Just over 100 years ago Howard Carter’s careless unwrapping of the most famous mummy of all time took place. When we delve into the history of the Tutankhamun excavation, we find that the evidence for a curse is not so easy to dismiss, writes Maolsheachlann Ó Ceallaigh

 

Just over a hundred years ago, at 9:45 a.m. on the eleventh of November, a unique event in world history occurred. It was the unwrapping of the most famous mummy of all time: King Tutankhamun, a Pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt.

Tutankhamun was already big news by then. The archaeologist Howard Carter had discovered his tomb almost exactly three years before. Its excavation, however, was painstakingly slow for several reasons.
The blistering Egyptian climate made it impossible to do any excavation except in the cooler months from October to April.

Great care obviously had to be taken in working through such priceless relics, although (as we shall see) Carter and his team were the opposite of careful in some regards. As well as this, diplomatic squabbles created their own delays.

But now the moment had come. The “Boy King” who had been so carefully prepared for burial over three thousand years before would now have his body exposed to the light of twentieth-century science.
There was, however, a problem. Ointments which had been poured on Tutankhamun’s body as part of his burial rites, had hardened over the centuries. The pharaoh’s mummy was stuck to his coffin and couldn’t be removed.

Howard Carter’s first attempt to solve this problem seems drastic enough. He exposed the coffin and the body to the searing Egyptian sun, hoping the heat might melt the hardened ointment. This didn’t work. His ultimate solution, from today’s perspective, seems like pure vandalism.

Tutankhamun’s mummy was broken to pieces using chisels and knives. It was decapitated and its limbs were removed. Once separated from the coffin, its severed parts were glued back together using resin. Carter glossed over his dismemberment of Tutankhamun in his published account of the excavation.
None of the people involved in the unwrapping or dismemberment seemed to have any moral qualms about their actions.

This despite the fact that Egyptian Pharaohs went to extreme lengths to guard against the disturbance of their physical remains, which they believed would play a crucial role in their afterlife.
Certainly, it seems, none of Carter’s team were bothered by the rumours of a “curse of Tutankhamun” which were already swirling around the globe.
Howard Carter dismissed all talk of a curse as “tommyrot”, a verdict that has been echoed by sceptics for a hundred years now. However, when we delve into the history of the Tutankhamun excavation, we find that the evidence for a curse is not so easy to dismiss. And, by the time of the unwrapping of Tutankhamun’s mummy, it had already claimed several victims…

But before we look at the curse itself, let us ask: Who was Tutankhamun?

Such a question might seem redundant, given that almost everybody knows his name. The facts of his life, however, are less well-known.