Curse of The Mummy's Tomb

© 2012 El Veasey Publishing

VC L The Mighty V! Veasey

(VC L. Veasey)

The Curse of The Mummy’s Tomb!

Is there a curse on anyone who opens the tomb of an Egyptian Pharaoh?

Well let’s take a look at that subject.

The curse was supposed to preserve the sanctity of the Pharaohs tombs and to keep away grave robbers.

The idea of a curse befalling anyone who opened a Pharaoh’s tomb gained worldwide popularity in 1922, when British Archeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered and opened the tomb of the ancient Egyptian, Pharaoh Tutankhamen, also known as King Tut.

Howard Carter was a late comer to tomb-hunting.

Most Egyptologist thought that all the tombs of the major Pharaohs had been discovered.

Carter thought there was still one tomb to be found.

He spent five years searching for it before he finally found it.

The magnificent tomb of Tutankhamen

There was a curse engraved on the outside of the Tutankhamen’s coffin that said “Death Shall Come on Swift Wings to Him Who Disturbs the Peace of the King”.

The curse wasn’t taken seriously until those who were present or connected to the opening of Tutankhamen tomb started mysteriously dying.

A cobra killed Howard Carter’s pet canary.

Those who believed in curse said this happened because the king cobra was the symbol Pharaohs and this was a sign that Tutankhamen was taking revenge against those who disturbed his tomb.

Lord Carnarvon, the English lord, who sponsored Carter’s expedition to find Tutankhamen’s tomb, died after being bitten by a mosquito.

He cut the bite while shaving. It became infected and he died of blood poisoning.

Because Lord Carnarvon was present at the opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb,

his death was seen as having occurred as a result of the curse.

There was report that when Lord Carnarvon died, all the lights went out throughout Cairo.

Lord Carnarvon’s son, who was at Carnarvon’s estate in England, said that at the exact time his father died, his father’s favorite dog howled and suddenly dropped dead.(that curse was like the long arm of the law no matter where you’re at it catch up to you)

Carter’s friend, Sir Bruce Ingham, house burned down, not once, but on two separate occasions.

Ingham received a paperweight made out of a mummified hand, as a gift, on which was written, “Cursed be he who moves my body. To him shall come fire, water and pestilence”

This was said to be the cause of Ingham’s house burning down twice.

Carter didn’t believe in the curse and lived to be 64 years old before dying of lymphoma in 1939. (Could have still been the curse maybe he would have lived to an older age)

That would have been the end of the story about the curse, but newspapers in the United States and elsewhere ran with the story, made it popular around the world, and sold a lot papers in the process.

Not to be out done by the newspapers.

The movie makers got in on the money making and produced a slew of mummy movies

The Mummy (1932) starring the great Boris Karloff, The Mummy’ Hand (1940, The Mummy’s Tomb (1942), The Mummy’s Ghost (1944), The Mummy’s Curse (1944), Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

Recently, historian, Mark Beynon, put forth a new theory about the deaths attributed to the Mummy’s curse.

He says that deaths were actually ritualistic murders masterminded, by occultist and Satanist Aleister Crowley, called “the wickedest man in the world", and the “Great Beast”

Beynon says Crowley was obsessed with Egyptian religion and Jack the Ripper.

He thinks Crowley killed some of those involved in Tutankhamen’s tomb opening because he saw it as desecration of the Egyptian religion and he wanted to emulate killings of his hero, Jack the Ripper.

Beynon says that some of Crowley’s victims were.

Raoul Loveday, who associated with Crowley, died the same day and at the same hour that Carter broke the seal on Tutankhamen’s burial chamber.

He died after attending one of Crowley’s Egyptian rituals, after he drank the blood of a cat that was sacrificed during the ceremony.

Beynon thinks Crowley poisoned Loveday.

Sir Ernest Wallis Budge, who worked in the British Museum's Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, who was a friend of Lord Carnarvon, was found dead in bed. He put the artifacts from Tut’s tomb on display for the public. Beynon thinks Crowley killed Budge for doing that and had the opportunity to so because Crowley and Budge hung-out together in the London occult scene.

Captain Richard Bethell, Carter’s personal secretary who was supposedly, in good health, was found dead in his bed at an exclusive Bath Club.

The initial cause of death was ruled a heart attack, but Beynon thinks that he may have been smothered to death by Crowley, because Crowley was in London and may have been at the Bath Club as a guest of novelist, W. Somerset Maugham.

Edgar Steele, who was responsible for taking care of artifacts, died after a minor stomach operation. Beynon suspects that Crowley was the culprit in his death too.

Prince Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey, an Egyptian prince, was killed by his wife, after he was photographed visiting the tomb. Beynon says that Crowley and Bey’s wife were romantically involved and that he convinced her to kill Bey.

Maybe Tut’s curse was working through Crowley, carrying out Tutankhamen’s revenge against those who disturbed and robbed his tomb.

What do you think?

True or false?

Never the less, it was quite a tale!