Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Encore - The Curse of King Tut - Pseudo 128
0 Plays2 seconds ago
The Archaeology Podcast Network is taking a break for the holiday season. In the meantime, please enjoy this encore episode. It’s a favorite of ours! Happy holidays!
Welcome to a special Halloween edition of the Pseudo-archaeology Podcast! Tonight, the incredibly unsatisfying story of The Curse of King Tut. Beware! You may tune out even faster than usual…
Contact
ArchPodNet
- APN Website: https://www.archpodnet.com
- APN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnet
- APN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnet
- APN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnet
- Tee Public Store
Affiliates
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Pseudo-Archaeology Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You are now entering the pseudo-archaeology podcast, a show that uncovers what's fact, what's fake, and what's fun in the crazy world of pseudo-archaeology.
Episode 128: The Curse of King Tut
00:00:23
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the pseudo-archaeology podcast, episode 128. I am your host, Dr. Andrew Kinkella, and tonight, on a very special episode of the pseudo-archaeology podcast, The Curse of King Taunt.
Challenges in Engaging Storytelling
00:00:47
Speaker
OK, so we're doing the curse of King Tut tonight, huh? Well, I'm here to tell you that I said this was a very special edition of the pseudo archaeology podcast. And by very special edition, I mean lame. Oh, yeah, not good. Like poor. And why would I at the very beginning of this podcast ruin myself, break every rule of good storytelling, and tell you that this story is gonna suck. It's because, my friends, I have tried. I have tried with this story. I have told it. I've told it in different ways with my students over the years, right? Every time I teach egypt Egyptology,
00:01:37
Speaker
We gotta do the curves, you know? And when we get there, I always have a little bit of a sigh to myself and I'm like, here we go. I've tried to focus on different aspects of it. I've tried to edit it down, take out certain parts, add other certain parts, try and give it some sort of mojo, right? Some sort of je ne sais quoi. But there is no je ne sais quoi here, my friends.
00:02:05
Speaker
The mojo has left the building because this story is not satisfying. I'm just I'm just warning you, right? You got to be prepared. I know that you have many podcasts that you may listen to at this time, and I am just telling you that your choice is bold right at this juncture right here.
00:02:32
Speaker
Now, when I tell this story to my students, even sometimes I'll tell them this, you know, hey, you guys, this isn't the greatest story. And they'll always be like, oh, come on, can kill a man. You could do it. ah You're just thinking low on yourself. And about halfway through, I can tell the students, they're like, um he was right. This this story sucks.
00:02:54
Speaker
So I will I will try again, right tonight, but I think it's just smartest if we just embrace failure. Okay. That's what we're going to do here today on the pseudo archaeology podcast. You and I, we're just going to give a big warm hug to failure. We are leaning into failure to the failure of this story to add anything to your lives. Yeah. You feel that that warm embrace? Me too. Me too.
King Tutankhamun: Life and Death
00:03:31
Speaker
Before we go down the well of the curse of King Tut, we want to know a little bit about Tut himself, right? What are we what we talking about? Where does this come from?
00:03:44
Speaker
so I think everyone knows King Tut, but just in case, this is King Tutankhamun. He ruled during the 18th dynasty of the New Kingdom at around, oh, 1400, 1300 BC. And in that range of things, I always forget, maybe it's 1250, but it's it's in that vicinity over 1000 years BC. So we were talking over 3000 years ago, right?
00:04:10
Speaker
And he died at an early age, right? He died when he was 18 and he's always sort of a sickly person. I believe he rose to power when he was nine, give or take. And so, you know, a nine year old, what are they going to do? He was really controlled by the generals and other government officials kind of behind him. He really was a puppet and just sort of a figurehead.
00:04:32
Speaker
as the son of Akhenaten, if you guys know that story at all, right, he's really used to bring Egypt back to the good old days because Akhenaten was really edgy in terms of his new belief system and changing Egypt. King Tut, his his son is sort of there as as a useful idiot, right, to ah bring Egypt back to the way it was before.
00:04:58
Speaker
So always being sickly, you know, how did King Tut die? Nobody is 100 percent sure. He's just got so many things wrong with him. He had malaria. We believe he was in some sort of chariot accident or something like that that finally kind of compounded all these illnesses and did him in. But then he's buried in all his pharaonic regalia.
Howard Carter's Quest for the Tomb
00:05:22
Speaker
and forgotten by time until this guy Howard Carter comes around in the early 20th century. Now, to me, it feels like Howard Carter is kind of a prickly dude. We all know these guys. You know, they're just, they're really into what they do.
00:05:41
Speaker
They're really intelligent. I mean, he knows archeology, right? But interpersonally, not the guy you're happy to see at parties. Right. That guy kind of a ah work in progress. We all have that friend, you know, and he's he's that guy burning a lot of bridges. Right. So finally, in the 19 teens, he gets this idea that he wants to look for this Pharaoh Tutankhamun. He feels like there's one last tomb that hasn't been found and nobody believes him.
00:06:11
Speaker
Everyone thinks he's full of it. They're like, Howard, come on, like the the value of the kings. It's all done. OK, there's nothing else there. They thought that for years at this point. And Howard's like, no, no, I think there's one more. I think there's King Tutankhamun. I don't think he's been found. And there was this other team that they thought might have been King Tut's. Right. And it was looted and everything like all the other teams.
00:06:35
Speaker
looted. But he's like, No, I think there's this one more. So he gets this guy, Lord Carnarvon, who's Mr. Moneybags, right? He gets Lord Carnarvon to fund an excavation in the Valley of the Kings looking for this lost pharaoh King Tutankhamun. Lord Carnarvon is, he's kind of a rich British playboy character. If you've seen the show Downton Abbey,
00:07:00
Speaker
That house, that's Lord Carnarvon's real house. That's the Carnarvon estate. Isn't that crazy? Right. So this guy, Lord Carnarvon, though, he was always sickly. He was in a really bad car accident when he was younger and he was just always in frail, crappy health. One of the reasons Lord Carnarvon came to Egypt was for the better weather. And funnily enough, you see these funny connections between Lord Carnarvon and King Tut, just in terms of their bits and bobs of their life.
00:07:30
Speaker
There's an excellent book, you guys, that I highly recommend called Lord and Pharaoh by Brian Fagan. I use this in my Egyptology class, and it takes this dual approach where it tells the story of King Tut and the story of Lord Carnarvon. And you kind of interspersed chapter by chapter. It's like King Tut gets the odd chapters, Lord Carnarvon gets the even chapters. Fagan kind of builds the story that way, right? This kind of give and take. Really great. One of my favorite just history books in general, Lord and Pharaoh. I'll i'll put a link to it.
00:08:00
Speaker
in the description. i I highly recommend. Anyway, this guy, Lord Carnarvon, decides to give Howard money to do this look for this last tomb. And so over five years in the late teens and into the early 20s, five excavation seasons, right, they find nothing, nothing and nothing. Howard Carter grids out the entire Valley of the Kings and they look grid by grid, finding nothing, square by square, finding nothing. And then It gets to the point where at the final season, Lord Carnarvon is going to pull money. He's like, look, Howard, it's been great, but and enough's enough, man. We just we're not fine. It's not here. And Howard's like, give me three more weeks. Right. So Lord Carnarvon actually leaves Egypt. And of course, in the last couple of weeks, in the final square, welcome to archaeology, my friends. It's always like this.
00:08:53
Speaker
He uncovers a stairway leading town. So he immediately telegrams Lord Carnarvon. He's like, hey, found stairway leading down Lord Carnarvon, of course, telegrams back. and He's like, wait for me. Wait. Right. So Howard Carter has to like look like nothing's going on for like three weeks because Lord Carnarion can't just jump on a plane from London, right? He has to get on a boat, get on another boat, go to Egypt, down to Cairo, right? It takes weeks of travel. So it's three weeks. Howard Carter is sitting on the biggest archaeological find ever, has to play it off like no big deal. And of course, he still has his detractors. Yeah, Howard, you're not finding anything. He's like,
00:09:33
Speaker
Yeah, I guess not. But Kern-Arvin comes back and then together they go down the stairway. They they pull out a bunch of boulders, them and their workmen, of course, pull out a bunch of these boulders that are in this passageway. And they come to basically a doorway, right? Basically the entrance to the tomb where they're going to break in and they break a little piece open, right? They open a little piece. Howard Carter puts a candle through the opening and into what's beyond.
00:10:03
Speaker
And Lord Carnarvon says, Howard, what do you see? And Howard Carter says, wonderful things. Because his single candle light is glinting off the gold of the tomb of Tutankhamun.
The Curse: Media Sensation or Myth?
00:10:24
Speaker
Man, that's a good story. So when we come back,
00:10:33
Speaker
Let's ruin it by talking about the curse of King Tut. Hello and welcome back to the pseudo-archaeology podcast, episode 128. I'm your host, Dr. Andrew Kinkella, and we are talking about the curse of King Tut, my friends. And so let's get into the actual curse. Now, the tomb has been found. It's a media sensation. This is near the end of 1922, just to give us our little temporal spot there.
00:11:01
Speaker
And of course, it being so huge, you get these flurry of stories and public reactions and every newspaper wanting to sell based on this. Right. It really is just this huge media event. And a couple months in, like three months in or so, there's a I believe it's a letter published in New York World magazine.
00:11:29
Speaker
Where somebody just publishes this letter talking about, you know, that basically a curse will befall anyone who disturbs the dead. There will be a dire punishment for anyone associated with this kind of thing. Just this general sort of your everyday claptrap of beware.
00:11:49
Speaker
<unk> that kind of thing, right? And I'm sure this kind of thing happened in all over the place, right? The the idea, just that general kind of cliche idea of if you disturb the dead, well, negative things shall shall befall you, right? It's just sort of this this old trope that's been used forever and ever and ever. But two weeks after the letter was published, and we're now four months since the tomb was opened,
00:12:17
Speaker
Lord Carnarvon dies. So because of the timing, and now if we really think about it, basically anyone dying in the first couple of months after the tomb was opened, who's related to it in any way, I mean, dude, what are you going to say? Come on, this is this is pseudo archaeology at its easiest, right? It's like, oh, the curse, the curse, the curse of King Tut befell Lord Carnarvon.
00:12:42
Speaker
You know, how did Lord Carnarvon die? Well, I already set up last time. He was sick. He was always sick and in frail health. So what actually happened is he got a mosquito bite on his cheek and then he cut it shaving and then that got infected. And ultimately the blood poisoning that came with that finally did him in. But.
00:13:03
Speaker
Kind of like the King Tut story, he was just frail with all kinds of other bad health problems anyway. So the actual fact that he died was not surprising to anyone, not surprising to his family. Right. You know, this is a frail person who you just know is going to go sooner rather than later. But.
00:13:22
Speaker
After that, there's this idea that the place is cursed. It's cursed. And you have other stories that are kind of rolled into this. Now, I'll just tell you about some of the ones that I've heard, some of the ones that I've seen online.
00:13:39
Speaker
I have no idea how true or false most of these are. Right. ah But I have heard that when Carnarvon entered the tomb or when he died, I'm unsure. His dog howled at the moon. Oh.
00:14:01
Speaker
OK.
00:14:05
Speaker
I have heard that when Carnarvon died or when the tomb was opened, let's go with I have heard that when the tomb was opened, that all the lights in Cairo went out. But I'm kind of guessing if you're using 1922 electricity, I bet that happens every 72 hours or so. This one, OK, this is one of my favorites that you guys might have heard.
00:14:30
Speaker
I've heard that shortly after opening the tomb, Howard Carter, while at the tomb, sent a messenger back to his house. The messenger got there only to find that Howard's prized canary was being eaten by a snake that got into the canary's cage. That's my personal favorite. What that has to do with the curse? Well, the snake is obviously symbolic of Egyptian royalty, so it's King Tut's soul.
00:14:58
Speaker
coming back and saying, huh, you denigrate my tomb? I will eat your bird. There's another one, two of one of the people. I think it was one of the assistants.
00:15:13
Speaker
to the project. I forget because sometimes they're either assistants or they're tourists who kind of hung out for a while at the tomb. But this guy, after he visited the tomb, his house burned down. Oh, yeah. King Tut was like, you desecrate the dead. I'll burn your house down. Then he built his house again and then it flooded. Yes. So King Tut was like, oh, yeah. Oh, I see you with your newly built house. I will unleash floods.
00:15:44
Speaker
So there you go. though Those are the people who. are related to the curse, right? The big ones. The big the big one is, of course, Lord Carnarvon. It's like Lord Carnarvon dies on the curse. And then it's like, hey, you have some other ones. Now, if you go online, you'll see a couple other people listed up to years after. We got to remember the tomb was opened in 1922. So in the I would say in the next decade, so throughout the 20s, you'll have a handful of, again, either assistants or other archaeologists or tourists who visit visit the site.
00:16:18
Speaker
dying usually from fevers or pneumonia or very obvious diseases. They don't just drop dead like they caught this thing and then they died. My favorite one was one of them who died in 1929 was the victim of a suspected smothering in a hotel room.
00:16:43
Speaker
How that's the curse? I don't know. I guess, like, King Tut was like, ah, I know it's been seven years since you desecrated my tomb, but I'm going to send one of my minions to smother you. Beware, my friends, of the curse of King Tut. It's everywhere. So that that's it. That's what you have. And then finally, I guess to to wrap it up, Howard Carter himself,
00:17:11
Speaker
dies in, I believe in 1939. He dies over 16 years after he opens the tomb and he dies of cancer. He has cancer, I believe he's 64 or something like that ah at the time of his death. And that, even that 16 years later, the curse of the tomb is, well, if you open this Decades from now, you may die pretty yeah inclusive curse, I would say very inclusive. You know, what you know what I love about this, though? If you actually put a scientific.
00:17:51
Speaker
hat on and actually analyze this, which which a handful of people have done just because it's been so much, you know, oh King Tut, King Tut, Curse of King Tut. They found that if you average out like the 30 people or so who who actively worked, you know, yeah on this tomb and follow out their life history, they die go altogether. They died an average age of 73.
00:18:16
Speaker
which is one year more than the expected age of death for people of that era and of of that time.
Debunking the Curse: A Closer Look
00:18:24
Speaker
So the real curse of King Tut is here ye, here ye, those who desecrate my tomb shall live an average of one year more than your fellow countrymen. Thus I have spoken. And when we come back, let's wrap up the curse of King Tut.
00:18:46
Speaker
Hello, and welcome back to the pseudo-archaeology podcast, episode 128. I'm your host, Dr. Andrew King-Kella, and we are wrapping up the curse of King Tut. So what what's there to say at the end of this? It's funny, so much has been written about this, right? You know, the curse of King Tut. And of course, this will kind of bastardize itself into the mummy's curse. And you sort of wrap it all in like that. What I love about this is Howard Carter himself called this Quote. Tommy Rott. I love the word Tommy Rott. Yet another one that we should bring back into modern lingo. Man, what a bunch of Tommy Rott, dude.
00:19:29
Speaker
See, it works. so So Howard Carter himself. Oh, and you also hear that. Who knows if this is true or not, but in the early days when Howard Carter was first opening the tomb, of course, he didn't want people coming in, messing with his work, breaking in. So he himself might have offhandedly said something like, oh, don't come in here. There's a curse.
00:19:51
Speaker
And hey, if it works, it works, right? You do whatever you can to keep people away from kind of your precious archaeological information situation. Right. And oh after the tomb was open, Howard Carter did do really meticulous, really well done archaeology for the next decade. He went nice and slow. Right. This is not a looted, thoughtless plunder of the tomb of King Tutankhamun. This is a thought out, methodical, smart excavation. and And that's one of the main reasons why we have the remains of King Tut and all of his fineries today, because Howard Carter and his crew did such a good, thoughtful job on this. So you got to give it to the guy, you know, for being careful at that time when he could have been more cowboyish, but he wasn't. So good for him.
00:20:49
Speaker
Of course. After King Ted is found, there is a wave of what we call Egyptomania. And the whole King Tut's curse slash mummy's curse is part of this. We also have at that time in American history, right? This is when movies are really big in the 1920s and then into the late 20s and early 30s, you're going to get talking pictures for the first time. So movies with audio and big movies of this time are the mummy, which is huge. It comes out in the 1930s. It's it's riding the tail end of this wave.
00:21:30
Speaker
You have even like an architectural explosion in the early 1920s due to the King Tut find, right? You have like in Hollywood, you have the Egyptian theater. It's like, what? Why is there a place called the Egyptian theater in Hollywood? It's because during this time that idea of ancient Egypt was so huge that it infiltrated all kinds of pop culture. Right. So you're so you're watching it in movies, you have it in architecture, there's stories about it, songs about it, right? We can go on and on. I mean, just the idea of a mummy.
00:22:06
Speaker
has become like a major trope in Hollywood movies, right? There's a movie I like to call The Mummy that we've all seen. And and again, it's been remade ever since the 1930s. They remake this thing like every 15 or 20 years. Why? Because it sells because people love this kind of stuff. So it's that love. It's that draw, right? That keeps something like King Tut's curse alive.
00:22:36
Speaker
You know, what do I think of King Tut's curse? um I think it's fun. You know, i I think it's just sort of a fun idea. Of course, we should not take it too seriously. it's I think it's it's fun from like a historic point of view, you know, and in some ways it's it's one of the first of these, I would call them, I don't know, more modern pseudo archaeology stories or pseudo archaeology stories based on real events, you know,
00:23:05
Speaker
Instead of just aliens or some phantom flood or something like like this is. A real thing that happened in spawn the sort of pseudo archaeology wing of it i don't think it's necessarily again that destructive to our psyche and archaeology right i think it's it's just obviously silly as hell.
00:23:25
Speaker
and just kind of fun, especially if you're trying to do a podcast right around Halloween. I guess the downside is when people take it too seriously, right? When they take it to heart, when they really think there is some sort of curse because there's just obviously not.
A Lighthearted Perspective on the Curse
00:23:41
Speaker
And so you see what I mean when we break this down sort of back to the beginning where It's not that satisfying. You know, you want more more slings and arrows, more of a plot, more of a resolution. And it's just like, hey, this one sick guy died right after working on this thing. And then we're just sort of wrapping up some other stuff and trying to shove it in there. You can feel it. It feels last minute, you know? And so I guess in the end, what we want to do with the curse of King Tut,
00:24:16
Speaker
is laugh at it, and just as importantly, have fun with it, which is the best medicine for anything in pseudoarchaeology. And with that, I'll see you guys next time.
Conclusion and Host's Future Work
00:24:31
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the pseudo archeology podcast. Please like and subscribe wherever you'd like and subscribe. And if you have questions for me, Dr. Andrew Kinkella, feel free to reach out using the links below or go to my YouTube channel, Kinkella teaches archeology. See you guys next time.
00:24:52
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.