The Curse Read Online Free Page B

hung there. It had Carter’s canary in its mouth.
    The cobra was the symbol of Egypt’s pharaohs and the incident set off speculation that the ancient curse that was supposed to punish those who defiled the resting places of kings had struck.
    To the Egyptian workers at the dig, Carter had not been killed by the cobra because he had handled the opening of the tomb with great care and reverence. But they wondered who the revenge would be reaped upon.
    The legend grew as unusual deaths occurred among a group of people that had some association with King Tut’s tomb. Some of the deaths occurred among those directly involved with Howard Carter and the excavation, but some people had merely been visitors Carter permitted onto the site.
    The first strange death came within a few months and it was a sensational one: Lord Carnarvon. With his death, the curse became front-page news.
    The exact cause of Lord Carnarvon’s death wasn’t known, although they believed he died from blood poisoning after a mosquito bite had become infected from shaving with a rusty blade. They fastened on that cause because the doctors couldn’t come up with an exact diagnosis.
    During his last moments, Carnarvon was heard mumbling Tutankhamen’s name.
    If that wasn’t enough to throw fuel on the fires of the curse, when he died in Cairo during the wee hours, the lights in the city went inexplicably out—and two thousand miles away at his estate in Britain, the peer’s favorite dog howled inconsolably and died within minutes of his master.
    Lord Allenby, Britain’s high commissioner for Egypt, demanded an explanation for the mysterious power outage, but his power plant engineers weren’t able to supply one.
    Within months, Egypt’s first native Egyptologist and Egyptian Museum curator, Ahmed Kamal, and American Egyptologist William Henry Goodyear, both with a connection to the site, were dead.
    In another strange twist, Aubry Herbert, Lord Carnarvon’s brother, died six months later—also from blood poisoning. Aubry was only forty-three and Lord Carnarvon was fifty-six.
    His death was followed by that of an Oxford archaeologist who had entered Tut’s burial chamber with Carter. He hung himself, leaving a note that said he had “succumbed to a curse.”
    More deaths came; some seemed natural, some strange, but all were blamed on the curse. One scholar died attempting to rescue a book from his burning house. It was the Egyptian Book of the Dead .
    That nearly a couple dozen people with some connection to King Tut’s tomb died over the next six or seven years didn’t appear on the surface to be significant.
    However, when the ages of those who passed away underwent statistical analysis, the results supported the fact that the death rate was far above the norm. Throw in some strange circumstances, including the death of Lord Carnarvon’s wife allegedly from an insect bite, and it makes one wonder if the spirit of the boy king wasn’t reeking havoc on the invaders.
    The article’s premise was that the long-dead pharaoh was taking his revenge not just because his tomb had been opened, but also because it had been secretly looted by Carter and his cohorts.
    The theft had occurred at the tomb, soon after the realization that a major find had in fact been made and before the Egyptian government inspectors had arrived.
    In a very famous moment on November twenty-sixth, Carter had a hole made in a wall that was exposed after stairs leading to it were excavated. The hole only revealed a pitch-black empty void.
    To determine if the empty space was a room, Carter stuck a long steel rod through the opening. Deciding the area was large enough to be a room, he next extended a candle through the hole and stuck his head through the opening.
    That was when Lord Carnarvon, who was behind him, asked Carter the famous question. The article had excerpts from Carter’s own account, which