January 5, 2012 • 38 mins
When Howard Carter opened Tutankhamen's tomb, some believe he unleashed a curse on everyone associated with his expedition. But there's no such thing as a curse, right? Learn the scientific basis beneath King Tut's curse as Chuck and Josh Meet the Mummy!
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant
(00:20):
and makes this stuff you should know the podcast. I'm
walking like an Egyptian Worth. You nailed that too, Jerry
and now were singing the old Steve Martin King tut
song and you were like, what is that? I know
what it is? And I'm young. I don't know that.
I don't know the lyrics. Yeah, you were. You were
on the cusp there, that was. That was a big
(00:41):
deal when I was a kid, And I was like
to when I think when that came out? Yeah, he
missed it by a few years. Yeah, I mean, it
wasn't like twenty five and going to see Steve Martin
or anything, what I like sixty. So, Chuck, I know
you're familiar with Steve Martin, but are you familiar with
(01:01):
a little boy king by the name of King two
tongue common, Yes, I am, are you? Yeah, Well, let's
wrap about him. Man, did you go see the exhibit? No? No,
the Discovery one in Times Square. Well it travels you know.
Oh yeah, no, you we saw that one. I didn't
see it though it saw bodies, so that was pretty neat.
(01:22):
I think I told you about that. I didn't see
bodies yet. I did the dialogue in the Dark. Yeah,
we talked about this. Yeah, bodies was pretty cool. But
you're like, wow, this is really nuts. Yeah, um, but no,
I didn't see King Tych did you? Did you know
there's a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit now in Times Square?
Discovery has you know, Discovery has like this basically like
(01:43):
a museum, like an exhibition show in Times Square and
the newest one is the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like the
Dead Sea Scrolls are there in Times Square right now.
You can sign your name on it, right Yeah, all right,
Well let's get back to King Tut because we got
a little off topic. If you ask me, um, I'm
gonna tell you what I know about King Tutt, and
(02:06):
then you tell me what you know and we'll combine
the two. So like, for example, um, I found out
that King Tut was an Avid chariot racer. Did you
know that he was buried apparently in tombed I should say,
with six chariots. It's kind of like you're uber wealthy
boy president, right, who's like sixteen and then you know
(02:30):
dies at a eighteen is buried with like his eight
camaros or something. That's kind of what they did with
King Tutt. He was also an avid ostrich hunter. He
used to hunt in the desert with just him and
his dog. Is pretty cool. Um. He also married his
sister and had two babies with their both of the
both of which were um born prematurely and dyed. Yeah,
(02:51):
there's a lot of inbreeding going on back then. Yeah,
there's a lot of rumors that he was in bred,
or a lot of speculation or I should say a
lot of factual conjecture that he was him self also inbred. Um.
And they think that there's this huge mystery going on
right now that he was club footed. Did you know that.
I did not know that. So they think that he
may have been club footed, which would definitely support the
(03:14):
inbreeding UM argument, not that people who have club feed
are inbred, but I think if you are inbred, you're
likelier to have something like a club foot. But they
can't tell. It looks like he's club footed, but his
his cadavers. Corpse has been so mistreated over the decades
since it was discovered that, Um, they can't tell if
(03:35):
somebody just broke his foot or if he was born
that way club foot? Is that all yet? Yeah, that's
all right, we should boy it. Uh. He was short.
He had a weird shaped head. Have you ever seen
a skull? Uh, it's it looks like an egg. It's
(03:59):
really weird looking. And they measured it and found that
it just qualifies as quote normal. But he Uh. All
all the paintings back then showed all the pharaohs and
the Egyptian pharaohs had these weird shaped heads, and they thought, well,
those are just the artist. But then they found his
skull and they're like, no, he has a weird shape dead.
(04:20):
So Eric van Daeken here would say something like, well,
it's because aliens came down and bred with them. The
guy who wrote um Highways of the Gods, I believed
that Runways of the Gods basically the seventies dude who
who printed all these books basically saying that the ancient
Egyptians were in contact with aliens of them all this stuff,
(04:42):
and there's all this evidence throughout like hieroglyphics and things
like you know, two tone commons, skull or whatever that
show that Aliens came down and bred with the Egyptians,
and that's how human civilization just advanced by leaps and bounds.
I believe it already just from that. Anybody who it's
like their acupuncture podcast came back, weren't just turned that
(05:03):
off at the mention of his name. Yeah, exactly. So
let's talk a little bit about how he died though,
because that's the big you know, we know that he ruled,
he was the boy king from nine to nineteen and
then just died. And over the years there have been
some theories, and the leading three theories was one that
he died from war wounds too, that he died in
(05:26):
a chariot accident that seems possible, or because of a
chariot accident, and the third was murder, that he was
clubbed in the back of the head or poisoned. I
didn't see the poison one. So the club one, uh, well,
let let's get into this. Then there was a lot
of political intrigue going on and there were people that
(05:46):
may have wanted him dead. Well. Yeah, one of the
high priests, Um inherited the throne after Tout's death, and
they were all in a very close close position to
have murdered him. And he owned the club yeah exact,
used to carry they called him clubby clubby the High
priest Um. So his body has been uh, we'll get
(06:09):
to the beginning. But it was found at first in
the twenties and just mangled. They mangled this dude, yeh.
They think now. The hole in the head was when
they were taking off his ceremonial mask that really punctured
a hole in his head. That's where the hole came from. Well,
he was, he was. They used a lot of like
resins and things back then to help mumify the body,
and because of that, he was stuck to the coffin.
(06:31):
And uh, Howard Carter, he was the lead chief archaeologist
on this dig Um, had his guy heat up a
knife and was just like cutting through his body. And
in the end they you know, they were like dozens
of fractures and they couldn't tell, you know, are these
fractures here because his team mismanaged it or were they
real fractures. So the mystery like builds up over the years. Yeah,
(06:55):
he had a broken leg too, and that could have
been from the chariot accident, could have him from that, dude,
well not even they proved that it was pre mortem
and it started to heal, well, it started to react.
It wasn't healing yet. But all this came about because
unnamed TV network funded a like a million dollar dig
(07:20):
to make the show The Secrets of tut in Common
or something like that, and they got a ct A
cat scan on site, a portable one and for the
first time, we're able to run his body or what
was left of it through a cat scan, which pretty cool,
and they found out a few things. He had a
(07:40):
severely impacted wisdom tooth. Then you should have seen it
was like literally growing sideways in his mouth. I know.
They said it most definitely hurt. But through the ct
scan they were able to find there was no sign
of infection, so that didn't kill him. He had the
weird shaped skull, but they were shown that that wasn't
because of wrapping. They do a lot of like head
(08:01):
wrapping when they were babies, but they said that that's
just the way their family skull was shaped, maybe because
in breeding. Uh. They found he had no stern um
or rib cage what and uh. But through the CT
they found that the ribs were shown to be cut
away and not fractured. Remember we I don't remember talking
about removing the ribs, but remember we talked about them
(08:23):
getting the internal organs out and then re stuffing it
in the qualificat four inch fracture in the back of
the skull not related to the little coin size hole
and uh. Later on they found out that that wasn't
actually a fracture. It was just where the skull wasn't
fully fused because he was still a kid. Wow, so
it's just a line. So they learned all this stuff.
(08:44):
They end up finding that the fracture was shown to
be pre mortem because they found embalming resin inside the
fracture and if it would have happened afterwards, it wouldn't
have like gone in the route that it went in. UH.
Showed that it was beginning to react, which means it
was healing. And they eventually found out that they think
(09:05):
he died between one and five days after this leg fracture,
which could have been a compound fracture which they think
might have been infected. So that's the leading theory. I
didn't see anything on this bone disease and the special though,
did you find out about that? No, but I know
I've seen that before. That has to do with him
(09:26):
breeding as well a vascular bone necrosis, which is a
degenerative bone disease. So and there's also malaria. People say malaria. Yeah,
I didn't see that in the special either. The broken
bone thing though, was like, uh, I mean that makes sense.
Of course, he could die from an effective bone back then, Yeah,
and his kneecap was gone on that leg. It was
(09:48):
just man, that must have been a bad accident. Yeah,
So they think it could have been a chariot or
they think he could have been hurt and battle, which
is why the chest was all messed up to like
after he was down on the ground, they were just
like pummeling them or it was clubby, which is not true. So, Um,
just King Tut's death alone is uh. It's considered a
(10:09):
world mystery as far as I understand, I'd certainly consider
it that less of a mystery now though. Um. One
of the reasons why it was he's such a celebrated
king is because of his tomb. His tomb was the
first and only UM royal tomb found that contained like
(10:30):
just vast riches like everything that that Egyptologists which were
basically like um antiquities, crazed Westerners who were running all
over Egypt and um bribing officials to get stuff out
of the country. And it was a strange time. But
also you could call it the birth of archaeology. Um.
The the Egyptologists had always hoped for a find like this. Yeah,
(10:54):
it was only one that had been rated like outright. Supposedly.
There's a lot of speculation around that too, which we'll
get too. Oh yeah, yeah, um there there there was
supposedly um it had been looted at least twice, and
Howard Carter, the guy who led the dig that found
Um King Tut's tomb uh suggested that it was in
(11:14):
ancient times. The value of the kings, we should say,
is this um area in Luxe or that qualifies as
a necropolis, which is a city of the dead. And
it was a functioning city of the dead. There are
a bunch of different tombs, There were local officials and
administrators and a local police force, and it was a
very sacred place that was off site. Howard Carter alleged
(11:36):
that at least once or at least twice, possibly more times.
Thieves had um breached King Tut's tomb in ancient times
and it eluded it, but to an extent, they didn't
make it all the way in. So I saw that
they weren't looted, but they were they broke in but
didn't have a chance to loot it. Oh, he said
they looted all sorts of stuff. He was basically saying, like,
they looted this, and then he was very specific. Yeah. Um,
(12:00):
but the the when when Carter found the King Tut's tomb,
it's called k V sixty two, was the sixty sixty
second tomb found in the Valley of the Kings. There's
still a bunch of mountain there too. Well. Yeah, but
the the most recent when they found was kV sixty three,
and that was just in the last couple of decades,
I believe. I think they said they found one every
ten of twenty years at this point. Oh really, Yeah,
(12:22):
So kV sixty two was found in the twenties and
kV sixty three was found in the twenty one century.
It's yeah, um, so it was a big deal when
they found King Tut's tomb, which is one reason why
I celebrated. The richest inside were another reason. But um,
I think there's like four thousand objects that they found
inside this um his his royal tomb. It was the
(12:44):
big daddy. But one of the other things that has
made King Tuts so famous is the supposed the curse
that was upon his tomb that supposedly befell a large
number of people who were either present when the tomb
was breached or were connect it familiarly or um financially
to the people who were there, including a dog, the Susie.
(13:07):
I don't know the dog's name, Susie. Was it really okay?
You think I just made that up? Yeah, that sounds
like something I would say. I wouldn't name it Susie.
You know, Susie had three legs. I would love three
legged dogs. I want one. Well, you would love Susie. Well, yeah,
until Susie died. So let's talk about this, Chuck, Let's
talk about the kurs on King Tut's tomb. Yes, it
(13:29):
all started with the financer financier excuse me, behind the
whole operation or Carter's operation was a Lord Carnarvan and
he was very rich guy. He was in very bad health.
He had had a really bad car accident and apparently
(13:49):
was just kind of a wreck of a human. Like
during the dig, he would sit in a suspended cage
lined with gauze. I'm serious. Yeah, he was in that
bad of health until they actually opened it and then
he was like I gotta get in there. Uh so
(14:09):
he actually went in. Yeah he Um. He made it
from uh England to Egypt in like record time. He
took um a ship, a train, and a steamer down
the Nile to get to Luxor. Once he found out
that they were making headway. Yeah, and he got there
in like two weeks, which was like, that's like really fast.
Fact and especially if like you normally sit around in
(14:31):
a suspended cage filled with gauze, lined with gauze. I
kept trying to picture that. I wish I had a picture.
I wish I couldn't picture it, Like I feel like
I'm gonna vomit a little bit, especially like old timey
wicker you know, like those old wheelchairs that are so disturbing. Yeah,
from like the turn of the century, creepy. So what
(14:56):
happened to him was he had a mosquito bite on
his cheek he shaved one day with a straight razor
and cut that mosquito bite open and uh died because
of blood of blood disease from infection. Well, you're leaving
a big point out. This was two months after he
was there at the opening of King Tut's tomb. Yeah,
(15:20):
this is breaking news. He had actually snuck in. This
is when. Yeah, this is the un official unveiling. But uh,
four months previous they poked their head in to take
a look around. I think so. It was actually six
months later I heard it was, And by Lord Carnavan's
um own uh words, they did a lot more than
(15:41):
poke their head in the party. Basically, they partied like
they went supposedly. This is how Carter told it, and
this is how he kept his job and his reputation
still to this day. They opened the door just a
little bit enough so we could peek in and so
that there were so many riches, pulled the door shut
and went and alerted the Egyptian antiquities authorities, right, which
(16:05):
is exactly what supposed to do. Lord carbon On uh
said no, actually we pushed the door. Carnavan Carvan, yeah,
he said, Carnavon, Yeah. He said that they pushed the
door open, went in, pushed another door open, went in,
went as far as the shrine. UM pocketed a bunch
(16:27):
of stuff. There's like stuff in Kansas City, there's stuff
in Cleveland, there's things in at the met Um at
the louver that. Yes, they are definitively linked to King
tuts Toom that should not be there because UM, under
the auspices of the agreement that ultimately fell between UM
(16:49):
carbon On and UM Egypt, they were allowed to take
nothing out, but they stole a lot of stuff. So yes,
you're right. They entered in November and then Um he
died in April. But in the meantime, though, and this
definitely didn't help to spell any rumors of a curse,
(17:09):
he kept losing his teeth, like one by one, his
teeth were falling out before he died. I know the feeling.
So imagine this Victorian era dude in a wicker cage
with gauze, losing teeth. Yeah, that's that's what he looked
like in the months leading up to his death. Yeah,
he was in bad shape. Supposedly, at the moment of
(17:31):
his death, the power the power grid of Egypt failed
and then Susie and then Susie and then uh, well
she died. Yeah. Back in England they said that she
bade once and fell over death and he said she
had let out a howel and died. And uh. Carter
also had a pet canary that he got for good
luck on the stig and it died on the day
(17:52):
the tomb was officially opened. Some say it was killed
by a cobra, which is a symbol of the pharaoh's
so it must be a curse. Crazy. Uh. The rumors
started spreading because this was a time when you couldn't
readily get information, so they think that journalists got a
little uh, took some liberties, started making up some more stories,
(18:17):
spreading the word that it's actually a curse. Oh, they
jumped all over it. The British press was crazy for this,
but I think they actually made stuff up right, Um,
they still do. Have you heard the news of the world? Um?
And actually I read two sources for this idea of
a mummy's curse, Chuck. One was um an American painter
(18:39):
named Joseph Smith who told the tale about King Tutt's
father in law, not King Tutt, but his father in law.
Um canaton, I cannot one of the two his father
in law slash cousin probably probably Um I cannot, who
was known as the heretic King because he um he
(19:00):
opped worshiping all the old gods, the pantheon of gods,
and just um basically created in a monotheistic religion based
on just raw. Yeah, I thought that was his dad.
It was his father in law. Yeah, like you said. Um.
The the Um priests clubby may have even been among them,
(19:22):
because King cut came to the throne right after a
knat and um he uh the priests cursed him to
separate his body and his spirit forever. So that's the
possible origin for the idea of a mummy's curse, because
think about it, there's probably times when nobody thought of
mummies and curses going hand in hand. Um. And then
(19:44):
the other one comes from a short story called Lost
in the Pyramid Colan The Mummy's Curse by none other
than Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women, So she
may have started the idea of a mummy's curse too.
Yeah you read Little Women. No, it's kind of a
chick book, remember most his lack readit really Yeah, he
(20:07):
was reading it to uh, an orphan. I think it's
pretty funny. So, uh, this whole notion of a curse
is that something was inscribed on the tomb. I've seen
a couple of different versions. One is they who enter
the sacred tomb shall swift to be visited by the
wings of death. That's pretty cool. The other one was
(20:28):
death will come on swift opinions to those who disturbed
the rest of the pharaoh. Is it one or the
other or was it even there? There's a third one. Yeah,
no shirt, no shoes, no dice. Uh. So everyone in
Europe and the United States at the time was really
(20:49):
like they called it Egypt Domania, which kind of bothered me,
but that's really what was going on. Like all things
Egypt were really like enthralling at the time to the
public because it was just like they seemed like a
cult of death fetishists, right, And this is also the
time when they're like we're mediums holding seances all over
like America and England. So the Victorians are really into
(21:14):
like death and like shrines to death. And this person
was loved it, ate it up. And it wasn't just
um Lord Carnarvan who was the one who died. It
wasn't just him. UM. By ninety six, which was three
years after UH, they opened the tomb, well a little over, UM,
(21:36):
there were eleven people dead who were either at the
um opening of the tomb or we're connected. And then
by twenty one dead just Westerners. Yes, that's that's it.
That's UM. Very good to bring up. There was. There
have been two papers that have over the years that
have debunked this. The first one came in nineteen thirty
(21:58):
three UM a German Egyptologists named George Stendorf. He was
German UM he U. He wrote a paper that basically said, look, man,
there is no Mummy's curse. UM. These people who are dying,
who are like struck by the curse, they're barely even
connected to these people, UM. Some were more connected than others,
(22:20):
like UM. Howard Carter's personal secretary died UM, and then
his personal secretary's father killed himself. He left a note.
His last words were, UM, it was the curse. I
really cannot stand anymore horrors and hardly see what good
I am doing here. So I am making my exit.
And then he let out a window. He went out
(22:40):
the window. It sounds to me like he had mental
instability that's possible and was not cursed possibly um, but
there and there there was some like Lady Elizabeth Carnavan
who was actually there at the opening with her father, Um,
who I guess changed his gauze. That was her role. Yeah,
(23:00):
Um she died as well. So people connected, we're dying.
But really for the most part, it was just wild
rumor and speculation, according to Professor Steindorf. And then we
come to the twenty one century and a guy named
Mark R. Nelson of Monash University in Australia created a
paper that ran in the British Medical Journal, which is
(23:21):
pretty cool. Did you read it? Well, I didn't read
the whole paper. Uh. He actually got a little more
scientific with it and examined survival rates of uh forty
four Westerners identified by Carter as being in Egypt during
the examination. So and it just chose Westerners for good reason.
That was uh if at the time, Egyptians lifespans would
(23:45):
have been so radically different, average life expectancy would have
been so different from Trusterners that it would have totally
skewed the results, which makes sense. And he also only
included people that were there at the time, because he
worked on the assumption that it was the curse was
a physical into d So only if you were there
when the coffin was opened or present, then you would
be afflicted by this curse. Right, And there were four
(24:08):
opportunities to be afflicted by the curse by being present, right,
four official ones. Yet and he actually his whole papers
is bunk because he has the wrong dates. He completely
leaves out the first entrance. Well that's what I'm saying, Yeah,
the one yeah, right, But so he's got February seventy three,
which is the opening of the the third door. This is
supposedly the first time Carter and his expedition have gone
(24:31):
into the shrine, into the tomb, but it's not. This
is months after they've actually gone in and already started
to looted. Yeah, and it was found by accident, which
is one of the cool things. Oh no, no, I
thought some kid happened upon the top step. Uh. Supposedly
Carter's team came within a couple of centimeters of discovering it,
(24:53):
and then Carter, they're working this one area for years
and years and years, come within a couple of ser
centimeters are discovering it, and then car it's like, let's
stop working here, let's move over there. And then right
when Carnavan says that's it, I'm not funding your expeditions anymore,
Carter talks him into one more try, and then all
of a sudden, there's the there's the tomb. So a
(25:15):
kid found the step and told Carter. Right, one of
Carter's workers came over and said, hey, I found it.
But apparently Carter was like, oh, that's great, good thing.
He knew he was. He was supposedly not quite the
the gentleman adventure that he's made out to be like.
He was definitely a thief who sold antiquities like on
(25:36):
the black market for his own personal game. Well, it
sounds like some Egyptian kid found the step and was like, hey,
it's over here. Yeah. No, apparently he knew it was
all along. Yes, Well, that kid begs to differ, I'm sure. Well,
and the reason it's so hard to find was because
during construction of other tombs, the I mean, I guess
(25:56):
you could call it a construction crew, an ancient construction
crew said their home base on top of what was
uh touchstoom, And so the ruins they are kind of
obscured things. And I think tout was either in the
eighteenth or nineteenth dynasty, do you know so? And then
the the home basis construction crew were alive during the
twenty dynasty, so they came much later. All right, So
(26:18):
sorry about that sidebar. Back to the dates. February three, uh,
the opening of the sarcophagus, October tenth, ninety six, opening
of the coffins, and then November eleventh, nineteen six, which
was when they actually examined and mangled and broke apart
(26:38):
the body because they had to get the gold off.
They disattached the head from the body. I mean, they
just mangled it all the bits um and what uh,
what Mark Nelson found was that these exposures were absolutely
no predictor of early death at all. And actually I
was looking at a graphic compile wild Um, if you
(27:01):
were exposed three or more times, your chances of dying
early actually decreased. So that he really yeah, his data.
His data showed that um, of the twenty five Westerners
present during an opening or an examination or both, um,
they lived in average of twenty eight years after exposure.
(27:26):
The other Westerners that were in Egypt at the time
that we're not exposed. During those four times lived twenty
eight point nine years, like an eight year difference. Right.
That was the curse I think was you shall die
eight point one year sooner. Exactly. The mean age of
death for people who were exposed to the curse seventy years,
(27:46):
for those who were unexposed seventy five years. You shall
not see seventy one, right exactly. Yeah, there's there's um. Yeah,
especially back then, who musts to be seventy five not me? Um?
So there you have it. There was no curse there,
but it is possible that there is a scientific basis
(28:10):
for people who were exposed to the tomb to have
actually died younger than they would have otherwise had they
not breached King Tut's tomb. That's right. And this special
on this unnamed network also covered this. Uh So, what
we're talking about, for the most part are bacteria, mold,
(28:34):
fungus trapped in these tombs. Uh breathe and and and
multiplies upon hitting oxygen. So when they open these things up,
perhaps these people get sick, or people that were already
sick get sicker and die. And Carter was actually he
was aware that this is a possibility. He took air samples,
(28:55):
he took sport samples. Um, or he tried to take
sport samples. He said that there was like the place
was sterile. Now he said there was mold and fungi. Okay, well,
okay um. He said his air samples were sterile, which
is just absolutely impossible. But he made a point that
like if Lord Carnavan did die of a bacteria or
(29:17):
an infection, he was far likelier to pick it up
in Cairo at the time than he was in King
Tut's tomb. That makes sense, it does, and that's been confirmed. Um.
There are some other deadly things that you might encounter
if you were to breach a tomb that hadn't been
opened in several thousand years um from malde hyde, hydrogen, sulfide, ammonia.
(29:40):
They all build up from decomposition um. One of the
cool things that Carter noted um upon entering the shrine
that the coffin shrine made of gold. This thing was
a room within a room, and this room was made
of gold. And there were coffins within coffins too. Yeah,
I think five of them nesting coffin UM. But on
(30:01):
top of the outer coffin. I guess which is the sarcophagus.
There were still lotus flowers and berries that have been left.
You know. However, how when did King tell live? I
think that it was like three thousand years earlier, three
thousand years before they left these lotus flowers on it,
and it hadn't been touched since, which is pretty cool.
And it's pretty cool. Um, these things also meet. You know,
(30:24):
you gotta have your meat when you're traveling through the
afterward life. Well, that's the idea, is that you want it.
That's why you had six chariots, as you want to
have everything you need for the next life. You want
to have your favorite camera or five. Um. These things
dee decompose themselves. They can attract mold like asper Gillis
niger and Aspergillis flavis um. And there was a bacteriologist
(30:49):
working in the late twentieth century who looked at medical
records of workers um like modern Egyptian workers at the
Valley of Kings, and found that a lot of them
had been exposed to these things too. And apparently you
can find those in tombs, so it's possible to be
felled by that as well. Yeah, they they on this
TV show, I saw they found another sealed tomb, which
(31:12):
was the first one in like twenty years they did. Uh,
I mean it wasn't a pharaoh. It was just like
a priest or something. But they found a sealed tomb,
and they thought, this is our opportunity to test a
sealed tomb for pathogens. So they in the in the
tomb itself, they found like vast quantities of mold, like
(31:34):
tons and tons of mold, toxic mold. And then for
the actual coffin, they used a vacuum sampler to suck
out an air sample before they even opened it from
this two thousand year old grave. And don't I saw
the thing. It was something like that. And uh, what
they found was exactly what he said for malde hyde, hydrogen, sulfide,
(31:57):
ammony gas, all these toxic, uh, toxic fumes. But in
the end they don't think that it could have been
at a high enough level to actually like kill somebody.
So while it was present, while all that mold was there,
although you know, if he was already sick, it certainly
might have contributed. He does it, he does thickly um.
(32:19):
And then one last one, another bacteriologist from Germany at
the University of Leipzig, UM conducted a study of forty
mummies and found that every single one of them contained
potentially dangerous mold. So of course it does. It's possible,
but unlikely, and it's almost definitely was not a mummy's curse.
(32:41):
I would say it very much definitely was not a
curse of Louisa may Alcott. It was the curse of
science and mold growing. So that you have it, man,
that's your answer. Was there really a curse on King
Tut's tomb? And oh uh, if you want to learn
more about it, you can tell been King Tutt. That'll
(33:01):
bring up a bunch of stuff on the site. Um, yeah,
you just have to type it into a handy search
bart how stuff works dot com And I said handy
search bar, So let me use it's time for listener mail. Uh.
You know they recreated his face too that I think
that made a lot of press at the time. Yeah,
I don't. He didn't seem to look abnormal though. Well
(33:23):
if you look from the profile, he's got a money
shaped head for sure. And it wasn't from rapping. They
said it wasn't from rapping. Craig I say, that's just
the family head. Have you ever heard of foot binding? Yeah?
What is that? I don't know if it was in
China or Japan or both, but um, like in the
early twentieth century, late nineteenth century, probably further back, it
(33:43):
was considered attractive for a woman to have a foot
like a duck, like a triangle. So they would bind
your feet to to this like bonzai into the shape
for years, and then eventually you would have this deformed
foot that was like the the point of the triangle
was your heel, and then it went out into the
other two points and there was your your foot, and
(34:06):
it was considered very um and outlawed. It was definitely
outlawed in China, and like you could get in big
trouble if your you know, daughter was found to have
bound for Wow, I've heard of that. I didn't know
what it was. Odd mystery salt all right, Uh listener, Mayle, Hi, Chuck, Josh,
and Jerry. By the way, Josh, I'm gonna call this,
(34:27):
Uh that's why sk saving lives. Oh, this is a
good one. Yeah, greetings from a long time listener in
your new Atlanta neighbor. I don't think he literally lives
next door to one of us. I think he just
is a new in town. Got Jerry just laughed at that.
I want to take a few moments to tell you
how s Y s K contributed to saving my friend's
(34:47):
life back in January of this year, a co worker
and good friend of mine. I'm glad he said he
was a good friend because when I read it initially,
I didn't see that. It's like this guy came up
a kidney for a co worker. Uh. A co worker
was diagnosed with in stage kidney failure shortly after. He
told me, you guys publish how organ donation works. After
(35:09):
hearing about how long it might take on the waiting
list and how many transplants were done each year, I
decided that the least I could do was get tested.
As it turns out, the other members of his family
were disqualified due to a number of reasons, including age
of medical history. But lo and behold, I was a match.
And in parentheses, he says, that'll teach me the volunteer.
What a good guy? No kidding, Mann ribs himself. Over
(35:33):
the course of the summer, he and I were run
through a battery of tests to match blood type and
to prep the anti rejection drugs he would need after surgery,
and then on October eighteenth, we did the transplant. I
am thrilled to report now only a little over a
month later, both of us are completely almost recovered and
doing great. I would love it if you would encourage
anyone on the fence about getting tested to go for it.
(35:55):
The process is a little intimidating, but definitely worth it. Also,
the unlimited and berry juice and chicken broth are great perks.
And that is Dustin who gave up a kidney for
a coworker. And you know what, it's one of our
long standing s Y s K model mottos. Give up
a kidney for a coworker slash friend, get a stuff
(36:16):
you should know T shirt. So, Dustin, if you want
to come down to the office, we will gladly shake
your hand and give you your T shirt. If you
are the type who doesn't like to leave the house,
will also maail it to you. Just contact with me
an email. If you like I'll give up a kidney,
I will contact you. We have his email, but yes,
expect a T shirt at the very least, and if
you want to come by, we'd love to meet you,
(36:37):
so thank you for doing that. That's awesome. I mean,
that is awesome, so cool. Um, I don't I don't
even feel like a bad person or less of a
person because it's so colossally out of something I would
do for a co worker that like co workers that
I love a kidney for. Jerry would say, I know
(36:59):
you would, totally would. You wouldn't for me, though, would you. Well,
you wouldn't for me either, but we both do it.
For Jerry, it's a wash. Yeah, exactly. Um that. I
just think that that's great, So thank you for that.
If you have a fantastic, amazing story you want to
toot your own horn, that's fine, that's cool man. You
do something like that, you get to once in a while,
you can tweet it to us. If you can tell
(37:20):
us your story in a hundred and forty characters or less. Um,
you can tweet that to s y SK podcast. Uh.
You can go on to Facebook and go to facebook
dot com slash stuff you should Know, or you can
send us an email at stuff podcast at how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
(37:41):
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com to
learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how
Stuff Works I Fine app has a ride. Download it
today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant
(00:20):
and makes this stuff you should know the podcast. I'm
walking like an Egyptian Worth. You nailed that too, Jerry
and now were singing the old Steve Martin King tut
song and you were like, what is that? I know
what it is? And I'm young. I don't know that.
I don't know the lyrics. Yeah, you were. You were
on the cusp there, that was. That was a big
(00:41):
deal when I was a kid, And I was like
to when I think when that came out? Yeah, he
missed it by a few years. Yeah, I mean, it
wasn't like twenty five and going to see Steve Martin
or anything, what I like sixty. So, Chuck, I know
you're familiar with Steve Martin, but are you familiar with
(01:01):
a little boy king by the name of King two
tongue common, Yes, I am, are you? Yeah, Well, let's
wrap about him. Man, did you go see the exhibit? No? No,
the Discovery one in Times Square. Well it travels you know.
Oh yeah, no, you we saw that one. I didn't
see it though it saw bodies, so that was pretty neat.
(01:22):
I think I told you about that. I didn't see
bodies yet. I did the dialogue in the Dark. Yeah,
we talked about this. Yeah, bodies was pretty cool. But
you're like, wow, this is really nuts. Yeah, um, but no,
I didn't see King Tych did you? Did you know
there's a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit now in Times Square?
Discovery has you know, Discovery has like this basically like
(01:43):
a museum, like an exhibition show in Times Square and
the newest one is the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like the
Dead Sea Scrolls are there in Times Square right now.
You can sign your name on it, right Yeah, all right,
Well let's get back to King Tut because we got
a little off topic. If you ask me, um, I'm
gonna tell you what I know about King Tutt, and
(02:06):
then you tell me what you know and we'll combine
the two. So like, for example, um, I found out
that King Tut was an Avid chariot racer. Did you
know that he was buried apparently in tombed I should say,
with six chariots. It's kind of like you're uber wealthy
boy president, right, who's like sixteen and then you know
(02:30):
dies at a eighteen is buried with like his eight
camaros or something. That's kind of what they did with
King Tutt. He was also an avid ostrich hunter. He
used to hunt in the desert with just him and
his dog. Is pretty cool. Um. He also married his
sister and had two babies with their both of the
both of which were um born prematurely and dyed. Yeah,
(02:51):
there's a lot of inbreeding going on back then. Yeah,
there's a lot of rumors that he was in bred,
or a lot of speculation or I should say a
lot of factual conjecture that he was him self also inbred. Um.
And they think that there's this huge mystery going on
right now that he was club footed. Did you know that.
I did not know that. So they think that he
may have been club footed, which would definitely support the
(03:14):
inbreeding UM argument, not that people who have club feed
are inbred, but I think if you are inbred, you're
likelier to have something like a club foot. But they
can't tell. It looks like he's club footed, but his
his cadavers. Corpse has been so mistreated over the decades
since it was discovered that, Um, they can't tell if
(03:35):
somebody just broke his foot or if he was born
that way club foot? Is that all yet? Yeah, that's
all right, we should boy it. Uh. He was short.
He had a weird shaped head. Have you ever seen
a skull? Uh, it's it looks like an egg. It's
(03:59):
really weird looking. And they measured it and found that
it just qualifies as quote normal. But he Uh. All
all the paintings back then showed all the pharaohs and
the Egyptian pharaohs had these weird shaped heads, and they thought, well,
those are just the artist. But then they found his
skull and they're like, no, he has a weird shape dead.
(04:20):
So Eric van Daeken here would say something like, well,
it's because aliens came down and bred with them. The
guy who wrote um Highways of the Gods, I believed
that Runways of the Gods basically the seventies dude who
who printed all these books basically saying that the ancient
Egyptians were in contact with aliens of them all this stuff,
(04:42):
and there's all this evidence throughout like hieroglyphics and things
like you know, two tone commons, skull or whatever that
show that Aliens came down and bred with the Egyptians,
and that's how human civilization just advanced by leaps and bounds.
I believe it already just from that. Anybody who it's
like their acupuncture podcast came back, weren't just turned that
(05:03):
off at the mention of his name. Yeah, exactly. So
let's talk a little bit about how he died though,
because that's the big you know, we know that he ruled,
he was the boy king from nine to nineteen and
then just died. And over the years there have been
some theories, and the leading three theories was one that
he died from war wounds too, that he died in
(05:26):
a chariot accident that seems possible, or because of a
chariot accident, and the third was murder, that he was
clubbed in the back of the head or poisoned. I
didn't see the poison one. So the club one, uh, well,
let let's get into this. Then there was a lot
of political intrigue going on and there were people that
(05:46):
may have wanted him dead. Well. Yeah, one of the
high priests, Um inherited the throne after Tout's death, and
they were all in a very close close position to
have murdered him. And he owned the club yeah exact,
used to carry they called him clubby clubby the High
priest Um. So his body has been uh, we'll get
(06:09):
to the beginning. But it was found at first in
the twenties and just mangled. They mangled this dude, yeh.
They think now. The hole in the head was when
they were taking off his ceremonial mask that really punctured
a hole in his head. That's where the hole came from. Well,
he was, he was. They used a lot of like
resins and things back then to help mumify the body,
and because of that, he was stuck to the coffin.
(06:31):
And uh, Howard Carter, he was the lead chief archaeologist
on this dig Um, had his guy heat up a
knife and was just like cutting through his body. And
in the end they you know, they were like dozens
of fractures and they couldn't tell, you know, are these
fractures here because his team mismanaged it or were they
real fractures. So the mystery like builds up over the years. Yeah,
(06:55):
he had a broken leg too, and that could have
been from the chariot accident, could have him from that, dude,
well not even they proved that it was pre mortem
and it started to heal, well, it started to react.
It wasn't healing yet. But all this came about because
unnamed TV network funded a like a million dollar dig
(07:20):
to make the show The Secrets of tut in Common
or something like that, and they got a ct A
cat scan on site, a portable one and for the
first time, we're able to run his body or what
was left of it through a cat scan, which pretty cool,
and they found out a few things. He had a
(07:40):
severely impacted wisdom tooth. Then you should have seen it
was like literally growing sideways in his mouth. I know.
They said it most definitely hurt. But through the ct
scan they were able to find there was no sign
of infection, so that didn't kill him. He had the
weird shaped skull, but they were shown that that wasn't
because of wrapping. They do a lot of like head
(08:01):
wrapping when they were babies, but they said that that's
just the way their family skull was shaped, maybe because
in breeding. Uh. They found he had no stern um
or rib cage what and uh. But through the CT
they found that the ribs were shown to be cut
away and not fractured. Remember we I don't remember talking
about removing the ribs, but remember we talked about them
(08:23):
getting the internal organs out and then re stuffing it
in the qualificat four inch fracture in the back of
the skull not related to the little coin size hole
and uh. Later on they found out that that wasn't
actually a fracture. It was just where the skull wasn't
fully fused because he was still a kid. Wow, so
it's just a line. So they learned all this stuff.
(08:44):
They end up finding that the fracture was shown to
be pre mortem because they found embalming resin inside the
fracture and if it would have happened afterwards, it wouldn't
have like gone in the route that it went in. UH.
Showed that it was beginning to react, which means it
was healing. And they eventually found out that they think
(09:05):
he died between one and five days after this leg fracture,
which could have been a compound fracture which they think
might have been infected. So that's the leading theory. I
didn't see anything on this bone disease and the special though,
did you find out about that? No, but I know
I've seen that before. That has to do with him
(09:26):
breeding as well a vascular bone necrosis, which is a
degenerative bone disease. So and there's also malaria. People say malaria. Yeah,
I didn't see that in the special either. The broken
bone thing though, was like, uh, I mean that makes sense.
Of course, he could die from an effective bone back then, Yeah,
and his kneecap was gone on that leg. It was
(09:48):
just man, that must have been a bad accident. Yeah,
So they think it could have been a chariot or
they think he could have been hurt and battle, which
is why the chest was all messed up to like
after he was down on the ground, they were just
like pummeling them or it was clubby, which is not true. So, Um,
just King Tut's death alone is uh. It's considered a
(10:09):
world mystery as far as I understand, I'd certainly consider
it that less of a mystery now though. Um. One
of the reasons why it was he's such a celebrated
king is because of his tomb. His tomb was the
first and only UM royal tomb found that contained like
(10:30):
just vast riches like everything that that Egyptologists which were
basically like um antiquities, crazed Westerners who were running all
over Egypt and um bribing officials to get stuff out
of the country. And it was a strange time. But
also you could call it the birth of archaeology. Um.
The the Egyptologists had always hoped for a find like this. Yeah,
(10:54):
it was only one that had been rated like outright. Supposedly.
There's a lot of speculation around that too, which we'll
get too. Oh yeah, yeah, um there there there was
supposedly um it had been looted at least twice, and
Howard Carter, the guy who led the dig that found
Um King Tut's tomb uh suggested that it was in
(11:14):
ancient times. The value of the kings, we should say,
is this um area in Luxe or that qualifies as
a necropolis, which is a city of the dead. And
it was a functioning city of the dead. There are
a bunch of different tombs, There were local officials and
administrators and a local police force, and it was a
very sacred place that was off site. Howard Carter alleged
(11:36):
that at least once or at least twice, possibly more times.
Thieves had um breached King Tut's tomb in ancient times
and it eluded it, but to an extent, they didn't
make it all the way in. So I saw that
they weren't looted, but they were they broke in but
didn't have a chance to loot it. Oh, he said
they looted all sorts of stuff. He was basically saying, like,
they looted this, and then he was very specific. Yeah. Um,
(12:00):
but the the when when Carter found the King Tut's tomb,
it's called k V sixty two, was the sixty sixty
second tomb found in the Valley of the Kings. There's
still a bunch of mountain there too. Well. Yeah, but
the the most recent when they found was kV sixty three,
and that was just in the last couple of decades,
I believe. I think they said they found one every
ten of twenty years at this point. Oh really, Yeah,
(12:22):
So kV sixty two was found in the twenties and
kV sixty three was found in the twenty one century.
It's yeah, um, so it was a big deal when
they found King Tut's tomb, which is one reason why
I celebrated. The richest inside were another reason. But um,
I think there's like four thousand objects that they found
inside this um his his royal tomb. It was the
(12:44):
big daddy. But one of the other things that has
made King Tuts so famous is the supposed the curse
that was upon his tomb that supposedly befell a large
number of people who were either present when the tomb
was breached or were connect it familiarly or um financially
to the people who were there, including a dog, the Susie.
(13:07):
I don't know the dog's name, Susie. Was it really okay?
You think I just made that up? Yeah, that sounds
like something I would say. I wouldn't name it Susie.
You know, Susie had three legs. I would love three
legged dogs. I want one. Well, you would love Susie. Well, yeah,
until Susie died. So let's talk about this, Chuck, Let's
talk about the kurs on King Tut's tomb. Yes, it
(13:29):
all started with the financer financier excuse me, behind the
whole operation or Carter's operation was a Lord Carnarvan and
he was very rich guy. He was in very bad health.
He had had a really bad car accident and apparently
(13:49):
was just kind of a wreck of a human. Like
during the dig, he would sit in a suspended cage
lined with gauze. I'm serious. Yeah, he was in that
bad of health until they actually opened it and then
he was like I gotta get in there. Uh so
(14:09):
he actually went in. Yeah he Um. He made it
from uh England to Egypt in like record time. He
took um a ship, a train, and a steamer down
the Nile to get to Luxor. Once he found out
that they were making headway. Yeah, and he got there
in like two weeks, which was like, that's like really fast.
Fact and especially if like you normally sit around in
(14:31):
a suspended cage filled with gauze, lined with gauze. I
kept trying to picture that. I wish I had a picture.
I wish I couldn't picture it, Like I feel like
I'm gonna vomit a little bit, especially like old timey
wicker you know, like those old wheelchairs that are so disturbing. Yeah,
from like the turn of the century, creepy. So what
(14:56):
happened to him was he had a mosquito bite on
his cheek he shaved one day with a straight razor
and cut that mosquito bite open and uh died because
of blood of blood disease from infection. Well, you're leaving
a big point out. This was two months after he
was there at the opening of King Tut's tomb. Yeah,
(15:20):
this is breaking news. He had actually snuck in. This
is when. Yeah, this is the un official unveiling. But uh,
four months previous they poked their head in to take
a look around. I think so. It was actually six
months later I heard it was, And by Lord Carnavan's
um own uh words, they did a lot more than
(15:41):
poke their head in the party. Basically, they partied like
they went supposedly. This is how Carter told it, and
this is how he kept his job and his reputation
still to this day. They opened the door just a
little bit enough so we could peek in and so
that there were so many riches, pulled the door shut
and went and alerted the Egyptian antiquities authorities, right, which
(16:05):
is exactly what supposed to do. Lord carbon On uh
said no, actually we pushed the door. Carnavan Carvan, yeah,
he said, Carnavon, Yeah. He said that they pushed the
door open, went in, pushed another door open, went in,
went as far as the shrine. UM pocketed a bunch
(16:27):
of stuff. There's like stuff in Kansas City, there's stuff
in Cleveland, there's things in at the met Um at
the louver that. Yes, they are definitively linked to King
tuts Toom that should not be there because UM, under
the auspices of the agreement that ultimately fell between UM
(16:49):
carbon On and UM Egypt, they were allowed to take
nothing out, but they stole a lot of stuff. So yes,
you're right. They entered in November and then Um he
died in April. But in the meantime, though, and this
definitely didn't help to spell any rumors of a curse,
(17:09):
he kept losing his teeth, like one by one, his
teeth were falling out before he died. I know the feeling.
So imagine this Victorian era dude in a wicker cage
with gauze, losing teeth. Yeah, that's that's what he looked
like in the months leading up to his death. Yeah,
he was in bad shape. Supposedly, at the moment of
(17:31):
his death, the power the power grid of Egypt failed
and then Susie and then Susie and then uh, well
she died. Yeah. Back in England they said that she
bade once and fell over death and he said she
had let out a howel and died. And uh. Carter
also had a pet canary that he got for good
luck on the stig and it died on the day
(17:52):
the tomb was officially opened. Some say it was killed
by a cobra, which is a symbol of the pharaoh's
so it must be a curse. Crazy. Uh. The rumors
started spreading because this was a time when you couldn't
readily get information, so they think that journalists got a
little uh, took some liberties, started making up some more stories,
(18:17):
spreading the word that it's actually a curse. Oh, they
jumped all over it. The British press was crazy for this,
but I think they actually made stuff up right, Um,
they still do. Have you heard the news of the world? Um?
And actually I read two sources for this idea of
a mummy's curse, Chuck. One was um an American painter
(18:39):
named Joseph Smith who told the tale about King Tutt's
father in law, not King Tutt, but his father in law.
Um canaton, I cannot one of the two his father
in law slash cousin probably probably Um I cannot, who
was known as the heretic King because he um he
(19:00):
opped worshiping all the old gods, the pantheon of gods,
and just um basically created in a monotheistic religion based
on just raw. Yeah, I thought that was his dad.
It was his father in law. Yeah, like you said. Um.
The the Um priests clubby may have even been among them,
(19:22):
because King cut came to the throne right after a
knat and um he uh the priests cursed him to
separate his body and his spirit forever. So that's the
possible origin for the idea of a mummy's curse, because
think about it, there's probably times when nobody thought of
mummies and curses going hand in hand. Um. And then
(19:44):
the other one comes from a short story called Lost
in the Pyramid Colan The Mummy's Curse by none other
than Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women, So she
may have started the idea of a mummy's curse too.
Yeah you read Little Women. No, it's kind of a
chick book, remember most his lack readit really Yeah, he
(20:07):
was reading it to uh, an orphan. I think it's
pretty funny. So, uh, this whole notion of a curse
is that something was inscribed on the tomb. I've seen
a couple of different versions. One is they who enter
the sacred tomb shall swift to be visited by the
wings of death. That's pretty cool. The other one was
(20:28):
death will come on swift opinions to those who disturbed
the rest of the pharaoh. Is it one or the
other or was it even there? There's a third one. Yeah,
no shirt, no shoes, no dice. Uh. So everyone in
Europe and the United States at the time was really
(20:49):
like they called it Egypt Domania, which kind of bothered me,
but that's really what was going on. Like all things
Egypt were really like enthralling at the time to the
public because it was just like they seemed like a
cult of death fetishists, right, And this is also the
time when they're like we're mediums holding seances all over
like America and England. So the Victorians are really into
(21:14):
like death and like shrines to death. And this person
was loved it, ate it up. And it wasn't just
um Lord Carnarvan who was the one who died. It
wasn't just him. UM. By ninety six, which was three
years after UH, they opened the tomb, well a little over, UM,
(21:36):
there were eleven people dead who were either at the
um opening of the tomb or we're connected. And then
by twenty one dead just Westerners. Yes, that's that's it.
That's UM. Very good to bring up. There was. There
have been two papers that have over the years that
have debunked this. The first one came in nineteen thirty
(21:58):
three UM a German Egyptologists named George Stendorf. He was
German UM he U. He wrote a paper that basically said, look, man,
there is no Mummy's curse. UM. These people who are dying,
who are like struck by the curse, they're barely even
connected to these people, UM. Some were more connected than others,
(22:20):
like UM. Howard Carter's personal secretary died UM, and then
his personal secretary's father killed himself. He left a note.
His last words were, UM, it was the curse. I
really cannot stand anymore horrors and hardly see what good
I am doing here. So I am making my exit.
And then he let out a window. He went out
(22:40):
the window. It sounds to me like he had mental
instability that's possible and was not cursed possibly um, but
there and there there was some like Lady Elizabeth Carnavan
who was actually there at the opening with her father, Um,
who I guess changed his gauze. That was her role. Yeah,
(23:00):
Um she died as well. So people connected, we're dying.
But really for the most part, it was just wild
rumor and speculation, according to Professor Steindorf. And then we
come to the twenty one century and a guy named
Mark R. Nelson of Monash University in Australia created a
paper that ran in the British Medical Journal, which is
(23:21):
pretty cool. Did you read it? Well, I didn't read
the whole paper. Uh. He actually got a little more
scientific with it and examined survival rates of uh forty
four Westerners identified by Carter as being in Egypt during
the examination. So and it just chose Westerners for good reason.
That was uh if at the time, Egyptians lifespans would
(23:45):
have been so radically different, average life expectancy would have
been so different from Trusterners that it would have totally
skewed the results, which makes sense. And he also only
included people that were there at the time, because he
worked on the assumption that it was the curse was
a physical into d So only if you were there
when the coffin was opened or present, then you would
be afflicted by this curse. Right, And there were four
(24:08):
opportunities to be afflicted by the curse by being present, right,
four official ones. Yet and he actually his whole papers
is bunk because he has the wrong dates. He completely
leaves out the first entrance. Well that's what I'm saying, Yeah,
the one yeah, right, But so he's got February seventy three,
which is the opening of the the third door. This is
supposedly the first time Carter and his expedition have gone
(24:31):
into the shrine, into the tomb, but it's not. This
is months after they've actually gone in and already started
to looted. Yeah, and it was found by accident, which
is one of the cool things. Oh no, no, I
thought some kid happened upon the top step. Uh. Supposedly
Carter's team came within a couple of centimeters of discovering it,
(24:53):
and then Carter, they're working this one area for years
and years and years, come within a couple of ser
centimeters are discovering it, and then car it's like, let's
stop working here, let's move over there. And then right
when Carnavan says that's it, I'm not funding your expeditions anymore,
Carter talks him into one more try, and then all
of a sudden, there's the there's the tomb. So a
(25:15):
kid found the step and told Carter. Right, one of
Carter's workers came over and said, hey, I found it.
But apparently Carter was like, oh, that's great, good thing.
He knew he was. He was supposedly not quite the
the gentleman adventure that he's made out to be like.
He was definitely a thief who sold antiquities like on
(25:36):
the black market for his own personal game. Well, it
sounds like some Egyptian kid found the step and was like, hey,
it's over here. Yeah. No, apparently he knew it was
all along. Yes, Well, that kid begs to differ, I'm sure. Well,
and the reason it's so hard to find was because
during construction of other tombs, the I mean, I guess
(25:56):
you could call it a construction crew, an ancient construction
crew said their home base on top of what was
uh touchstoom, And so the ruins they are kind of
obscured things. And I think tout was either in the
eighteenth or nineteenth dynasty, do you know so? And then
the the home basis construction crew were alive during the
twenty dynasty, so they came much later. All right, So
(26:18):
sorry about that sidebar. Back to the dates. February three, uh,
the opening of the sarcophagus, October tenth, ninety six, opening
of the coffins, and then November eleventh, nineteen six, which
was when they actually examined and mangled and broke apart
(26:38):
the body because they had to get the gold off.
They disattached the head from the body. I mean, they
just mangled it all the bits um and what uh,
what Mark Nelson found was that these exposures were absolutely
no predictor of early death at all. And actually I
was looking at a graphic compile wild Um, if you
(27:01):
were exposed three or more times, your chances of dying
early actually decreased. So that he really yeah, his data.
His data showed that um, of the twenty five Westerners
present during an opening or an examination or both, um,
they lived in average of twenty eight years after exposure.
(27:26):
The other Westerners that were in Egypt at the time
that we're not exposed. During those four times lived twenty
eight point nine years, like an eight year difference. Right.
That was the curse I think was you shall die
eight point one year sooner. Exactly. The mean age of
death for people who were exposed to the curse seventy years,
(27:46):
for those who were unexposed seventy five years. You shall
not see seventy one, right exactly. Yeah, there's there's um. Yeah,
especially back then, who musts to be seventy five not me? Um?
So there you have it. There was no curse there,
but it is possible that there is a scientific basis
(28:10):
for people who were exposed to the tomb to have
actually died younger than they would have otherwise had they
not breached King Tut's tomb. That's right. And this special
on this unnamed network also covered this. Uh So, what
we're talking about, for the most part are bacteria, mold,
(28:34):
fungus trapped in these tombs. Uh breathe and and and
multiplies upon hitting oxygen. So when they open these things up,
perhaps these people get sick, or people that were already
sick get sicker and die. And Carter was actually he
was aware that this is a possibility. He took air samples,
(28:55):
he took sport samples. Um, or he tried to take
sport samples. He said that there was like the place
was sterile. Now he said there was mold and fungi. Okay, well,
okay um. He said his air samples were sterile, which
is just absolutely impossible. But he made a point that
like if Lord Carnavan did die of a bacteria or
(29:17):
an infection, he was far likelier to pick it up
in Cairo at the time than he was in King
Tut's tomb. That makes sense, it does, and that's been confirmed. Um.
There are some other deadly things that you might encounter
if you were to breach a tomb that hadn't been
opened in several thousand years um from malde hyde, hydrogen, sulfide, ammonia.
(29:40):
They all build up from decomposition um. One of the
cool things that Carter noted um upon entering the shrine
that the coffin shrine made of gold. This thing was
a room within a room, and this room was made
of gold. And there were coffins within coffins too. Yeah,
I think five of them nesting coffin UM. But on
(30:01):
top of the outer coffin. I guess which is the sarcophagus.
There were still lotus flowers and berries that have been left.
You know. However, how when did King tell live? I
think that it was like three thousand years earlier, three
thousand years before they left these lotus flowers on it,
and it hadn't been touched since, which is pretty cool.
And it's pretty cool. Um, these things also meet. You know,
(30:24):
you gotta have your meat when you're traveling through the
afterward life. Well, that's the idea, is that you want it.
That's why you had six chariots, as you want to
have everything you need for the next life. You want
to have your favorite camera or five. Um. These things
dee decompose themselves. They can attract mold like asper Gillis
niger and Aspergillis flavis um. And there was a bacteriologist
(30:49):
working in the late twentieth century who looked at medical
records of workers um like modern Egyptian workers at the
Valley of Kings, and found that a lot of them
had been exposed to these things too. And apparently you
can find those in tombs, so it's possible to be
felled by that as well. Yeah, they they on this
TV show, I saw they found another sealed tomb, which
(31:12):
was the first one in like twenty years they did. Uh,
I mean it wasn't a pharaoh. It was just like
a priest or something. But they found a sealed tomb,
and they thought, this is our opportunity to test a
sealed tomb for pathogens. So they in the in the
tomb itself, they found like vast quantities of mold, like
(31:34):
tons and tons of mold, toxic mold. And then for
the actual coffin, they used a vacuum sampler to suck
out an air sample before they even opened it from
this two thousand year old grave. And don't I saw
the thing. It was something like that. And uh, what
they found was exactly what he said for malde hyde, hydrogen, sulfide,
(31:57):
ammony gas, all these toxic, uh, toxic fumes. But in
the end they don't think that it could have been
at a high enough level to actually like kill somebody.
So while it was present, while all that mold was there,
although you know, if he was already sick, it certainly
might have contributed. He does it, he does thickly um.
(32:19):
And then one last one, another bacteriologist from Germany at
the University of Leipzig, UM conducted a study of forty
mummies and found that every single one of them contained
potentially dangerous mold. So of course it does. It's possible,
but unlikely, and it's almost definitely was not a mummy's curse.
(32:41):
I would say it very much definitely was not a
curse of Louisa may Alcott. It was the curse of
science and mold growing. So that you have it, man,
that's your answer. Was there really a curse on King
Tut's tomb? And oh uh, if you want to learn
more about it, you can tell been King Tutt. That'll
(33:01):
bring up a bunch of stuff on the site. Um, yeah,
you just have to type it into a handy search
bart how stuff works dot com And I said handy
search bar, So let me use it's time for listener mail. Uh.
You know they recreated his face too that I think
that made a lot of press at the time. Yeah,
I don't. He didn't seem to look abnormal though. Well
(33:23):
if you look from the profile, he's got a money
shaped head for sure. And it wasn't from rapping. They
said it wasn't from rapping. Craig I say, that's just
the family head. Have you ever heard of foot binding? Yeah?
What is that? I don't know if it was in
China or Japan or both, but um, like in the
early twentieth century, late nineteenth century, probably further back, it
(33:43):
was considered attractive for a woman to have a foot
like a duck, like a triangle. So they would bind
your feet to to this like bonzai into the shape
for years, and then eventually you would have this deformed
foot that was like the the point of the triangle
was your heel, and then it went out into the
other two points and there was your your foot, and
(34:06):
it was considered very um and outlawed. It was definitely
outlawed in China, and like you could get in big
trouble if your you know, daughter was found to have
bound for Wow, I've heard of that. I didn't know
what it was. Odd mystery salt all right, Uh listener, Mayle, Hi, Chuck, Josh,
and Jerry. By the way, Josh, I'm gonna call this,
(34:27):
Uh that's why sk saving lives. Oh, this is a
good one. Yeah, greetings from a long time listener in
your new Atlanta neighbor. I don't think he literally lives
next door to one of us. I think he just
is a new in town. Got Jerry just laughed at that.
I want to take a few moments to tell you
how s Y s K contributed to saving my friend's
(34:47):
life back in January of this year, a co worker
and good friend of mine. I'm glad he said he
was a good friend because when I read it initially,
I didn't see that. It's like this guy came up
a kidney for a co worker. Uh. A co worker
was diagnosed with in stage kidney failure shortly after. He
told me, you guys publish how organ donation works. After
(35:09):
hearing about how long it might take on the waiting
list and how many transplants were done each year, I
decided that the least I could do was get tested.
As it turns out, the other members of his family
were disqualified due to a number of reasons, including age
of medical history. But lo and behold, I was a match.
And in parentheses, he says, that'll teach me the volunteer.
What a good guy? No kidding, Mann ribs himself. Over
(35:33):
the course of the summer, he and I were run
through a battery of tests to match blood type and
to prep the anti rejection drugs he would need after surgery,
and then on October eighteenth, we did the transplant. I
am thrilled to report now only a little over a
month later, both of us are completely almost recovered and
doing great. I would love it if you would encourage
anyone on the fence about getting tested to go for it.
(35:55):
The process is a little intimidating, but definitely worth it. Also,
the unlimited and berry juice and chicken broth are great perks.
And that is Dustin who gave up a kidney for
a coworker. And you know what, it's one of our
long standing s Y s K model mottos. Give up
a kidney for a coworker slash friend, get a stuff
(36:16):
you should know T shirt. So, Dustin, if you want
to come down to the office, we will gladly shake
your hand and give you your T shirt. If you
are the type who doesn't like to leave the house,
will also maail it to you. Just contact with me
an email. If you like I'll give up a kidney,
I will contact you. We have his email, but yes,
expect a T shirt at the very least, and if
you want to come by, we'd love to meet you,
(36:37):
so thank you for doing that. That's awesome. I mean,
that is awesome, so cool. Um, I don't I don't
even feel like a bad person or less of a
person because it's so colossally out of something I would
do for a co worker that like co workers that
I love a kidney for. Jerry would say, I know
(36:59):
you would, totally would. You wouldn't for me, though, would you. Well,
you wouldn't for me either, but we both do it.
For Jerry, it's a wash. Yeah, exactly. Um that. I
just think that that's great, So thank you for that.
If you have a fantastic, amazing story you want to
toot your own horn, that's fine, that's cool man. You
do something like that, you get to once in a while,
you can tweet it to us. If you can tell
(37:20):
us your story in a hundred and forty characters or less. Um,
you can tweet that to s y SK podcast. Uh.
You can go on to Facebook and go to facebook
dot com slash stuff you should Know, or you can
send us an email at stuff podcast at how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
(37:41):
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com to
learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how
Stuff Works I Fine app has a ride. Download it
today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you