The Curse of Tutankhamun (2022) - full transcript

An English archaeological

expedition headed by a man

named Howard Carter sought

to uncover the tomb of an

ancient Egyptian Pharaoh, King

Tutankhamun.

November 1922.

After years of searching,

a tomb is unearthed.

Hanging

over the excavation party

was a pall of superstition

that threatened

the progress of the

expedition at every turn.

A long-lost pharaoh

disturbed and desecrated.

They thought that Egypt

so stuffed full of artifacts

that they could just

go there, dig a hole,

and take whatever

they wanted and it

really, really didn't matter.

A deadly curse,

thousands of years old,

is awakened.

And it absolutely

runs like wildfire.

Those who

entered are in grave peril

from the Curse of Tutankhamun.

Within a few

weeks, his father had

thrown himself out of a window.

A century has passed

since the tomb

of the world's

most famous pharaoh

was discovered, Tutankhamun.

Tutankhamun, yeah,

he wasn't an important guy.

He wasn't an important pharaoh.

He died very young.

He didn't rule for very long.

It's absolutely

bizarre, in a way,

that he should end up the most

famous of all the pharaohs.

2019, a London exhibition

of Tutankhamun's treasures

attracted hundreds of thousands

of visitors.

It remains the

greatest archaeological

find of all time.

But with Tutankhamun,

you've got everything.

You've got the mummy, the death

mask, and all of his treasures.

And... and the treasures are

weirdly intimate things,

you know, his walking sticks,

because he was lame, his games,

his toys.

There are some boomerangs here.

We know him.

We... we know him

and we love him.

Ancient Egypt was the

first visually compelling

and beautiful civilization.

It's incredible.

It comes out of the Stone Age.

And it evolves by the Nile in

this kind of very organic way.

And they produce true beauty and

sublimity actually, grandeur,

aesthetic grandeur,

maybe for the first time

in human civilization.

Certainly, the discovery of...

Of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922

attracts attention

still, because it was

an archaeological adventure.

There's a sense of the intrepid,

a sense of real glamour,

again, because of the time

that it happened, in the 1920s.

So it's not simply

what they found.

It was the manner

that it was found in

and the way that

is framed, the way

it was photographed, the way it

was sold in the popular press.

But the world's

fascination with Tutankhamun

has always been tinged

with fear and danger.

The notion of a curse,

the vengeance of

a long dead pharaoh persists.

It's beautiful.

It's powerful.

It's great art.

But there's some kind

of idea in it, which

is really intense, that this...

A real belief that

this stuff matters.

And... and it is meant

to have magical power.

And so maybe there is just

something spooky and slightly

inexplicable about Egyptian

art and the Egyptian dead that

does make us, you know, believe

in curses and mummies and so

forth.

Widespread

enthusiasm for ancient Egypt

began over 200 years ago.

The Europeans had a

very kinda clear taste

that was nearly all classical,

so Roman and Grecian.

And they thought that

Egyptian sculpture was just...

And architecture... was just

awful, tasteless, primitive.

And that totally

changed in 1798,

when Napoleon invaded Egypt.

And there was a sudden

kind of rush of awareness

about the extraordinary culture

that was there and rotting away

in the deserts.

And when that stuff started

coming in massive quantities

to Europe, then there was

a sudden burst of what

we now call Egyptomania.

It's a bit

strange, because some of them

brought back mummies.

And you know, you

wouldn't normally

think of going on

holiday and bringing

back human remains as a

souvenir, but they did this.

And it wasn't even unknown to

have a mummy unwrapping party.

And people would come and

watch the mummy be unwrapped.

ROBERT LUCKHURST So you

would go to the Royal

Institution in 1830s

and see a mummy,

literally, disassembled,

so unwrapped, chiseled

away at, ripped apart.

And what they're

looking for, really,

is the jewels that are

bound into the wrappings

of the mummy.

Ancient Egypt intrigues

us, fascinates us,

horrifies us, because of the

status of mummified flesh.

And that chance to,

rightly or wrongly,

see the face of an

ancient Egyptian,

the preserved flesh of

an ancient Egyptian,

puts Egypt in a

special category.

That fired the imagination

in a way between real rapture

at seeing this and

excitement and revulsion.

By the mid-19th century,

popular fiction was feeding

this twin fascination.

So in 1869, we have Louisa

May Alcott, most famous

for writing "Little Women,"

writes a short story

called "Lost in a Pyramid."

And "Lost in a Pyramid"

not only has a mummy,

but it has the

first time a curse.

And mummies and

curses thereafter

seemed to go hand-in-hand.

I think, far and away, the

more influential piece is

Arthur Conan Doyle's "Lot No.

249."

And in that, we have the

first real representation

of an enormous bandaged

juggernaut of a mummy battering

its way through the leafy

countryside of Oxfordshire

and killing people in its way.

By the end of the 19th century,

ancient Egypt was

attracting a new wave

of professional archaeologists,

including Howard Carter.

The first

Egyptologists were basically,

I think what we'd classify

today, almost as tomb robbers.

They thought that Egypt was

so stuffed full of artifacts

that they could just

go there, dig a hole,

and take whatever

they wanted and it

really, really didn't matter.

But about the time that

Howard Carter came,

there was a definite change.

Things became more scientific.

And Howard Carter

seems to have adapted

very well to that new

approach to Egyptology.

We don't get the sense that he

went in ripping things apart,

just looking for that

one particular find

that... that would be

worth, you know, thousands.

Carter first arrived in Egypt

in 1891, working on

archaeological digs

as a painter.

Howard Carter was an artist

and a very good artist.

His father was an artist too.

And he became interested

in ancient Egypt,

because he had a

neighbor who had an

extensive Egyptian collection.

He immediately

fell in love with the country

and became recognized as

a gifted Egyptologist.

Carter

had a massive career boost.

He moved suddenly from

just being somebody who...

Who excavated and did artistic

work to becoming an inspector

of the antiquities service.

He went to Luxor

and became in charge

of all the archaeological

sites in southern Egypt.

And he did a really good job.

The archaeological

jewel of southern Egypt

was the Valley of

the Kings, the burial

site of 18th dynasty pharaohs.

So that's

an area in western Thebes

and modern Luxor.

It's behind a range of... of

hills, the Theban Mountains.

But behind these set

of hills, there's

this quiet area,

the Place of Truth,

where the kings are

actually buried.

But archaeologists had unearthed

few artifacts from the

pharaoh's tombs in the Valley.

Ancient Egyptian grave robbers

had beaten Western treasure

hunters to it by millennia.

The Valley of the Kings

was home to a lot

of royal tombs.

And these tombs were

repeatedly robbed.

They were robbed pretty soon

after the burials of the kings.

Everyone knew that the tombs

in the Valley of the King

had been emptied.

For almost a hundred

years, people

had been looking at them.

They'd been finding tombs,

finding nothing in them.

But Howard Carter was convinced

there was one pharaoh's tomb

that hadn't been robbed.

Howard Carter

knew the list of the

kings of the 18th dynasty.

And he knew that some of

those kings had a tomb.

Some also had a body, because

collections of royal bodies

had been found.

So he was able to

go down the list

and say, well, this

king has a tomb.

And this king has a body.

And this king has both.

The only king who Carter

would've expected to be buried

in the Valley and who had

neither a body nor a tomb

was Tutankhamun.

So Howard Carter knew

that he was missing.

And if he was going to look

for an 18th dynasty king,

it would be Tutankhamun.

Tutankhamun was

one of the last pharaohs

of 18th dynasty royalty.

His reign lasted little

more than a decade.

Tutankhamun came to the throne

at a very strange time.

His predecessor,

Akhenaten, had decided

to change the whole

focus of the monarchy

and had worshipped just one

god, the Aten, the sun disk.

Tutankhamun, when he came to the

throne, reversed that decision.

We know that he

came to the throne

at about eight years of age.

And we know that

after he'd done this,

the old gods were reinstated.

So, if you like, he's a

King who restores Egypt.

We also know that he married

his sister or his stepsister.

But beyond that, we don't

a great deal about him.

By his late teens,

the young pharaoh was dead.

Tutankhamun's reign

was never forgotten.

There were statues

of Tutankhamun

and his... his name was...

Was dotted about Egypt.

But his tomb was forgotten.

There was a massive flood

in the Valley of the Kings.

The bottom of the Valley,

where Tutankhamun was buried,

was covered in a layer of mud.

And it was

essentially forgotten.

But to find

Tutankhamun's tomb required

money and plenty of it.

What Howard Carter

needed was a sponsor.

The 5th Earl of Carnarvon

is normally portrayed

as the financier behind Howard

Carter and the discovery

of Tutankhamun, a... a playboy

who sort of threw money at it.

And that's about it.

After a near-fatal car accident,

Lord Carnarvon began spending

his winters in Egypt, a country

under British control.

Egypt was this playground,

really, for wealthy Europeans.

And you would have

aristocrats swanning around,

lots of journalists,

lots of military people,

lots of writers, and socialites.

So it was a whole social scene.

As Cairo's

colonial club life wore thin,

Lord Carnarvon began to show

an interest in Egyptology.

Lots of people

are interested in

Egyptology, because they

think that the Egyptians have

a knowledge that we're lacking.

Particularly in our very

scientific, very modern age,

there's a feeling that maybe

the people of the past,

the Egyptians with their

mysterious mummies and pyramids

and so on, actually

had an understanding

that we are lacking today.

Part of this process is

the idea of the curse,

that they could create

a curse that would have

effect many, many years later.

By 1917, Lord Carnarvon

had teamed up with Howard

Carter and purchased

the rights to excavate in

the Valley of the Kings.

The search for

Tutankhamun had begun.

They made an ideal team,

because one had the expertise

and one had the money.

And they started

to work together.

In the

shadows of the silent sphinx

and the gigantic pyramids

that stood as lonely sentinels

over the vast stretch

of burning sand,

an English archaeological

expedition, headed

by a man named

Howard Carter, sought

to uncover the tomb of an

ancient Egyptian Pharaoh,

King Tutankhamun.

Howard Carter's archives

are now held at the Griffith's

Institute in Oxford.

So this is Howard

Carter's map of a section

of the Valley of the Kings.

It's written up here, "Valley

of the Kings by Carter."

So Carter gridded up this

section of the Valley.

And he was asking

his men to dig down

to bedrock in every square.

And he's drawn in the tombs

that they already knew about

and also some of the

geological features.

Also got the tomb

of Ramesses VI here,

which was a very large tomb.

So Carter's map here is kind

of indicative of the way

that he worked, in that he's...

He's gridded everything

up very carefully

and he's methodically

working through each square

to make sure that he

doesn't miss anything.

Hanging

over the excavation party

was a pall of superstition

that threatened

the progress of the

expedition at every turn.

Fighting that feeling as well

as the blazing desert sun,

Carter ruled with an

iron fist and was hard

pressed to keep the work going.

The English excavators, I think,

tried to see themselves

as scientists.

And they knew that they were

surrounded by Egyptian workers

who had a set of beliefs that,

really, this was transgressive

in some way, that

you were breaking

into what was holy space.

But five years of looking

for the lost tomb of Tutankhamun

delivered only disappointment.

So as Carter's written

here, in all of our excavation

seasons, he started in 1917 and

we've got '18, '19, '20, '21.

They'd found very little

for those five years

that they'd been digging.

And it was getting to

the point where Carnarvon

was running out of money.

And things would've

been quite tense.

The pressure would've been

on for Carter to try and find

something to make all

this excavation and all

this... this money worthwhile.

So in June 1922, Carnarvon

and Carter sat down here,

probably in his Egyptian

room, amongst all

the extraordinary

collection and treasures.

And Lord Carnarvon was

saying to Howard Carter,

I cannot continue to

fund the expeditions

in Egypt on an ongoing basis.

And he needed to

give him notice.

So he said to Lord

Carnarvon, look,

I just have one

square on my map left.

Please, can I have

one more season?

He even offered to

finance it himself.

And then, I'm happy

to say that there's

nothing left in the value.

So Lord Carnarvon,

ever the gambler and

ever the generous patron,

said basically, OK.

One last season.

1922 would

be Carter's last chance

to find Tutankhamun.

So this is what we call

Carter's pocket diary for...

This is Egyptian season

1922, that, at the time,

Carter believed would be

his last season working

in the Valley of the Kings.

So 27th of October, 1922.

"Left Cairo for Luxor."

And he always writes

quite neatly on the line.

The 1st of November,

1922, he's just

recorded "commenced

excavations, B el M,"

Biban el-Moluk, which is

the Valley of the Kings.

And then, very quickly, we have

on the 4th of November 1922,

Carter's entry is one of

the few where he's written

across the page diagonally.

And this is Howard

Carter excited.

And he's simply written

"First steps of tomb found."

And then, when he had

time, he would write

in his journal, which

gives a much fuller

account of what happened.

This is the entry for

November the 5th, 1922.

"Towards sunset,

we had cleared down

to the level of the 12th step...

"which was sufficient

to expose a large part of the

upper portion of the plaster

and sealed doorway.

Here, before us, was sufficient

evidence to show that

it really was an

entrance to a tomb..."

"and by the seals, to

all outward appearances,

that it was intact."

So for Carter, this

must've been something

that he probably dare

even dream about, to find

a tomb that was still sealed.

Beyond those 12 steps,

descending through the bedrock

to a sealed doorway, lay a

passageway, which took Carter

down to another sealed

entrance, beyond which

lay an antechamber, an annex,

and the burial chamber.

Throughout the tomb were

references to the pharaoh

buried inside, Tutankhamen.

The morning that Carter

first entered the tomb,

a hawk was spotted flying

above the excavation site.

His Egyptian workforce

considered it a bad omen.

A mere four months later, the

financier, Lord Carnarvon,

would be dead.

After five years of excavating

Egypt's Valley of the Kings,

archaeologist Howard

Carter and his team

had found the long-lost

tomb of Tutankhamun.

The Griffith's Institute

houses over a thousand

glass-plate photographs

taken inside the tomb.

So we have, in front of

us, a glass negative, one

of several thousand created by

the photographer Harry Burton,

who was assigned to

Carter's team right

from the beginning

of the excavation.

So this is the first

room that they entered

in the tomb of Tutankhamun.

All of these objects were

just as if they had been

placed over 3,000 years ago.

So on the left-hand

side, you can

see we have the dismantled

chariots of the king

for use in the afterlife.

Then, moving round

to the right, we

can see two gilded couches,

or three gilded couches,

found in the tomb.

And upon those couches

are heaped furniture.

So we have chairs and stools, as

well as boxes, which contained

items such as the

King's garments,

and also even a medicine set.

Then, looking

underneath the couches,

we see even more furniture.

We can just about see the

throne of a king, child size.

And then, moving along

to the next couch,

we can see these oval-shaped

boxes, which were

found to contain cuts of meat.

So it's the first

major archaeological

find, really, to use photography

in a very stylized way.

We know the finding

through the photographs.

And it really was an

aesthetic that, yes,

Carter contributed to, but

which Harry Burton invented.

With thousands of grave goods

to remove, catalog, and restore,

the task ahead was monumental.

Carter was prepared to

take years, if necessary,

because he wanted

to do it correctly.

Because he recognized that in

excavating Tutankhamun's tomb,

he would be destroying it.

You could never recreate it.

So he knew he had to

get it absolutely right.

So he did things that hadn't

really been done before.

He assembled a big

team of experts.

And he planned out a

methodology, which was so good

that we can still use

his cards today to see

what he was... found and where.

On November 29th, 1922,

the discovery was officially

announced to the press.

To a world ravaged by the

Great War and Spanish Flu,

the golden treasures

cast a brilliant light

when the public needed it most.

The timing was good, I think,

because it was after

the War and it was also

after the influenza epidemic.

So the world really

needed cheering up.

And everybody loves a story

of action and adventure

and discovery and treasure.

This is

the beginning of the '20s.

This is the beginning of the

era of wealthy socialites

and flappers and new freedoms

and also of, kind of,

decadence and the F. Scott

Fitzgerald "Great Gatsby" era

is beginning.

And perhaps Tutankhamen, with

his glitter and his bling

and his youth, is

the Jazz Age pharaoh.

The delicate grave goods,

over 3,000 years

old, mesmerized,

inspired, and enlightened.

You're suddenly

looking on the face of a king

who hasn't been

seen for thousands

of years, his perfect

tomb, his perfect treasure,

his gorgeous art.

And it was all to do with

helping the soul or the...

You know, the spirit to make its

journey through the afterlife.

There's nothing

lacking from what

the Egyptians could do in art.

And that's what

you really realize,

I think, looking at

Tutankhamun's treasures.

It's a time capsule of a lost

artistic wonderland, which

must've been just incredible.

One prominent journalist

present at the opening of

the tomb was Arthur Weigall.

Arthur

Weigall was, really, a rival

Egyptologist to Howard Carter.

So for years, he had

been telling stories

about the Valley of the

Kings, about hauntings,

about mysterious, vengeful

events that were associated

with particular tombs.

So he was perfectly situated to

tell a story about Tutankhamun.

And he was employed

by "The Daily Mail,"

at the news of the opening

of the Tutankhamun tomb,

to go out there and

get as many stories

as he could related to this.

So he was kind of an

authority figure and expert,

but also someone who understood

that sensational stories would

really sell.

When Carnarvon is present at

the public opening of the tomb,

he does it with such

bravado, such excitement,

such a devil may care

attitude that Arthur Weigall,

the reporter who's

standing on the sidelines,

says, "If he continues

in this frame of mind,

he will be lucky

to last six weeks."

This is really the seeding of

the curse story from this very,

very early point.

Weigall's off the cuff remark

would turn out to be prophetic.

With the media frenzy

interrupting the excavation's

progress, Lord Carnarvon decided

to sign an exclusive deal

with "The Times"

newspaper, appointing them

as sole agent for all

reporting inside the tomb.

But, of course, it enraged

all the other journalists.

And it particularly enraged

the Egyptian journalists

from the Egyptian newspapers,

because they could only learn

what was happening in a tomb

of one of their dead kings

by reading about it in

"The Times" of London.

There's a huge media circus

that, fundamentally, is kind

of locked out of the event,

so that every other newspaper

sends along people to try

and get as much

information as they can,

subvert the whole situation.

Well, bud, good luck to you.

Get back in 21 days or less.

I'll do it.

And they

published stories from experts.

And these experts weren't actual

experts, because the experts

were in the tomb.

So the experts

that they consulted

were sort of fringe

Egyptologist people,

like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or

Marie Corelli or Rider Haggard.

Of course, these people were

interested in the elementals

and the spirits in the

occult versions of Egypt,

rather than the actual

practicalities of the dig.

In February 1923,

after the opening of the burial

chamber, an exhausted Lord

Carnarvon took some time

out with his daughter Evelyn.

So he rented a

dahabiya and he decided

to sail up towards Aswan,

to sail on the Nile

and have a few days of rest.

Unfortunately, as he sailed,

he was bitten by a mosquito

on his left cheek.

And instead of dabbing

it with iodine,

he nicked it with his

razor when he was shaving

and it became infected.

Evelyn brought

her father back to Luxor,

where his condition worsened.

So then, she

took him up to Cairo, where

there were better doctors.

But I think he was

stressed and exhausted.

He got, probably, a

form of septicemia.

It probably went to his lungs.

And then, sadly, he died

on April the 6th, 1923.

The moment he died, Cairo

was plunged into darkness.

And by some mischance, or not,

the lights in Cairo did

go out on that night.

And actually, his dog

Susie howled and died

back here at the same time.

So it is...

I suppose, maybe I just think

of it as a respect for the past.

We don't know what

happens after we die.

It does seem to me so sad

that Lord Carnarvon died

in the hour of his triumph.

He had made the

most extraordinary

discovery of all time.

With Lord

Carnarvon's sudden death,

the press, excluded

from the tomb, now

had a story they

could run wild with.

"Dateline," Egypt.

Visitors flock to the open

tomb, attracted as much

by the legendary

curse as of the chance

to step into a chamber

of the far-distant past.

Mystics the world over, led

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,

the creator of Sherlock Holmes,

cried out at the tomb's curse

had claimed it's desecrator.

It's difficult to imagine

a more perfect storm,

in the sense of the creation

of a curse narrative than Lord

Carnarvon's death in 1923, hot

on the heels of, of course,

the discovery of the tomb.

And it fits a preconceived

narrative of mystery,

of danger, of threat.

And it absolutely

runs like wildfire

through the popular press.

It was

in the Valley of the Tombs

that Howard Carter and

his expedition party

first discover the

tomb of King Tut.

In the dead king's crypt

was the inscription

"Death shall come

with swift wings

to him who touches the

tomb of a pharaoh."

We also, as a culture, really

like stories about bad luck

befalling very rich people.

We love it.

That's what the whole of

tabloid culture is about.

Build people up and

then destroy them.

That kinda sense of

revenge, of justice,

of a kind of natural

justice that is...

That... that is hitting back.

Curse stories are nearly always

told by the poor, the oppressed

about their masters.

As Tutankhamun's body

was removed from his burial

chamber, the public,

in increasing numbers,

believe that Carnarvon had

paid the price for disturbing

the dead pharaoh.

It was only

when the body was discovered

that it suddenly

became very apparent

that this was a young man.

Particularly, being close

to the First World War,

it really sort of made people

feel they could relate to him.

People started to

ask, was it actually

right that

Egyptologists should be

digging up dead people, looking

at their bodies, and so on.

Should we not be letting

these people rest in peace?

After the War, the public's

interest in spiritualism grew.

So we have a group of letters,

a one-sided correspondence,

in fact.

Because as far as

we're aware, Carter

never replied to these letters.

But they were sent by a lady who

adopted the name Stella Maris.

And we believe that she

was a renowned psychic,

a spiritualist.

Your Honor, we have met today.

Many may wonder at the true

purpose of this cooperation.

In the time that is to come,

life must cease.

Spiritualism would've been

very popular during this period

following the... the

First World War,

where a lot of young men died.

So parents, wives were

very keen to reconnect

with the recently departed.

Stella writes "I believe that

Lord Carnarvon owes his death

to the fact that the

tomb of Tutankhamun

was opened without

any ceremonies

calculated to placate any

or. "."

And she says that to satisfy

the spirits, which were guarding

the tomb, that a... an offering

of wine, oil, and milk

should be poured

on the threshold.

And then, Carter and his

team would be able to proceed

without any further hindrance.

Carter dismissed

the curse as ridiculous

and continued working

inside the tomb

while the press outside

pursued it relentlessly.

It would be a matter of

weeks before Tutankhamun

would claim his next victim.

The discovery of

Tutankhamun's tomb

was soon eclipsed by the

shadow of its alleged curse.

The Pharaoh's victims

were adding up.

And the press seized

upon the dark rumors.

In May 1923, George Jay Gould,

an American railroad magnate,

died of pneumonia after

visiting the tomb.

July that same year, Egyptian

playboy Prince Ali Fahmy Bey,

after seeing the

tomb, was later shot

by his wife in the Savoy Hotel.

Key members of Carter's

team soon followed.

It's well known

that Howard Carter's account

of the whole opening

of the tomb was

co-written by another

Egyptologist, Arthur Mace.

And within a year,

Arthur Mace had

had this major

physical breakdown

and had to retire

from Egypt entirely.

And he went back to New

York and he died in 1928.

The person who worked

with Howard Carter

to x-ray and photograph

some of the artifacts

was Archibald Reid.

And he died in January 1924.

And then, there was a French

Egyptologist, very eminent,

called Georges Benedite.

And he had inspected the tomb

and fell very badly outside

on the steps and died in 1926.

Others ensued.

Lord Carnarvon's secretary

was called Richard Bethell.

And he died in

mysterious circumstances

in 1929, thought

to have committed

suicide in his London club.

And the great

confirmation of that story

was that his father had heard

this news and had kind of cried

"It's the curse of the mummy,

the curse of the mummy."

And within a few weeks, his

father had thrown himself out

of a window and died as well.

Within 10

years of the discovery,

13 deaths had been

linked to the curse.

But while the press

lapped up such stories,

others were skeptical.

Some of those who died had

never even visited Egypt.

So it came to a

point, almost, where

anybody who had any

connection at all

with Tutankhamun or

his tomb and then met

a mysterious or unexpected end,

it was attributed to the curse.

American Egyptologist,

Herbert Winlock,

got fed up of hearing

these stories.

So he decided to

do some research.

And he looked at the people

who'd been present in the tomb

at various times.

And basically, he

worked out that

of all those people

who were there,

the death rate was

completely as expected.

There was no disproportionate

number of people dying.

But if there is no curse,

what of the tablet

inscription reported to have

been found inside the tomb?

In the dead king's crypt was

the inscription "Death

shall come with swift wings

to him who touches the

tomb of the pharaoh."

So the story that there was

a tablet found within the tomb

that said "Death

comes on swift wings,"

I think we can put no

credence to it whatsoever.

In ancient Egypt, tomb warning

were only found in

private civilian tombs,

not royal tombs.

So Egyptian tombs, at least

for private individuals,

weren't hidden.

They were very open and required

visitors to come to them.

The tomb wasn't just the place

where you deposited a body

and forgot about it.

It was a place which

actually served

as the home for the

spirit, the burial chamber.

And then, there's

the offering chapel.

And that was very much where

threats connected to tombs

are situated.

The idea is that if you

behave badly in a tomb

or toward the tomb, particularly

the physical structure

of the tomb, bad things

will happen to you.

Royal tombs were

completely the opposite.

The sort of threats that you

would see in private tombs,

you actually wouldn't

get in a royal tomb.

Tombs in the Valley

of the Kings were

not open to general visitors to

come along and make offerings.

And that's partly

because the king is very

different to everybody else.

The curse inscription supposedly

discovered inside Tutankhamun's

tomb has never been found.

It took 10 years

for Howard Carter

to remove Tutankhamun's

funerary objects from the grave.

The man most responsible

for disturbing the pharaoh

lived to the age of 64, before

dying of natural causes.

For a hundred years,

stories of curses

have been entwined with the

public's love of Tutankhamun.

And as his artifacts

are returned to Egypt,

they show no signs of fading.

I think, fundamentally, people

do love to have not everything

explained to them,

because it allows

a little bit of interpretation.

And it's that bit of

interpretation that's the ghost

story, that's the curse story.

And as long as there is

that space in the narrative,

the curse will always

exist, side-by-side

with the rational explanation.

And that will only

continue to fuel

our interest in ancient Egypt.