According to an archaeologist who has just exhumed 50 mummies in Egypt, there has never been a “curse of the pharaohs”. The men who discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb died from bacteria thousands of years old, he says.
And if the terrible curse of the pharaohs was in fact only a simple story of microbes? This was revealed by Doctor Fathi Awad, Egyptian archaeologist, in the episode “The secret of the pyramids” from the show 8:30 p.m. on Saturday which was broadcast on Saturday March 23 after the France 2 newspaper.
In February, Fathi Awad, “the Howard Carter of 2019”, as journalists call him in reference to the British Egyptologist who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, exhumed 50 mummies buried 2,500 years ago on the archaeological site of Tuna El-Gebel in Minya, south of Cairo (Egypt).
“The newly discovered graves are a family grave that was probably that of an upper middle class family (the method of mummification indicates that they held important or prestigious positions, editor’s note)”, then announced the Egyptian Minister of Antiquities, Dr. Khaled El-Enany.
Followed by the television crew of 8:30 p.m. on Saturday on the site of his discovery, Fathi Awad explains a mask over his mouth: “The air here is not healthy. Bacteria thousands of years old can damage your lungs. And in the past, people have died in because of that.” “In fact, that’s what we called the curse of the pharaohs,” he slices, thus cutting short the legend.
A rumor launched to deter looters
The latter was born at the beginning of the 20th century and has since been widely reported by the media around the world. She claims that members of the team of archaeologists fromHoward Carter reportedly died supernaturally shortly after exhuming Tutankhamun’s mummy. Some fans of scary stories also claim that the ancient Egyptians would have poisoned the air of the tomb to punish possible looters.
But if we believe Awad, the violent deaths of Lord Carnarvon, the sponsor of the excavations, and his companions, would have been simply caused by microbes.
It is therefore a safe bet that Carter had himself launched the rumor of the curse in order to prevent a dishonest worker from coming to loot the objects found in the tomb. A deterrent technique that has proven its worth.
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