The Curse of Tutankhamun

Summary

When Lord Carnarvon, who had engaged Howard Carter to excavate in the Valley of the Kings, died in Cairo on 5 April 1923, newspapers around the world blamed a pharaoh's curse. He had died of an infected mosquito bite, and a 2002 study in the BMJ found no link between being present at the tomb's openings and dying early.

The curse was a story about a death, told backwards from it. The people counted as exposed to the tomb died, on average, at 70.

What is documented

The tomb. On 4 November 1922 Howard Carter's excavators found the first sign of the tomb in the Valley of the Kings. On 26 November a second sealed doorway was reached, with the treasures behind it. George Herbert, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, a collector of antiquities, had engaged Carter to supervise excavations in the valley; their association began about 1907. The burial chamber was opened in February 1923.

Carnarvon's death. Carnarvon died in Cairo on 5 April 1923, aged 56. Britannica attributes his death to infections and complications after a mosquito bite suffered while he was at Thebes to visit the newly opened burial chamber. Mark Nelson's 2002 paper gives the medical course: erysipelas at the site of the bite, followed by septicaemia and pneumonia.

The curse. Nelson writes that Carnarvon's death "unleashed a sensation in the international newspapers", and that further deaths were attributed to the curse in the reports that followed. The idea of a mummy's curse was older than the tomb's discovery: in 1869 Louisa May Alcott wrote a story titled "Lost in a Pyramid", subtitled "the Mummy's Curse". Carter dismissed the stories; Nelson quotes him saying that "all sane people should dismiss such inventions with contempt". Carter died in London on 2 March 1939, aged 64.

The study. In the BMJ of 21 December 2002, Nelson, of the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at Monash University, reported a retrospective cohort study of 44 Westerners whom Carter's records place in Egypt at the relevant dates. He counted 25 as exposed: present at one or more of four events recorded by Carter, from the breaking of the seals in February 1923 to the examination of the mummy. The other 19 were the comparison group. He limited the study to Westerners because their records were more likely to be complete and their life expectancy would differ from that of Egyptians.

The results. The exposed died at a mean age of 70 (standard deviation 12), against 75 (13) for those not exposed (P=0.87). They survived a mean of 20.8 years (15.2) after the date of exposure, against 28.9 years (13.6) (P=0.95). Nelson found "no significant association between exposure to the mummy's curse and survival". He noted the study's limits, including its small size and an imbalance between the sexes of the two groups. His conclusion: "I found no evidence for its existence."

Leading explanations

A sensational reading of an ordinary death. Established. Carnarvon's death has a recorded medical cause. The curse was attached to it by the press, and other deaths were added to it in the same way.

A curse that shortens lives. Rejected. Nelson's cohort found no significant difference in age at death or in survival between those present at the tomb's openings and those who were not.

Current status

Debunked. The death at the centre of the story has an ordinary medical cause, and a cohort study built from the excavator's own records found no effect on survival. The study is small, as its author said. Nothing in it, or in the record of Carnarvon's death, needs a curse to explain it.

Last reviewed: September 2026. Records are provisional. Where the evidence changes, the entry changes. Found an error? Tell us.