By Jane Mulder
Myths abound about the curse to be visited on those who disturb Ancient Egyptian burials, the most famous “victim” being Lord Carnarvon who died not long after he and Carter opened Tutankhamun’s tomb. But there is an even older account of a mummy’s curse.
The story goes that in the late 1890’s a group of four Englishmen, on a visit to Egypt, were offered a mummy case containing the purported mummy of a priestess of Amun-Ra. As each was keen to acquire the masterpiece of Egyptian art they drew lots, and the winner paid several thousand pounds for it. He was not to enjoy his acquisition, however, as the next day he walked out into the desert, never to return. The following day one of the men was accidentally shot in the arm, which was so badly damaged that it had to be amputated. The third victim lost all his money when a bank failed, while the fourth became so ill that he could no longer work and was reduced to selling matches on the street.
Eventually the sarcophagus arrived in England and was bought by a wealthy London businessman. Again the mummy’s curse became active when three of the businessman’s family were killed in a motor accident, and his home caught fire. Not willing to chance further misfortune, he donated the offending object to the British Museum. While the mummy case was being unloaded at the museum, the truck in which it had been transported unaccountably rolled backwards, trapping a passer-by, and one of the two men carrying the coffin up the stairs fell and broke his leg, while the second died suddenly two days later.
After the coffin was installed in the Egyptian room the strange happenings continued. Frightened night watchmen reported hearing scratchings and sobbings coming from inside the coffin, while objects were often thrown around the gallery. When one of the watchmen died the others threatened to resign. And visitors to the gallery weren’t immune. When one man loudly scoffed at the rumours, his child contracted measles and died soon afterwards.
Now thoroughly alarmed, museum officials had the coffin moved down to the basement, but shortly afterwards one of the helpers became seriously ill while his supervisor was found dead at his desk. By now the press had got hold of the story, and a journalist obtained permission to photograph the coffin. When he developed the film he was so frightened by the terrifying image of an evil face that he shot himself.
This was the last straw and the museum sold the infamous object to a private collector. When continual misfortune and deaths haunted his family, the new owner hid the coffin in his attic, and then consulted a well-known medium, Madame Helena Bavatsky, who informed him that the evil could not be exorcised from the mummy, and advised that he get rid of it as quickly as possible. But as so many deaths and much misfortune attended the object, no British museum wanted it.
Enter a no-nonsense American collector who didn’t believe in the myth. He bought the coffin and embarked with his prize on the brand-new “unsinkable” Titanic. When the liner foundered the wily collector bribed one of the crew to put him and the coffin on a lifeboat, and they were picked up by the Carpathia. After having landed safely in New York the evil spirit of the long-dead priestess continued to wreak death and mayhem on those who came into contact with her.
Thoroughly browned off by all the goings-on, the collector sold the coffin to a collector from Montreal, but when calamities continued to be experienced the new owner shipped her back to Europe on the Empress of Ireland.You’ve guessed it – the ship with its deadly cargo sank in the St Lawrence River on 29th May 1912, and 840 passengers were lost. But what of the mummy? Yet again it was miraculously saved from a watery grave. The Canadian, now a firm believer in the legend, decided it was time for the mummy to return to Egypt, so he booked it to sail on the Lusitania. Yet again the ship on which it sailed was doomed. On 7th May 1915 Lusitania was torpedoed by a German submarine near the coast of Ireland, with the loss of 1200 lives. What happened to the mummy thereafter the story doesn’t say.
Well so much for the legend. But what is the truth about the “unlucky mummy”? Well like most myths it started off with a tiny grain of truth.
The valuable artefact was acquired by Arthur F. Wheeler, and in 1889 his sister, Mrs Warwick Hunt, presented it to the British Museum on his behalf. It was here that the legend found its beginnings. When the exhibit was visited by Douglas Murray (an amateur archaeologist) and William Thomas Stead (a journalist with an interest in spiritualism), the imaginative pair saw a link between the museum’s recent acquisition and another mummy. This mummy, so they said, had been placed in the drawing-room of an English lady who had just acquired it. The next day she and her husband were alarmed to discover that crockery and ornaments in the room had been smashed to smithereens. They moved the offending object to an upstairs room where the same thing happened, and in desperation they locked it in a cupboard at the top of the house, but the haunting continued. “Troops of beings breaking crockery and carrying heavy pieces of iron stamped up and down the stairs all night, flourishing lights and shaking the staircase to such purpose that all the servants resigned in a body the next day”.
Murray and Stead, who claimed to see anguish on the face and in the eyes painted on the coffin lid, publicly sought to arrange a séance in the gallery and to perform rituals in order to set the unhappy spirit to rest. Naturally museum authorities didn’t agree to this, but the story went “viral” and gullible people from all walks of life and from many countries contributed money for floral wreaths to be placed in front of the mummy case! Of course museum officials never went along with this, and no wreaths were purchased. (What happened to the money is open to conjecture.)
After the death of Lord Carnarvon in 1923 interest in the story of the “unlucky mummy” was revived and the story took on a life of its own, leading to the convoluted myth recounted above.
And the truth of the matter? None of the above shenanigans ever happened. Far from being a coffin with mummy, the exquisitely painted object is a 162cm inner coffin lid made from wood and plaster thought to be from the late 21st to early 22nd dynasty (950-900 BCE) which was found at Thebes. The mummy itself never left Egypt. The lifelike face and beautiful embellishments (which include a large floral collar and numerous images of deities associated with the afterlife) that are painted on the mummy board indicate a person of high rank, and indeed E.A. Wallis Budge, in his book “The Mummy: A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology” stated that the object is : “… decorated with an elaborate pectoral, figures of the gods, sacred symbols of Osiris and Isis, and at the foot, between crowned uraei, is a cartouche containing the prenomen and nomen of Amenhetep I, Tcheserkara Amenhetep, one of the earliest kings of the XVIIIth dynasty and a great benefactor of the priesthood of Amen at Thebes. This board was presented to the British Museum in 1889 by Mr A F Wheeler and has been the subject of many paragraphs in the newspapers.”
As no name appears on the coffin – there are only short religious phrases – it is not known to whom the coffin belonged, though the beardless face and placement of the hands with extended fingers indicates that it was a woman. Although it was never proved that she was a priestess of Amun-Ra, early museum publications gave her that appellation. The only occasions that the object has been removed from the museum was during the two world wars (for safety), and later when it formed part of exhibitions in Australia and Taiwan. It was never in America, shipped on the Titanic or sold to anyone at all. Indeed the Trustees of the British Museum are not empowered to sell or dispose of any of the museum’s objects.
The magnificent mummy board can be seen in room 62 of the British Museum bearing the number EA 22542.