The Curse of the Pharaohs

      When Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon opened the tomb 0f Tutankhamun they set off a chain of mystery. Several of those connected with the discovery died violent or unusual deaths--victims, according to the legend, of the pharaoh's curse.

      The sinister superstition is based on the unconfirmed reports of a chilling series of happenings on the very day when the two archaeologists and their party had first penetrated the entrance to the tomb in November 1922. As the last man climbed back into the sunshine a sandstorm is said to have sprung up and swirled over the mouth of the cave. As it died away a hawk, the royal emblem of ancient Egypt, was allegedly seen soaring over the tomb to the west--towards the mysterious 'Other World' of Egyptian belief.

      The spirit of the dead pharaoh, said superstitious people, had left his curse on those who had violated his tomb.

      Five months later Lord Carnarvon, then 57, was bitten by a mosquito on the left cheek. The bite became infected, and weakened by blood poisoning, he contracted pneumonia. As he died in a Cairo hotel at 1:55 a.m., all the city lights went out. At the same time, back home in Hampshire, Carnarvon's dog howled--and died.

      Strangest of all, doctors who later examined Tutankhamun's mummy reported a scab-liked depression on a spot on the left cheek exactly corresponding to Carnarvon's mosquito bite.

      In the following months of 1923 the curse was blamed for the death of several others who had visited the tomb.

      Carnarvon's half brother, Aubrey Herbert, died of peritonitis.

      An Egyptian prince, Ali Farmy Bey, whose family claimed descent from the pharaohs, was murdered in a London hotel and his brother committed suicide.

      George ay Gould, an American railway tycoon, died of pneumonia after catching a cold in the tomb.

      The Hon. Richard Bethell, who helped Carter to catalogue the treasures, was thought to have committed suicide at the age of 49. A few months later, in February 1930, his father, Lord Westbury, hurled himself to death from his London flat. An alabaster vase from the pharaoh's tomb was in his bedroom.

      In the years after the discovery of the tomb in 1922 more than a dozen people who had been concerned with it in one way or the another died unnatural deaths.

      But one man continued to scoff at the legendary curse of the pharaohs--the one man who, it might have been thought, had most reason to fear it. Howard Carter in March 1939--of natural causes.

      Yet the Egyptian government agreed to send the Tutankhamun treasures to Paris for an exhibition in 1966, its Director of Antiquities, Mohammad Ibraham, dreamt that he would face terrible danger if he allowed them to leave the country.

      He fought the decision bitterly, right up to one last despairing meeting in Cairo with the authorities concerned. As he left the meeting he was knocked down ny a car. He died two days later.