April
27
/ 2024
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
