, "would follow intrusion into a sealed tomb."
AMANDA: Oh, man, this is— I'm interested. I'm hooked.
JULIA: Now, Amanda, two weeks after Corelli's article, this is where rumors of the curse turned into what many consider to be a reality when Lord Carnarvon suddenly passed away. Now, the reported reason was a mosquito bite, which then became infected after a razor cut, which led to blood poisoning, which turned to pneumonia, that killed him.
AMANDA: You say that now, and I'm like, "Holy shit. Do I have any mosquito bites right now?" But also, that's how almost everybody died, uh, right? Is like an infection from something—
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: —that wasn't a huge deal. Uh, and I can't decide if I am glad he got to see his dream realized, or if out of spite, I wish that he didn't, but here we are.
JULIA: This sparked even more of a media frenzy, and then suddenly, everyone had an opinion on whether or not the curse was real.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame, weighed in himself, saying that, "Elementals created by King Tut's priests as guards for the royal tomb were the ones that killed Carnarvon." As you might remember, he was a famous spiritualist. He loved this shit. So the fact that he was like, "Absolutely, it was elemental spirits, and that's why that man is dead," is so funny to me.
AMANDA: He's like, "Decisively, that's why. Buy another magazine of mine, please."
JULIA: There were rumors that also surfaced, which followed the first autopsy that was carried out on the mummy of Tutankhamun, where there was a healed lesion on the mummy's left cheek.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: Now, rumor said that this was the same location as the fatal mosquito bite that killed Carnarvon. But when they were already done with the autopsy on King Tut, Carnarvon had already been buried for six months, so they couldn't really confirm it.
AMANDA: Wild.
JULIA: Yeah, absolutely wild. Uh, there is another story about how Carter gave a paperweight to his friend, whose name was, uh, Sir Bruce Ingram, right? Uh, apparently, it wasn't just a paperweight, though. It was, Amanda, get ready for this, a gift I will—
AMANDA: Foot of a mummy? Foot of a mummy.
JULIA: A mummified hand.
AMANDA: Let's go. Woo!
JULIA: Not a gift I'm ever—
AMANDA: Did it.
JULIA: —gonna give you. Don't worry. The mummified hand had a scarab bracelet, which apparently read, quote, "Cursed be he who moves my body. To him shall come fire, water, and pestilence."
AMANDA: Incredible gift to send to an enemy, I gotta tell you.
JULIA: Apparently, they were friends. Apparently, they were friends.
AMANDA: With friends like these, you know? Come on, man.
JULIA: And apparently, Amanda, as soon after getting this gift, Ingram's house burned down.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: And then, if that wasn't bad enough, after the house was rebuilt, it was destroyed by a flood.
AMANDA: No. Not fire and flood.
JULIA: Fire and flood. The only thing he was missing was the pestilence, so—
AMANDA: Listen, Julia, it was, what, 1924, I'm sure he had some nasty shit going on in his lungs.
JULIA: Probably, probably. For all of this talk about this deadly curse, there were seven deaths that were attributed to the mummy's curse.
AMANDA: Of white people, post-dig?
JULIA: Yes, mostly. So Carnarvon, who we already discussed, right? He died four months and seven days after the opening of the tomb. This is going to be a name that might sound familiar, George J. Gould, who visited the tomb, died of a fever on the French Riviera shortly after his visit.
AMANDA: Not a bad place to go.
JULIA: Sir Archibald Douglas Reid, who was invited to essentially X-ray the mummy of Tutankhamun, died of cancer a little over a year after the tomb was opened.
AMANDA: Probably related to his profession as an X-ray technician in the 1920s.
JULIA: Amanda, a 100%, it would. [46:24]
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Then there was A.C. Mace, who was a member of the excavation team. He died in 1928 of lung disease that led to pneumonia.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Carnarvon's half-brother, Mervin Herbert, died of malarial pneumonia in 1929. Carter's Secretary, Richard Bethell, who I would say has the weirdest death out of all of these, died in 1929 under mysterious circumstances. The reported death was suspected smothering, which seems wild to me.
AMANDA: Damn. Yeah.
JULIA: It was in a club in Mayfair in London.
AMANDA: Damn. I wonder if he was like smothered by a bosom, and then they wanted to be polite to, like, his widow, and just said, "Smothered. I don't know how."
JULIA: Very possible. Very possible. And then there is Howard Carter himself. He died 16 years after the opening of the tomb on March 2nd, 1939 from lymphoma. Now, despite the fact that he died so long after the opening of the tomb, and from seemingly an unrelated disease, his death is still often attributed to, quote-unquote, "the curse."
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Now, Carter, until the end, did not believe in the curse, as he said, quote,
the sentiment of the Egyptologist is not one of fear, but of respect and awe, entirely opposed to foolish superstitions."
AMANDA: Okay. Take your attitude, and let's check it down several notches, but he would say that, right?
JULIA: Interestingly, Amanda, noted by his biographers is that in May of 1926, a few years after the opening of the tomb, but he was still working on the Valley of the Kings, still excavating in Egypt. He writes in his diary that he saw a jackal, specifically, the same type of jackal that is associated with Anubis.
AMANDA: And we know there are two species, and one of them is less common in that area.
JULIA: Exactly. While working in the desert, despite having never seen one in over 35 years of working in Egypt.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: And he was like, "But it doesn't have to do with the curse or anything."
AMANDA: I'm sure that's fine for me.
JULIA: I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure everything's good. Everything's fine. Don't worry about it. Now, as you kind of pointed out earlier in the episode, Amanda, there have been some theories, scientists attempting pretty much to find a logical explanation for what is considered by many to be the curse, right? Some have suggested that when opening the tomb, the excavators released fungal and potentially toxic spores.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: For example, and they use this as a potential for what happened is there was a tomb opening in Poland in 1973 where this specific type of fungus, which is Aspergillus flavus, might have contributed to the deaths of some of the conservation team, which led to 10 out of the 12-man team dying prematurely.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: Now, they— the— this is a theory.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: They can't prove that that's why—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —10 of these 12 men died, but this is the argument that a lot of scientists make as a possibility to explain the curse.
AMANDA: Fascinating.
JULIA: Basically, what scientists think is, you're sealing both human and animal remains as well as food for the dead in a sealed tomb. And because of that, this can lead to various types of mold growing in the tombs, as well as bacterias, like Pseudomonas and Staphylococcus, right?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Which are, famously, things that lead to lung damage. And a lot of the— I would say half of the people who were associated with the deaths of the curse had some sort of lung affliction.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So it is quite possible. So whether it is bacteria or fungus or in some cases, scientists think there might have been some sort of radiation that was happening, chances are this curse was not an actuality, but instead a superstition, and one that was formed mainly from European and Western traditions, twisting Egyptian cultural beliefs into something that could be used essentially as a horror trope.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So in some ways, Amanda, I do like the idea of this trope of the curse of the tomb, right? Because it is a belief that could have, in its time, deterred people who effectively wanted to legally rob a grave, quote-unquote, "legally rob a grave."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But at that same time, I also, like, I don't love the idea of taking this important religious belief, which, as you pointed out before, is the preservation and respect of the dead, which is something I would say almost all cultures have, but particularly, the ancient Egyptians, right?
AMANDA: It kind of is what makes us human, the knowledge that we're gonna die, and what we do with that knowledge.
JULIA: Exactly. So they're taking this important religious belief and they're turning it into something tropey, something to laugh about, something to write newspaper articles, and to sensationalize, right?
AMANDA: Make money off of.
JULIA: But in general, I do think like— balancing my two coins, my typical Libra self, I think the curse of the mummy, the curse of the tomb, King Tut's curse, it is an interesting fusion of cultures, right? I'm not gonna say it's good or bad one way or another, but I think it is an interesting fusion of cultures, and one that I am glad we got to discuss on today's episode.
AMANDA: It sure exists, Julia. And, uh, on balance, one of the things in its favor is that it did give us Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser looking like that.
JULIA: They just— oh, man, they just look like that, huh?
AMANDA: They just looked like that. And for the rest of time, there will be couples dressed like that.
JULIA: I hope so.
AMANDA: And I'll say, thank you.
JULIA: Thank you. Thank you for your service.
AMANDA: Thank you, King Tut, for your 10 years of service on this Earth, uh, as a ruler. You did a great job.
JULIA: Now, Amanda, next time you are visiting Egypt and someone offers you a mummy to purchase, first off, you say no.
AMANDA: Yep.
JULIA: But then I would say, stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
JULIA: Later, satyrs.
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