The Curse Of The Pharah

The curse of the pharaoh originated from the inscription on the walls of King Tutankhamun’s tomb warning intruders that “they who enter this sacred tomb shall swift be visited by the wings of death”. It evolved from the time of the opening of the tomb to the present. The belief in the superstitions of the time and the influence of the media upon the public in an effort to move the news out of the mundane stories it had focused on since the end of the war was influential in its increasing popularity among the populace. With the large variety of sources connecting incidents to the curse of the tomb, it grew from the death of Lord Carnarvon to today’s conglomeration of stories. The newspapers follow the evolution of the curse at its beginning

Newspapers from around the world were prepared for the story, but they were infuriated about the Time exclusive so they were looking for anything to undermine the excavation. This can be seen in all the newspaper articles: “Howard Carter, of Tutankhamun Fame, Very Ill”, “Scarabs of Ancient Pharaoh Strike at American Savant”, “Peer Leaps to Death, Ninth Victim of King Tut’s Curse” and “Curse Fears Win Laugh”, which were from The Atlanta Constitution, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Throughout all of them, they keep a running theme of the deaths and their connections to the tomb of Tutankhamun, specifically the death of Lord Carnarvon. With his death so soon after the opening, they latched onto his death as a source of news. Taking all the circulating superstitions, the world-wide phenomenon known as the curse of the pharaoh was invented (Luckhurst,1-3). The newspapers took his death to new heights and found incidents to connect back to the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb such as when Carter got sick days before they began to bring the sarcophagus out of the tomb (“Scarabs”, 1). This can be seen with the deaths of all that were involved with the tomb. The deaths were secondary to their connection to the tomb; in addition, with the search for something sensational in the post-war era after World War I, anything exciting was pushed to the forefront of the news to appease their bored readers

According to “The Mummy’s Curse”, there was no curse inscribed anywhere (“The Mummy”, 3). This supports Nelson’s conclusion that the curse was simply a hoax that did not exist; moreover, it shows that the media did incite the curse of the mummy (Luckhurst, 2). However, there is no actual clear base for the legend of the mummy. Carter is quoted as saying, “all sane people should dismiss such inventions with contempt” (Luckhurst, . In “The Mummy’s Curse”, it goes into further depth about the various famous stories that were the basis for the curse that parallels with the variety of tales mentioned in all of the newspaper articles. It ends with the conclusion that the curse does not exist and in a study by Dr. Mark Nelson in “Old Legend Dies Hard”, he has proved that their lifespans were not