There WAS a Curse! Was Deadly Radiation Behind the Curse of the Pharaohs?

When Howard Carter broke into the tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922, the treasures he found in the sealed chambers were not the only thing on his mind. He also feared a curse, the legendary curse of the pharaohs. And a new study suggests he was right to fear for his life.

The idea of a curse was not some whimsy or 1920s rumor. Ancient Egyptian writings on other tombs talk of “a disease that no doctor can diagnose”. And now it seems we understand what this was: the tombs may have been deliberately seeded with deadly uranium.

Carter performed as many tests on the artifacts as he could, taking swabs of the sarcophagus and samples of the air, to ensure there was no curse. But he was limited by the science of his time, and while his conclusion that the air he breathed in the tomb was sterile was correct, it missed the dangers of radiation.

Famously the curse of King Tut claimed the lives of at least 20 people associated with the opening of the tomb. Some are clearly coincidental: Lord Carnarvon’s infected mosquito bite which killed him was a cruel accident of chance. But many others, including the death of Carter himself from Hodgkin’s lymphoma, would seem to come from this radiation.

• Tomb Curses of Ancient Egypt: Magical Incantations of the Dead
• Ancient Curses: Five Ways to Create Calamity in the Ancient World

Howard Carter feared the curse of the pharaohs when he opened the tomb of King Tutankhamun. But in his tests he did not know to look for radiation (Exclusive to The Times / Public Domain)

This new discovery would also explain why Egypt, both ancient and modern, has an abnormally high instance of haematopoietic cancers, those of the bone, the blood and the lymph nodes. These come primarily from radiation exposure. And, according to the new study published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, the source of this radiation has now been found.

The Evil Spirits of the House of Eternity

Ancient Egypt did not describe the tomb complexes of pharaohs as graves. They were called “per D’jet” or the House of Eternity. Tradition, which passed throughout the entirety of Egyptian history and even into the Arabic era noted that these tombs were guarded by  illahat, evil spirits. Local guides would not approach the tombs, it was only modern explorers who were so foolish.

Nor is it news that the tombs of the pharaohs are radioactive. Two locations in Giza and several more in the ancient necropolis at Saqqara have been shown to emit radiation. Until now it has been dismissed as background radiation, from the surrounding rock.

Such radiation levels are up to ten times higher than the safe dose, and could easily have caused cancers in those exposed. The study links this radiation to the evil spirits and the cursed tombs through a startling theory: the radiation is not background, but comes from the funerary objects deliberately placed inside.

The first clue comes from the type of radioactive material that was detected. The Saqqara radiation is from radon gas, and this has a half life of only 3.8 days.

• Saqqara: A Stunning, Sprawling, Necropolis of Egypt
• False Doors: The Gateways to the Egyptian Underworld

The study suggests that mastabas, the low structures that surround many pyramids, may have contained uranium. The radiation would act as the curse of the pharaoh (Internet Archive Book Images / Public Domain)

This means that the radon must be coming from somewhere else. While the source of the gas was never established, radon is known to come from the decay of uranium.

The second clue comes from the radiation at Giza. The two locations were both in the tunnels under Pharaoh Khafre’s Valley building in what is known as the Osiris tomb shaft.

Here, two stone coffers were shown to be intensely radioactive, the interiors of the coffers even more so than the outside. It looked a lot like something that emitted a strong radiation had been placed in these two containers.

Similar storage areas known as “magazines” under Djoser’s pyramid in Saqqara also emitted radiation. The area looks to have been once filled with hundreds of pots, their contents unanalyzed and unknown.

The study believes that these pots and the other storage containers are filled with Uranium 235, known as “yellowcake”. This highly radioactive substance, used today to enrich uranium isotopes for use in modern day nuclear reactors, would emit a deadly radiation. Any tomb raider who chose to disturb the pharaoh’s resting place would be exposed.

Understanding the Necropolis

This revelation allows us to understand the structure of an ancient Egyptian necropolis with new eyes. Let us start with the mastaba, the smaller flat roofed “tombs” which preceded the grand pyramids.

Previously these had been seen as a more modest and simpler burial site, a stepping stone in the development of the Egyptian approach to the afterlife. But this did not fit the available evidence: some mastaba structures had been found empty of occupants, apparently by design. Further, Egyptians continued to build them long after they were building enormous pyramids alongside.

The mastaba complex at Giza. Some of the structures were clearly used as tombs, but not all. Could these peculiar “bunkers” with their air vents be built to house uranium, the radiation serving as the deadly curse of the pharaohs? (Zemanst / CC BY 4.0)

We know from surviving Egyptian inscriptions that these mastaba structures, and not the pyramids themselves, were specifically that “per D’jet” previously mentioned. These and not the pyramids were the Houses of Eternity, designed to last for millions of years.

The name “mastaba” has also been subject to a drifting misinterpretation. Thought to mean “bench” in reference to the shape of the above ground structure when seen from a distance, the word actually comes from Persian, and means “bunker”.

We also know, again from ancient Egyptian sources, that these bunkers of eternity were built in an area designated as the  tꜣ-dsr, meaning the “secluded, cleared, isolated land”. The decorated reliefs on the mastaba also do not depict them as tombs: we see offerings being placed inside during the lifetime of the pharaoh. Not people, but something else.

Egyptologists are quite familiar with this art, which appears throughout early Egyptian history. They had always thought the pots being carried in procession contained drink, oblations for the afterlife. But it seems now these contained something to be stored underground in bunkers surrounding the pharaoh’s tomb, something which would curse the site for millions of years.

It remains to be seen how many of these sites still contain uranium, and how many still pose a danger to the unwary who dare to invade the pharaoh’s House of Eternity. But given what we know about uranium, it seems a safe guess that the curse of the pharaohs is still deadly indeed.

Top Image: A new study believes that uranium may be behind the curse of the pharaohs. Source: Shutter2U / Adobe Stock.

By Joseph Green