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One day, late in the year 1922 there were two men standing
over a freshly dug pit staring down at a stone staircase disappearing deep
into the darkness below. Brave as they were they still hesitated stepping
down into the Unknown because there was a Great Mystery lurking behind
the massive doors still featuring the ancient seal with a jackal and nine
prisoners. There were sixteen steps leading the way to either fame or death…
Amateur archeologist Lord Carnarvon was an athlete and art
collector, a traveler and a circumnavigator and at once a cool-headed realist
and daydreaming romantic. Inheriting a huge fortune at the early age of
23, he had been spending lavishly on sports and scientific research.
The proud owner of Britain’s third registered automobile, he drove all
the way down to Egypt where he plunged himself wholly into archeological
excavations only to realize that he still had a lot of reading to do to
get the hang of his new profession. That’s how he met Howard Carter,
the other member of the would-be expedition bound to make the biggest archeological
discovery in the ancient land of the Pharaohs…
A brilliantly educated researcher, Howard Carter was exactly
the man Lord Carnarvon needed, and a real daredevil too…
So they stood there taking their time before entering the
tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen Carter had discovered shortly before that…
Exchanging one final glance of mutual encouragement, the two men started
their slow descent. Carnarvon led the way oblivious of the fact that his
days were numbered. A few years before that Carter had come across a wealth
of treasures apparently belonging to Tutankhamen but it was the first time
anyone had dared come close to the final resting place of the long-deceased
ruler… When word of the tomb’s discovery spread out, one Italian reporter
said he knew for sure about some mysterious object the archeologists stumbled
upon on the very threshold of the Pharaoh’s tomb. That was the reason of
Lord Carnarvon’s hasty departure back to England. Howard Carter later
denied everything but we know that Lord Carnarvon did seek the advice of
the famous mystic, Count Haymon, who told him in no uncertain terms that
if he only ventured into the sepulcher he would fall ill and die.
Undeterred and all set to see his expedition through, the Lord traveled
back to Egypt and, in the company of Howard Carter, walked down the remaining
stairs and came close to the sarcophagus – a huge gold-plated box-like
structure… Reaching the opposite end of the sepulcher, they saw a tiny
door leading to a small room where there stood a chest covered in gold
and surrounded by several statues of patron goddesses. Carnarvon thought
the eyes of the statues peered right at his own and, feeling ill at ease,
headed for the exist, flanked by his companions. Two months later
Lord Carnarvon died in his suite at the Continental Hotel in Cairo.
His doctors said the famous archeologist had been killed by a poisonous
mosquito...
Shaken by his friend’s sudden death, Howard Carter put on
hold all further work. Only two years later did the party get back breaking
open the gold-plated chest, taking out the numerous caskets placed one
inside another and examining Tutankhamen’s mummy.
The mummy was beautiful and terrible all at the same time,
its lavish coat of ointments and fragrances bonding together forming a
black and stone-hard mass… Then they removed the shining gold mask and
saw the face of the young Pharaoh, his noble and serene features almost
unaffected by nearly 30 centuries of lying under the vaulted ceiling of
the stone sepulcher…
Shortly after, newspapers went abuzz writing about the so-called
“Pharaoh’s curse”. Indeed, within six years of the tomb’s discovery, 12
of those who attended the tomb’s opening were dead… Then Lord Carnarvon’s
stepbrother, Herbert Obrey, took his life without any obvious reasons and,
shortly afterwards, Lady Carnarvon died bitten by some unknown insect.
Just a year later the 78 year old Lord Westburn jumped out of his seventh-floor
window shortly after his son, who was Howard Carter’s secretary during
the excavations, was found dead. The cause of his death has never been
determined.
A decade after the greatest archeological discovery of the
century, Howard Carter was the only survivor. Strangely, it looks like
the Pharaoh’s curse spared him and he died of natural causes in 1939…
Theories about Tutankhamen’s curse abound, some saying there
might have been some poisonous elements inside the Pharaoh’s tomb. Nuclear
physicist Louis Bulgarini believes the Egyptians could have used radioactive
materials to protect their shrines. The most ominous theory, however, comes
from Philip Vandenburg. In his book titled The Curse of the Pharaohs’ he
writes that the pyramids and tombs provided fertile breeding ground for
all kinds of deadly bacteria…
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