A British scholar has traced the origins of the curse of Tutankhamen, the Egyptian pharaoh who died more than 3,000 years ago, and found that the legend of King Tut's curse began not in ancient Egypt but in 19th-century England.
Dominic Montserrat, an Egyptologist at London's Open University, has tracked the trail of the curse back to the 1820s, to the imagination of an English author and an odd theatrical "striptease" show in London. The intact tomb of Tutankhamen was discovered by British archeologist Howard Carter in November, 1922, working under the patronage of the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, a collector of antiquities. The fabulous tomb yielded thousands of objects, from gold-covered chariots and masks to beautiful jewellery, furnishings and statues, as well as King Tut's mummy itself, protected in three golden coffins. The discovery, reported in early 1923, stunned the world and spurred popular belief in a "mummy's curse" that brought woe to anyone associated with the discovery.
"My research has not only confirmed that there is no ancient Egyptian origin of the mummy's-curse concept," he said. "But, more importantly, it also reveals that it didn't originate in the 1923 press publicity about the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb, either," said Dr. Montserrat, author of a book about pharaonic civilization called History, Fantasy and Ancient Egypt.
"My work shows quite clearly that the mummy's-curse concept predates Lord Carnarvon's Tutankhamen discovery -- and his death -- by 100 years." He traced the origins of the curse to a stage show that took place near London's Piccadilly Circus in 1821, in which Egyptian mummies were unwrapped for the paying public.
The show apparently inspired a 25-year-old author named Jane Loudon Webb to write an early science-fiction novel called The Mummy, published in 1822. Set in the 22nd century, it tells the tale of a vengeful mummy who comes back to life and threatens to strangle the book's scholarly young hero.
The Mummy was followed in 1828 by an anonymous English children's book, The Fruits of Enterprize, in which mummies were set alight and used by intrepid explorers as torches to illuminate the interior of an Egyptian pyramid.
Forty years later, the literary idea of the vengeful mummy evolved into the idea of a mummy's curse. In 1869, American Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, wrote a short story called Lost in a Pyramid; or, The Mummy's Curse. Dr. Montserrat only recently rediscovered this long-lost work buried deep in the periodicals collection of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Like the anonymous 1828 children's book, and perhaps based partly on it, the Alcott story features an explorer who uses a mummy as a human torch to explore a pyramid, from which he steals a golden box containing strange seeds. The seeds are planted by the explorer's fiancée and grow into grotesque flowers; when she inhales their scent, she falls into a coma and turns into a living mummy.
The curse motif was copied and expanded upon by other British and U.S. novelists for the next 50 years. By the time Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon entered Tutankhamen's real-life burial chamber, the idea of a mummy's curse was well-established.
Scottish author Minnie MacKay (who wrote under the name Marie Corelli) promptly applied the motif to the exciting discovery of King Tut's tomb, issuing a dramatic warning that "the most dire punishment follows any rash intruder into a sealed tomb."
When Lord Carnarvon died suddenly of pneumonia just two weeks after entering the tomb, the Curse of King Tut was propelled onto the front pages of the world's newspapers. An "ancient Egyptian" inscription -- "Death shall come on swift wings to him that toucheth the tomb of Pharaoh" -- was invented, and any death associated with the expedition, however remote, was attributed to the curse.
Only six of the 26 people present at the opening of Tutankhamen's tomb died in the decade following its discovery. Mr. Carter did not die until 1939, aged 64. And there are no known genuine ancient curses relating to opening tombs or removing objects from them. (In ancient times, tomb-robbers faced the wrath of the civil courts rather than that of the mummy's eternal spirit; when caught, most raiders were executed for theft.)
If King Tut didn't extract revenge on the intruders in his tomb in the form of a curse, he did find satisfaction another way. According to ancient Egyptian beliefs, a king's eternal soul would be kept alive only if his name were periodically recited for eternity. The mythical mummy's curse ensured that Tutankhamen's name will live on for many generations.