Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Myths of Pharaonic Mummies Remain “Befogging Fascination”


Mon 03 Dec 2018 | 05:33 PM
Norhan Mahmoud

By: Ali Abu-Dashish

CAIRO, Dec. 3 (SEE)- Nothing stimulates imagination about pharaohs like their mummies! Hollywood movies, for instance, have contributed much in fueling this fantasy right after discovering the mummies’ hideout in ‘Al Dair AlBahary.’

Interestingly, one of the rumors related to the sinking of the titanic, post screening the blockbuster movie, claimed that a pharaonic mummy was found on board and brought down curse on the ship and its passengers.

Egyptologist Dr. Hussein Abdel-Bassir noted that amongst the weirdest fables is what a newspaper published suggesting the presence of a 2500-year-old mummy at the Sakkara necropolis. “The news story feigns that this mummy rises daily 2 feet high into the sky out of the coffin for 8 hours then returns back and sleeps for the other 16 hours!.”

Since the 19th century, the curse of the pharaohs has been mediated either due to mentioning mummies or stepping inside ancient Egyptian graves. In fact, such allegations have been widely disseminated after the discovery of the tomb of the little pharaoh Tutankhamen by Howard Carter.

What supported this allegory is the false translation of the protecting mantra of chapter 51 in the “Book of the Dead” that was engraved on a safeguard statue in Tut’s tomb.

Actually, curses have been found inside other graves at different sites. Such imprecations were widely spread in the elites’ graves, while royals opted for other oaths to protect their graves from theft, assault and violation.

Carter finished his restoration work at the tomb in 1932 and passed away in 1939 crowned with fame, glory and poverty. His furniture was auctioned at Sotheby’s in December of the same year, while his library was sold two months later.

Another eerie paradox is that of the Egyptian Archaeologist Dr. Sami Gabra and his team who suffered from severe headache and suffocation while working inside the cellars of the bird ‘Aybes’ at ‘Tuna AlGabal’ site. “Workers popularized that a curse fall onto them because of excavating the grave, yet Gabra did not believe so.”

Furthermore, American press rumored that American Egyptologist David Silverman was damned by a pharaonic curse when he was in charge of the exhibition of ‘Tutankhamen’s Treasures,’ but he denounced the allegations.

‘The Golden Mummies’ unearthed by Hawass and his team in ‘Alwahat Albahariya’ had also a thrilling story. Hawass relocated the mummy to his research center at the pyramids and named it “Mr. or Mrs. X.”

Bassir’s own encounter with the supposed curse while relocating mummies of two little children from their grave into a room designed to be a museum in the future is a bit humorous.

He narrated: “All along my one month trip as a visiting lecturer at Los Angeles University, US, the mummies used to show round in my dreams, I did it know why. One night, they were approaching me and I woke up disturbed. Not only this, but another weird incidents happened; I didn’t arrive to one of the lectures on time and missed a plane.”

When he arrived in Cairo, Bassir travelled to ‘Alwahat Albahariya’ to the same place where the two mummies were unearthed to surprisingly find another mummy that may have belonged to their father. “I instantly relocated him next to them and they no longer appear in my dreams.”

Also, the discoveries of ‘The Pyramids Builders’ graves, by Dr. Hawass and his team, hold many abruptness. One of them is the drawn curse inside the tomb of ‘Benti,’ the workers’ director, to protect his tomb and another screen related to his wife ‘Nes Sooker’: “ All of you alive who entered this grave; assailants against this grave by distortion, the crocodile on you in water, the snakes on you in land, the hippopotamuses on you in water and the scorpions on you in land.”

Factually, the scientific explanation is that sudden death occurs to those who step into the graves as a result of the decomposition of the thousands-year-old organic materials inside the sacrifices ancient Egyptians prepared to take with them in their journey to the other world. These materials generate huge amounts of gases, poisonous vapor and bacteria that leads to fainting and possible death. And that’s why archaeologists advise to air newly opened tombs, to be purged from all of the toxicity.

To sum up, I believe that there is nothing called the curse of the pharaohs but there is befogging fascination!

Translated by: Norhan Mahmoud