Did Ancient Egyptians Really Protect Their Dead With Mummy Curses?

Following Howard Carter’s discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, a series of deaths surrounding those involved with the excavation fueled rumors of a mummy’s curse.

The speculation drew on a long-standing fascination with ancient Egyptian tombs that were inscribed with warnings to those who disturbed their burial sites. Journalists—who did not have direct access to Tutankhamun’s burial chamber—seized on the idea, spinning tales of supernatural retribution. Within a decade, the legend had taken on a life of its own, immortalized on screen with Boris Karloff’s portrayal of a resurrected Egyptian priest in The Mummy (1932). 

But just how seriously did ancient Egyptians actually take curses?

Curses in ancient Egypt were typically inscribed in burial chambers, which were supposed to remain sealed and private. They were usually directed at people who entered them with “malicious intent and who wanted to either damage or confiscate offerings,” says Colleen Darnell, an Egyptologist who has published widely on pharaonic history and religion. There were also inscriptions that offered blessings to people visiting the public area of the tomb with good intentions; those who might recite a passage to preserve the memory of the deceased, she adds.

The inscriptions were similar to trespasser warnings, explains Daniel Potter, an assistant curator at the National Museums Scotland, who developed their Ancient Egypt Rediscovered gallery. “They would say if you come into this tomb and break stuff you’ll be judged by God,” he says.

Inscriptions might warn that a god could punish a person by wringing their neck like a bird or that they’d be eaten by a crocodile, hippopotamus or lion. “They’d use visual metaphors,” Potter says. “They’d say the tomb was being protected by the three scariest animals, and these were the ones with the biggest teeth near the Valley of the Kings.” He adds that curse inscriptions were rare and appear in only about 40 to 50 of the thousands of ancient Egyptian tombs that have been discovered.

Because only 1 to 5 percent of the ancient Egyptian population was literate, according to Potter, quite a lot of people would have been unable to read curses. However, they probably would have been perturbed to be surrounded by the dead in the Valley of the Kings—a royal burial ground where pharaohs and elite Egyptians were laid to rest—Potter says: “There’s talks of jinn [supernatural beings] and spirits in ancient Egyptian discourse. They would have had the same reaction as people who say that a cemetery is haunted today.”

Ancient Egyptians believed in what was called Heka, a divine force that helped to maintain order, offered protection and even healing. “For them, magic and religious ritual weren’t opposed to one another,” Darnell says. “They would use magical spells against scorpion stings, snake bites and a rogue spirit that’s attacking you for uncertain reasons. There was even one for if your cat got stung by a scorpion.”

Egyptians believed that gods and spirits were all part of the world they lived in, says Potter, and that simply saying something out loud—such as asking to be protected, for a loved one to be healed or a grave robber to be cursed—gave it the power to exist. 

They also wrote Letters to the Dead, in which people asked their deceased family members for help with issues like illness and infertility. “There’s clearly an appreciation that a deceased person has power in the living world and can impact your life,” Potter says. “Even then, it’s hard to say how many people were wandering around very cautiously and carefully.”

The idea that ancient Egyptian tombs were cursed actually began a few decades before the discovery of Tutankhamun. Louisa May Alcott’s short story “Lost in a Pyramid; or, The Mummy’s Curse” (1869) is one of the earliest examples of the trope in literature, followed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1892 tale “Lot No. 249,” about an Egyptology student who reanimates a mummy to attack his enemies.

When Bertram Fletcher Robinson died at the age of 36 in 1907, a rumor spread that he was the victim of a curse after researching the so-called Unlucky Mummy board at the British Museum. “There were also rumors that the man who bought it in Egypt had died, as had the family in England, as had someone who had taken a picture of it,” Darnell says. “There was even a rumor it was being transported on the Titanic and caused the ship to sink. Every single one of those stories is made up.”

The worldwide interest in Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb amplified and sensationalized these kinds of stories. Especially after Lord Carnarvon, the man who financed Carter’s expedition, died just five months after the discovery. In reality, his death was caused by an infected mosquito bite combined with other factors. 

One month later, George Jay Gould—a visitor to the tomb—died, and the radiologist who x-rayed Tutankhamun’s mummy also died in January 1924. Some link Carter’s death on March 2, 1939, to the curse.

Potter doesn’t believe it, though. “There’s quite a lot of people who live very long lives who were involved with the excavation,” he says.

Ahead of the excavation of Tutankhamun, Lord Carnarvon signed an exclusive media rights deal with The Times of London regarding the findings, says Potter: “Every other paper, including Egyptian papers, can’t publish any images. Everything else has to be written and reported.”

As a result, journalists made up inscriptions on the tomb. When Carnarvon died, papers printed additional sensationalist rumors about the curse. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini reportedly took them so seriously that he ordered the removal of an Egyptian mummy from Rome’s Palazzo Chigi.

Potter believes the discovery of Tutankhamun captivated the public in part because of the aftermath of World War I and the economic hardships that followed. “It’s a good news story. There’s adventure, gold, a link to the past, but it’s also dealing with death.”

Movies, books and other pop culture creations helped cement the view of “Egypt as a dangerous, salacious and sexy place that has long been built into the Western imagination of the country,” adds Potter. “Ultimately, people will always be curious about how people lived, though. Human stories always pull us in.”