After King Tut's tomb was found in Egypt in 1922, word spread of a curse plaguing—and sometimes killing—those who entered it. Science has another explanation.
“Yes, wonderful things,” he replied, according to his book “The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen,” written with Arthur Cruttenden Mace in 1923. Suddenly, the world became transfixed on a little-known pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty as gold, jewelry and other fantastic treasures saw the light of day for the first time in more than 3,000 years.
But was there really a curse? Some studies suggest a more mundane explanation: mold found on mummies and in the air at burial sites in Egypt. No curse was ever found written in hieroglyphics at the tomb of Tutankhamen, the Egyptian king who died at 18 or 19, around 1323 B.C. His father is thought to have been the pharaoh Akhenaten, while his mother was his father’s sister, according to DNA testing. King Tut had a club foot and scoliosis, possibly caused by the tradition of incest among the royal family.
Piling on was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the popular Sherlock Holmes stories. Upon learning of his friend’s death, Doyle, a known spiritualist, told a reporter, “An evil elemental may have caused Lord Carnarvon’s fatal illness.
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