# The Mummy’s Curse

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 29 Oct 2021, 37 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/2772d43f-8a3f-4bb6-93d2-ae3900389254/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

Disturbing the remains of the Egyptian pharaohs is known to incur a deadly curse, so why did a team of archeologists still risk inciting the wrath of King Tutankhamun by entering his burial chamber? And how many of them met a premature end for their impudence? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. Three and a half thousand years ago, in ancient Egypt,
[0:27] Speaker 1: the Princess of Munrah passed away. She was laid to
[0:32] Speaker 1: rest in an exquisite wooden coffin and buried in a
[0:36] Speaker 1: deep vault at Luxor on the banks of the Mighty Nile.
[0:41] Speaker 1: More than thirty centuries later, in the late eighteen hundreds,
[0:46] Speaker 1: four young English tourists, rich gentlemen all were offered the
[0:51] Speaker 1: chance to purchase a delightfully painted mummy case. They drew
[0:56] Speaker 1: lots to decide who had the right to buy the prize.
[1:00] Speaker 1: The man who won paid a small fortune and had
[1:04] Speaker 1: the coffin taken to his hotel. A few hours later,
[1:09] Speaker 1: he was seen walking out onto the Lone and Level Sands.
[1:16] Speaker 1: He was never to return. The second fellow was wounded
[1:20] Speaker 1: in a hunting accident. He lost his arm. The third
[1:24] Speaker 1: man lost everything in a bank run. The fourth was
[1:28] Speaker 1: struck with a severe illness, lost his job, and ended
[1:32] Speaker 1: his days selling matches on street corners. The coffin case
[1:36] Speaker 1: was purchased by another gentleman. His house caught fire and
[1:41] Speaker 1: he quickly donated the unlucky item to the British Museum.
[1:46] Speaker 1: The removal did not go smoothly, the removal wagon lost
[1:51] Speaker 1: control and hit a passer by. One workman fell and
[1:55] Speaker 1: broke his leg while carrying the casket. His colleague simply
[1:59] Speaker 1: died inexplicably. Two days later. Night watchman at the museum
[2:05] Speaker 1: frequently heard sobbing and hammering from inside the coffin. One
[2:12] Speaker 1: died on duty, the others refused to go near the
[2:16] Speaker 1: Egyptian room where the item was stored. A visitor who
[2:21] Speaker 1: treated the exhibition with scorn soon paid the price. His
[2:26] Speaker 1: child died of measles. The photographer took a picture of
[2:31] Speaker 1: the case, but when he developed the picture, he saw
[2:36] Speaker 1: only a tormented human face. The photographer went home, locked
[2:43] Speaker 1: his door, and shot himself. The British museum sold the
[2:49] Speaker 1: cursed object to a private collector, who soon regretted the purchase.
[2:54] Speaker 1: Eventually he found a buyer bold or foolish enough to
[2:58] Speaker 1: take it off his hands, an American archeologist who simply
[3:03] Speaker 1: did not believe in unlucky mummies. He paid top for
[3:09] Speaker 1: the coffin case and arranged to have it shipped across
[3:12] Speaker 1: the Atlantic to New York for safekeeping. The lid of
[3:18] Speaker 1: the coffin of the Princess of Munrah traveled on the
[3:22] Speaker 1: bridge of the finest ocean liner in the world, the
[3:27] Speaker 1: Pride of the White Star Line. The ship's name was
[3:32] Speaker 1: the Titanic. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to cautionary tales.
[4:03] Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty two, a decade after the Titanic had
[4:08] Speaker 1: slipped beneath the icy waters of the North Atlantic, another archeologist,
[4:14] Speaker 1: the Englishman Howard Carter, was at the head of the
[4:17] Speaker 1: Valley of the Kings in the heart of ancient Egypt.
[4:22] Speaker 1: He was patiently encamped outside what he described as a
[4:27] Speaker 1: magnificent tomb with seals intact. It had been a long wait.
[4:35] Speaker 1: Not just the three weeks for Carter's patron and financier,
[4:39] Speaker 1: Lord Carnarvon to arrive, not just the fifteen years of
[4:44] Speaker 1: excavating different sites around the valley with limited success. No
[4:49] Speaker 1: someone or something had been waiting still longer, for more
[4:57] Speaker 1: than three thousand years. Deep inside that tomb, behind a
[5:04] Speaker 1: sealed door, a corridor filled with rubble, another sealed door,
[5:09] Speaker 1: a chamber full of treasures, and yet another sealed door,
[5:13] Speaker 1: was something that nobody had dared to disturb for millennia,
[5:20] Speaker 1: and perhaps with good reason. Everyone knew the story of
[5:24] Speaker 1: the Unlucky Mummy and the Titanic. Such tales were popular
[5:29] Speaker 1: in late Victorian and Edwardian society. A famous psychic, Count Hayman,
[5:36] Speaker 1: sent a telegram with a warning Lord Carnarvon not to
[5:42] Speaker 1: enter tomb. Disobey at peril. If ignored, will suffer sickness,
[5:48] Speaker 1: not recover, death will claim him in Egypt. And yet
[5:55] Speaker 1: Lord Carnarvon had come after weeks of further digging. He
[6:00] Speaker 1: now stood at the shoulder of Howard Carter, who, after
[6:04] Speaker 1: patiently working on a small hole into the burial chamber,
[6:09] Speaker 1: were to candle to the hole and peered in. At
[6:13] Speaker 1: first I could see nothing, Carter later recalled, But presently,
[6:18] Speaker 1: as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of
[6:21] Speaker 1: the room emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues,
[6:25] Speaker 1: and gold everywhere, the glint of gold. For the moment
[6:29] Speaker 1: I was struck dumb with amazement. And when Lord Carnarvon,
[6:33] Speaker 1: unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, can't
[6:38] Speaker 1: you see anything? It was all I could do to
[6:41] Speaker 1: get out the words, yes, wonderful things, wonderful things. Perhaps
[6:52] Speaker 1: these treasures were there to guard and sustain the mummified
[6:57] Speaker 1: body and the golden burial mask of the young pharaoh Tutankhamen.
[7:03] Speaker 1: The story was a sensation. The world's press had gathered
[7:08] Speaker 1: in Kira and were jostling for access to the tomb
[7:11] Speaker 1: or to Carter or Carnarvin. The Times of London lauded
[7:16] Speaker 1: it over the other papers, having paid handsomely for exclusive access,
[7:21] Speaker 1: But every newspaper was there, and every newspaper had an angle.
[7:26] Speaker 1: These rival newspapers reported that Carter and Carnarvon had deliberately
[7:31] Speaker 1: destroyed a terrible warning over the tomb because they were
[7:34] Speaker 1: afraid that the locals would refuse to dig that warning.
[7:39] Speaker 1: Red death shall calm on swift wings to whoever toucheth
[7:46] Speaker 1: the tomb of the pharaoh. Reports too, that Carnarvon had
[7:52] Speaker 1: received a tiny injury in the tomb. A stinging or
[7:56] Speaker 1: biting insect had pierced the skin on his cheek just
[8:01] Speaker 1: as he had entered the presence of Teuton. Carmen and
[8:04] Speaker 1: Count Hayman was not the only person to have warned
[8:08] Speaker 1: about the consequences of Lord Carnarvan's arrogance. One eyewitness turned
[8:13] Speaker 1: to the fellow standing next to him I give him
[8:17] Speaker 1: six weeks to live. Nearly six weeks later, Lord Carnarvan's
[8:23] Speaker 1: family were rushing to be at his side in Cairo.
[8:27] Speaker 1: He was gravely ill. A wound on his cheek was infected,
[8:32] Speaker 1: and the malady was spreading through his body. The Express
[8:36] Speaker 1: newspaper reported that at the moment that Lord Carnarvan breathed
[8:41] Speaker 1: his last feeble breath, the lights in his hotel went out,
[8:47] Speaker 1: plunging all into darkness. Death had claimed him. In Egypt,
[8:54] Speaker 1: it was another pharaoh's curse, and it had claimed its
[8:59] Speaker 1: first victim. Cautionary tales are true stories of disaster and
[9:10] Speaker 1: lessons for us all to learn lest we make the
[9:13] Speaker 1: same mistake ourselves. But what lesson should we learn from
[9:18] Speaker 1: stories about the Unlucky Mummy or the curse of Tuton Carmen.
[9:23] Speaker 1: First let's establish what exactly is said to have happened
[9:28] Speaker 1: to Carnarvon and Carter's expedition. The first indication of trouble
[9:33] Speaker 1: was a little on the nose, the death of a canary.
[9:37] Speaker 1: Howard Carter's beloved pet canary had been eaten by a
[9:41] Speaker 1: cobra the day Carter began to excavate the tomb the
[9:46] Speaker 1: cobra was well known as a symbol of the power
[9:49] Speaker 1: of the pharaohs. Another symbol was the jackal, representative of Anubis,
[9:55] Speaker 1: the Egyptian god of the dead. In his diary, Howard
[9:59] Speaker 1: Carter recorded the unsettling site of two black jackals, the
[10:06] Speaker 1: very image of Anubis. He noticed that it was the
[10:09] Speaker 1: first time he had seen a blackjackal despite thirty five
[10:14] Speaker 1: years working in Egypt. Carter's canary wasn't the only pet
[10:18] Speaker 1: to suffer. Lord Carnarvan's dog howled in sorrow and then
[10:24] Speaker 1: expired at the same moment that Carnarvon himself did, which
[10:28] Speaker 1: is all the more remarkable since Carnarvon was in Cairo
[10:32] Speaker 1: while the dog was in high Clear Castle in southern England.
[10:35] Speaker 1: High Clear is better known these days as the filming
[10:38] Speaker 1: location for Downton Abbey. If it had just been Carnarvern
[10:43] Speaker 1: and a menagerie, that would be one thing, But the
[10:46] Speaker 1: Pharaoh's thirst for revenge was not easily slaked. Soon Howard
[10:52] Speaker 1: Carter was showing signs of illness too, and the list
[10:56] Speaker 1: of people struck down by the curse grew and grew.
[11:01] Speaker 1: A railroad baron from pneumonia after visiting the tomb of
[11:04] Speaker 1: Teuton Carmen in nineteen twenty three. The same year Lord
[11:09] Speaker 1: Carnarvan's half brother. A year later, a close colleague of
[11:14] Speaker 1: Carter suffered a breakdown and retired. A noted radiologist, after
[11:19] Speaker 1: performing an X ray of Teutoncarman's sarcophagus, died mysteriously. Also
[11:25] Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty four, a leading British diplomat was assassinated
[11:29] Speaker 1: in Cairo again in nineteen twenty four. A respected French
[11:34] Speaker 1: egyptologist died in nineteen twenty six after stumbling near Teutencarman's tomb.
[11:41] Speaker 1: Carnarvan's secretary survived a little longer. He died in his
[11:46] Speaker 1: sleep in nineteen twenty nine in circumstances also said to
[11:51] Speaker 1: be mysterious, and The Times of London noted that he
[11:56] Speaker 1: is believed to have been troubled by the legendary curse
[12:01] Speaker 1: of the Pharaohs. The man's father, Lord Westbury, killed himself
[12:07] Speaker 1: three months later. His suicide note included the line I
[12:12] Speaker 1: really can't stand any more horrors, but the horrors kept coming.
[12:19] Speaker 1: Lord Westborough's hearse knocked down a boy of eight on
[12:24] Speaker 1: the way to the cemetery. The boy had died to
[12:27] Speaker 1: satisfy the honor of a three thousand year old Egyptian.
[12:32] Speaker 1: The man who'd given Lord Carnarvon six weeks to live,
[12:35] Speaker 1: was to die. In nineteen thirty four, The Daily Express
[12:39] Speaker 1: noted that he had been killed by the curse. Finally,
[12:45] Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine, Howard Carter, the leader of the expedition,
[12:50] Speaker 1: the man who was the first to glimpse the mask
[12:52] Speaker 1: of Teuton Carmen in more than three thousand years, died
[12:58] Speaker 1: after picking off his pet, his patron, his friends, and
[13:01] Speaker 1: his colleagues one by one. The Pharaoh's curse finally came
[13:06] Speaker 1: for Carter, a man doomed to watch all around him die.
[13:13] Speaker 1: Even then, the curse was not lifted. After four decades
[13:18] Speaker 1: in a museum in Cairo, the Egyptian government arranged to
[13:22] Speaker 1: have Teuton Carmen's mask and treasures exhibited in Paris and
[13:25] Speaker 1: later in London. Numerous untimely deaths followed, in particular of
[13:31] Speaker 1: two successive directors of Egyptian antiquities. A Royal Air Force
[13:37] Speaker 1: crew took on the job of flying the treasures from
[13:40] Speaker 1: Cairo to London and paid the price. One of them
[13:44] Speaker 1: jokingly kicked the box containing the pharaoh's mask. I've just
[13:49] Speaker 1: kicked the most expensive thing in the world. Later, a
[13:52] Speaker 1: ladder broke underneath him for no apparent reason. That leg
[13:58] Speaker 1: was in plaster for five months. Another crewman lost everything
[14:02] Speaker 1: in a house fire. A third suffered two heart attacks
[14:06] Speaker 1: in his thirties, while two others died of heart attacks
[14:10] Speaker 1: in their forties, including flight engineer Ken Parkinson. His wife
[14:15] Speaker 1: said that he had had a heart attack every year
[14:18] Speaker 1: at the same time of year until the last one
[14:21] Speaker 1: killed him. Let's try to be rational about this. Could
[14:26] Speaker 1: there have been some toxic substance in the tomb that
[14:29] Speaker 1: caused death as possible. One explanation is that some strange virus, mold,
[14:34] Speaker 1: or bacteria evolved in there, ready to burst out and
[14:38] Speaker 1: wreak havoc. A second possibility is that the ancient Egyptians
[14:42] Speaker 1: were masters of poison and primed the tomb with toxic
[14:47] Speaker 1: paints or powders. Or perhaps the tomb was built out
[14:51] Speaker 1: of radioactive material, delivering a lethal dose to grave robbers
[14:56] Speaker 1: with a temerity to disturb it. All of these explanations
[15:02] Speaker 1: have been attributed to scientists, but there are some obvious subjections.
[15:07] Speaker 1: Radiation is easily de tected. If Tutankhamen's tomb was packed
[15:12] Speaker 1: with plutonium, I think we'd know about it by now.
[15:15] Speaker 1: The epidemiologist F. Dewolfe. Miller recently told National Geographic that
[15:21] Speaker 1: we don't know of even a single case of either
[15:25] Speaker 1: an archaeologist or a tourist experiencing any negative consequences from
[15:30] Speaker 1: either two molds or bacteria. He added that given the
[15:34] Speaker 1: sanitary conditions of the time in general, and those within
[15:37] Speaker 1: Egypt in particular, Lord Carnarvon would likely have been safer
[15:41] Speaker 1: in the tomb than outside. Anyway, no toxin could explain
[15:47] Speaker 1: all the mysterious deaths of all these different people across
[15:51] Speaker 1: the decades. But something else might, something as strange as
[15:57] Speaker 1: any fairnic curse. We'll find out more after the break.
[16:11] Speaker 1: Let's move from the realm of ancient curses to the
[16:14] Speaker 1: world of cutting edge science. Cutting edge that is, from
[16:19] Speaker 1: the perspective of seventeen eighty four. We're in Paris, the
[16:24] Speaker 1: Febrile decade before the Revolution and the guillotine. A strange
[16:29] Speaker 1: cylinder of polished oak with nautical fittings, ropes, brass wheels,
[16:34] Speaker 1: and iron rods stands in front of us in the
[16:38] Speaker 1: center of a room with an audience poor souls, wretched
[16:42] Speaker 1: invalids seeking healing. A brought in firmly fastened to the
[16:47] Speaker 1: cylinder by the ropes, then touch their diseased bodies to
[16:51] Speaker 1: the iron rods. They're ready to be healed by the
[16:54] Speaker 1: awesome scientific power of magnetism. To add to the sense
[17:01] Speaker 1: of occasion, a glass harmonica, a strange instrument invented by
[17:06] Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin, plays is earie music. A contemporary account describes
[17:13] Speaker 1: how the patients would cough, spit, feel slight pain, a
[17:17] Speaker 1: warmth either localized or all over, and perspire. Others are
[17:21] Speaker 1: agitated by quick, involuntary movements. These effects build over several hours,
[17:27] Speaker 1: with crescendos of screams, sobs, hysterical laughter, and of course,
[17:33] Speaker 1: the arm monica. The climax occurs with the appearance of
[17:36] Speaker 1: the device's inventor, dressed in gold slippers and a silk robe,
[17:42] Speaker 1: waving a wand and laying on hands, provoking yet more
[17:46] Speaker 1: convulsions and hysterics. It's Franz Anton Mesmer, the man who
[17:53] Speaker 1: gave us the word mesmerize. Mesmer was a sensation in
[17:59] Speaker 1: pre revolutionary France. A seat at his magnetic device was
[18:04] Speaker 1: the hottest ticket in Paris. The charge was steep, but
[18:08] Speaker 1: there was no shortage of eager customers. Some were desperate
[18:12] Speaker 1: for healing, others were in it for the thrill and
[18:15] Speaker 1: the ability to describe their experiences later in the salon.
[18:19] Speaker 1: The Queen herself, Marie Antoinette, was a follower of Mesma,
[18:25] Speaker 1: so was a hero of the American Revolution, the Marquis
[18:29] Speaker 1: de Lafayette. But while Mesma himself claimed to be at
[18:34] Speaker 1: the very forefront of scientific thought and practice, the scientific
[18:39] Speaker 1: establishment was less impressed. Indeed, the Society of Medicine refused
[18:44] Speaker 1: even to debunk his treatments, ignoring him completely. But Mesmo
[18:51] Speaker 1: Romania could not be ignored for long, and soon the
[18:55] Speaker 1: King demanded a proper investigation into this strange sorcerer scientist
[19:01] Speaker 1: and his methods. That investigation would include France's finest scientists,
[19:07] Speaker 1: led by a distinguished foreign authority, none other than Benjamin
[19:12] Speaker 1: Franklin himself. Franklin's team conducted a test in which a
[19:17] Speaker 1: patient sat in front of a closed door. She was
[19:21] Speaker 1: told that a noted mesmerist was behind it performing his
[19:25] Speaker 1: magnetic treatments. The investigators described the results after three minutes.
[19:32] Speaker 1: She stretched both arms behind her back, twisting them strongly
[19:36] Speaker 1: and bending her body forward. Her whole body shook. The
[19:40] Speaker 1: chatter of her teeth was so loud that it could
[19:42] Speaker 1: be heard from outside. She bit her hand hard enough
[19:46] Speaker 1: to leave teeth marks. The mesmerist, of course, wasn't there.
[19:51] Speaker 1: The entire effect was in her imagination. Other tests showed
[19:58] Speaker 1: similar results. It seemed clear that mesmerism didn't work, which
[20:04] Speaker 1: it didn't, but Benjamin Franklin was sharp enough to note
[20:07] Speaker 1: an equally import stant fact. Even a completely phony cure
[20:13] Speaker 1: can have powerful effects on the mind. These patients were
[20:17] Speaker 1: having convulsions caused only by their own belief in mesmerism.
[20:24] Speaker 1: Franklin also guessed that if these beliefs were powerful enough
[20:27] Speaker 1: to cause such reactions, they might also be powerful enough
[20:31] Speaker 1: to do some good. He wrote, if these people can
[20:35] Speaker 1: be persuaded to forbear their drugs in expectation of being
[20:39] Speaker 1: cured by only the physician's finger or an iron rod
[20:43] Speaker 1: pointing at them, they may possibly find good effects. And
[20:48] Speaker 1: Franklin was right. As Shancarva Dantum and Bill Mesler note
[20:52] Speaker 1: in their book Useful Delusions, what Franklin had observed is
[20:57] Speaker 1: now called the placebo effect. It's remarkably powerful. Researchers have
[21:03] Speaker 1: found that not only do fake painkillers relieve pain, but
[21:08] Speaker 1: fake expect if painkillers relieve pain more powerfully than fake
[21:12] Speaker 1: cheap painkillers. Doctors have performed placebo knee surgeries anesthetic incisions
[21:19] Speaker 1: but no actual surgery and found beneficial effects. The placebo
[21:25] Speaker 1: effect is potent, and so too is its evil twin,
[21:31] Speaker 1: the no sebo effect. Just as the placebo effect makes
[21:35] Speaker 1: you feel better because you think you're being helped, the
[21:38] Speaker 1: no sebo effect makes you feel worse because you think
[21:41] Speaker 1: you're being harmed. When a doctor says this is going
[21:45] Speaker 1: to hurt, it is more likely to hurt. When you're
[21:48] Speaker 1: given a drug or a vaccine shot and told about
[21:51] Speaker 1: side effects, you're more likely to experience side effects. In
[21:55] Speaker 1: clinical trials, people are often given a placebo that is
[21:59] Speaker 1: a harmless peel or injection that they think might be
[22:02] Speaker 1: an actual drug. It turns out that five percent of
[22:05] Speaker 1: these people then drop out of the trial because they're
[22:09] Speaker 1: experiencing what they think are side effects, ranging from pain
[22:14] Speaker 1: to depression to heart disease. It's a no sebo response.
[22:19] Speaker 1: A bad response to a fake pill. Could the no
[22:24] Speaker 1: Sebo effect help to explain some of the heart attacks
[22:27] Speaker 1: reported to be caused by the Curse of the pharaoh.
[22:30] Speaker 1: It might. I can't help but think of poor Ken Parkinson,
[22:35] Speaker 1: the flight engineer who helped transport Tuton Carmen's mask from
[22:39] Speaker 1: Cairo to London in nineteen seventy two, whose wife reported
[22:43] Speaker 1: that he had a heart attack at the same time
[22:46] Speaker 1: of year, year after year. Imagine what he must have
[22:51] Speaker 1: been thinking after three or four years of that. It's
[22:54] Speaker 1: the kind of thing that would cause some serious anxiety.
[22:58] Speaker 1: And that serious anxiety about a heart attack might turn
[23:02] Speaker 1: out to be a self fulfilling prophecy. So maybe tomb
[23:07] Speaker 1: toxins killed Lord can n Maybe the no sebo effect
[23:11] Speaker 1: gave Ken Parkinson repeated anxiety induced heart attacks. Maybe. But
[23:19] Speaker 1: there's another explanation for these eerie tales of the Curse
[23:24] Speaker 1: of the Pharaohs. Unlike tomb toxins, this explanation is everywhere.
[23:30] Speaker 1: It's all around us. We can't possibly escape it. And
[23:35] Speaker 1: to understand it, I want to tell you a very
[23:39] Speaker 1: different kind of spooky story. Once upon a time, a
[23:45] Speaker 1: man walked into a branch of Target near Minneapolis, furious
[23:51] Speaker 1: and demanded to see the manager. He was brandishing a
[23:56] Speaker 1: mailer that contained adverts for nursery furniture and maternity clothes,
[24:00] Speaker 1: alongside lots of smiling babies. My daughter got this in
[24:04] Speaker 1: the mail, he said. She's still in high school and
[24:07] Speaker 1: you're sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs. Are
[24:11] Speaker 1: you trying to encourage her to get pregnant? The manager
[24:14] Speaker 1: was rather confused and apologized. A few days later, he
[24:19] Speaker 1: called to apologize again. Ah about that, said the no
[24:25] Speaker 1: longer angry dad. I had a talk with my daughter.
[24:29] Speaker 1: Turns out there's been some activities in my house I
[24:32] Speaker 1: haven't been completely aware of. She's due in August. I
[24:38] Speaker 1: owe you an apology. This story, related by Charles Doohig
[24:44] Speaker 1: in The New York Times magazine in twenty twelve, is
[24:47] Speaker 1: the modern version of the Mummy's Curse. It's no longer
[24:52] Speaker 1: an ancient pharaoh who wields mysterious power over us. It's
[24:57] Speaker 1: an algorithm analyzing our shopping patterns, predicting what we'll do,
[25:02] Speaker 1: where we'll go, what will desire, all powerful and subtly
[25:07] Speaker 1: nudging us in the direct of corporate profit. Do Hick's
[25:13] Speaker 1: story went viral just as tales of the Mummy's Curse
[25:17] Speaker 1: had been shared a century earlier. People were in awe
[25:21] Speaker 1: of the way an algorithm could perceive a hidden truth
[25:24] Speaker 1: that even this teenage girl's own family could not. Well. Perhaps,
[25:32] Speaker 1: but while we're supposed to assume that everybody who received
[25:37] Speaker 1: one of those mailers was a pregnant woman, there's no
[25:40] Speaker 1: evidence in the story for that assumption. What if Target
[25:44] Speaker 1: sent the same mailer to every woman under the age
[25:47] Speaker 1: of forty five. What if Target sent coupons to absolutely everyone.
[25:54] Speaker 1: Maybe they did. From the perspective of the angry dad
[25:57] Speaker 1: and the pregnant daughter, the algorithm would seem just as
[26:01] Speaker 1: eerily good. What's going on here is what a statistician
[26:06] Speaker 1: would call selection bias. It's ubiquitous, and while it's easy
[26:12] Speaker 1: to understand that, it's often hard to solve. I can
[26:15] Speaker 1: name far more rich actors than poor ones, and far
[26:19] Speaker 1: more professional footballers than amateur ones. But that doesn't mean
[26:23] Speaker 1: most actors are rich and most footballers are professional. So
[26:28] Speaker 1: how many non pregnant people received coupons? I have no idea,
[26:34] Speaker 1: but I do know that if Target sends you some
[26:36] Speaker 1: maternity coupons but you're not pregnant, You're probably not going
[26:40] Speaker 1: to bother mentioning that to anyone, let alone mentioning it
[26:45] Speaker 1: to the New York Times magazine. You see selection bias.
[26:51] Speaker 1: It's everywhere. But could selection bias have shaped the way
[26:57] Speaker 1: we perceive the curse of the Pharaoh. We'll find out
[27:02] Speaker 1: after the break. Lord Carnarvon died not long after he
[27:12] Speaker 1: entered Tutan Carmen's tomb. It's a striking coincidence, if indeed
[27:18] Speaker 1: it is a coincidence. But to understand whether selection bias
[27:23] Speaker 1: might be at play, we need to ask how many
[27:25] Speaker 1: others have been involved in such excavations, and what does
[27:30] Speaker 1: it even mean to be involved. The mysterious logic of
[27:34] Speaker 1: Mummy's curse stories casts the net wide. A British diplomat
[27:39] Speaker 1: assassinated five hundred miles away from the tomb and two
[27:43] Speaker 1: years after it was opened. Does that really count? Or
[27:47] Speaker 1: remember the young boy whose connection to Tutancarmen was that
[27:51] Speaker 1: he was unfortunate enough to be in the path of
[27:54] Speaker 1: the hearse of the father of the secretary of Lord Carnarvon,
[27:57] Speaker 1: six years after the excavation. If the Pharaoh's curse can
[28:01] Speaker 1: be blamed for such deaths, we could draw plausible lines
[28:04] Speaker 1: of connection to countless thousands of people around the periphery
[28:08] Speaker 1: of the original dig. To analyze this rationally, we need
[28:14] Speaker 1: to compare the fates of people associated with the excavation
[28:18] Speaker 1: of the tomb with those who were not associated. An
[28:22] Speaker 1: epidemiologist named Mark Nelson has published a serious attempt at
[28:26] Speaker 1: this analysis. It was published in the British Medical Journal.
[28:30] Speaker 1: Doctor Nelson looked at forty four Westerners identified by Howard
[28:34] Speaker 1: Carter as being in Egypt during the dig. Twenty five
[28:39] Speaker 1: of them were potentially exposed to a curse by visiting
[28:43] Speaker 1: the tomb. Nineteen did not visit. He found scant evidence
[28:49] Speaker 1: of any curse. On average, people lived for another twenty
[28:54] Speaker 1: years after visiting the tomb. Howard Carter survived seventeen years,
[28:59] Speaker 1: slightly below the average, so it's not true that he
[29:02] Speaker 1: died quickly, nor is it true that his accursed fate
[29:06] Speaker 1: was to live to see all his friends succumb. The
[29:09] Speaker 1: only hint of a curse that doctor Nelson found was
[29:12] Speaker 1: that the average age of tomb visitors at death was
[29:16] Speaker 1: a little younger than the average age at death of
[29:19] Speaker 1: the companions who didn't visit. However, these companions were often
[29:24] Speaker 1: the wives of the excavators, and women do tend to
[29:27] Speaker 1: live longer than men. In any case, even the people
[29:31] Speaker 1: who visited the tomb lived on average until they were
[29:34] Speaker 1: over seventy. It's not exactly the stuff of nightmares. Lord
[29:40] Speaker 1: Carnarvon did die before his time, but in an age
[29:44] Speaker 1: before antibiotics, such things happened. He nicked that mosquito bite
[29:50] Speaker 1: while shaving, The cut became infected, and he developed pneumonia.
[29:55] Speaker 1: It's an unusual way to die, but not a mysterious one. Still,
[30:00] Speaker 1: there is one final reckoning. What of the prophetic warnings
[30:05] Speaker 1: that Carnarvon would die within six weeks? What of his dog?
[30:09] Speaker 1: What are the lights going out all over Cairo? And
[30:12] Speaker 1: what of one final chilling detail that the wound which
[30:16] Speaker 1: killed Carnarvon was in the same spot as a mark
[30:20] Speaker 1: on the cheek of King Tuton Carmen himself. The rather
[30:27] Speaker 1: underwhelming explanation for some of these stories is that they
[30:31] Speaker 1: aren't true. Remember that long before Howard Carter gazed upon
[30:36] Speaker 1: the mask of Tuton Carmen or Lord Carnarvan succumbed to pneumonia,
[30:41] Speaker 1: Edwardians had told each other ghost stories, and no ghost
[30:46] Speaker 1: story was more popular than a tale of the Mummy's curse.
[30:51] Speaker 1: Such tales sold newspapers. Given that most of the newspapers
[30:55] Speaker 1: had been shut out by The London Times's exclusive deal
[30:58] Speaker 1: with Carnarvin, what else would they print? Journalists made up
[31:02] Speaker 1: spooky stories, and the best such stories lived on. The
[31:06] Speaker 1: man who claimed he had given Carnarvon six weeks to
[31:09] Speaker 1: live six weeks before he died was writing for a
[31:12] Speaker 1: rival newspaper. He only published the details of his prophecy
[31:17] Speaker 1: several months after Carnarvan's death. The Daily Express reported that
[31:22] Speaker 1: the lights went out in the hotel when Lord Carnarvon died.
[31:26] Speaker 1: Perhaps they did. It would hardly be astonishing to have
[31:29] Speaker 1: a power cut in Cairo in nineteen twenty three, but
[31:32] Speaker 1: the timing was probably less uncanny. Otherwise other newspapers might
[31:38] Speaker 1: also have mentioned it. The haunting detail about the wound
[31:43] Speaker 1: on Tuton Carmen's cheek was published only in the Daily Mail.
[31:48] Speaker 1: Modern examinations of the Mummy mentioned no such wound. Lord
[31:53] Speaker 1: Carnarvan's dog Howard Carter's canary. Roger Luckhurst, author of the
[31:59] Speaker 1: Mummy's Curse, points out that all these tales are secondhand
[32:03] Speaker 1: or third hand accounts newspapers reporting hearsay about hearsay. What
[32:09] Speaker 1: about the pioneering radiologist Sir Archibald Douglas Reid, said to
[32:14] Speaker 1: have x rayed the sarcophagus and then to have died
[32:17] Speaker 1: of a mysterious illness. His mysterious illness wasn't mysterious at all.
[32:22] Speaker 1: He had cancer, one of the hazards of being a
[32:24] Speaker 1: radiologist in those days, and it seems unlikely that he
[32:28] Speaker 1: ever x rayed the sarcophagus. He was too ill to
[32:31] Speaker 1: be in Egypt. He was convalescing in Switzerland before he died.
[32:35] Speaker 1: The mysterious portent of the Black Jackal of a Nubis
[32:39] Speaker 1: seen by Howard Carter. It happened, but it wasn't a portent.
[32:44] Speaker 1: Carter's diary entry records the Black Jackal in May nineteen
[32:49] Speaker 1: twenty six, several years after Carnarvon's death and many years
[32:54] Speaker 1: before Carter's. That rather spoils the story of its potency,
[32:59] Speaker 1: doesn't it. No wonder it was the inaccurate version that
[33:02] Speaker 1: caught on. And what about Count Hayman, the man who
[33:07] Speaker 1: warned Carnarvin that death would claim him in Egypt. Well,
[33:12] Speaker 1: maybe Count Hayman, who was not. A count also claimed
[33:17] Speaker 1: to have warned trophy hunters not to remove the Unlucky
[33:21] Speaker 1: Mummy from Egypt. Since the Unlucky Mummy left Egypt when
[33:25] Speaker 1: Hayman was about three years old. This seems implausible. Yes,
[33:31] Speaker 1: the Unlucky Mummy, or more precisely, the coffin case of
[33:36] Speaker 1: the Princess of arman Rah. I'd almost forgotten that older tale,
[33:42] Speaker 1: the one which predates the discovery of the tomb of
[33:44] Speaker 1: Teuton Carmen, the one which ends with a coffin case
[33:48] Speaker 1: sinking with the Titanic. It is quite the story, but
[33:54] Speaker 1: it is just a story, and one which endlessly mutates.
[34:01] Speaker 1: One man, who had indeed lost his arm in a
[34:03] Speaker 1: shooting accident, used to tell it in the eighteen nineties
[34:06] Speaker 1: and early nineteen hundreds. He was president of the Ghost Club,
[34:11] Speaker 1: at which gentlemen would meet for dinner and frighten each
[34:13] Speaker 1: other out of their wits. But there was no shooting
[34:16] Speaker 1: accident in his telling of the tale. It was only
[34:19] Speaker 1: after he died that others retrofitted that detail to the story.
[34:25] Speaker 1: Another brother Ghost, one of the members of the Ghost Club,
[34:30] Speaker 1: died on the Titanic. His fate, too, was woven into
[34:35] Speaker 1: the story, and so the tale grew and grew, despite specific,
[34:41] Speaker 1: point by point rebuttals from the increasingly exasperated curator of
[34:45] Speaker 1: the Egyptian Room in the British Museum. But unlike my
[34:50] Speaker 1: cautionary tales, the story of the unlucky coughin case just
[34:55] Speaker 1: isn't true. The case wasn't on the Titanic. We know
[35:00] Speaker 1: that because we have the doomed liner's cargo manifest. It's
[35:04] Speaker 1: exhaustive and it lists no Egyptian artifacts. And there is
[35:12] Speaker 1: one final reason I'm confident that the coffin case of
[35:15] Speaker 1: the Unknown Priestess of Munras did not sync with the Titanic.
[35:21] Speaker 1: It's that it never left the British Museum. It's exhibit
[35:25] Speaker 1: number EA two two five four two. I know because
[35:29] Speaker 1: I just went into the museum and had a look.
[35:32] Speaker 1: Despite everything I've argued, I'll admit I was nervous, but
[35:36] Speaker 1: I stood in front of the coffin and now I'm
[35:38] Speaker 1: on my way home, safe from the Curse of the Mummy.
[35:52] Speaker 1: Key sources for this episode include Roger Luckhurst's book The
[35:56] Speaker 1: Mummy's Curse, Christopher Turner's an article Mesme Romania, the British
[36:01] Speaker 1: Medical Journal, and Snopes. For a full list of our sources,
[36:05] Speaker 1: see the show notes at Tim Harford dot com. Cautionary
[36:14] Speaker 1: Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.
[36:17] Speaker 1: It's produced by Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust. The sound
[36:21] Speaker 1: design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise.
[36:25] Speaker 1: This show wouldn't have been possible without the work of
[36:28] Speaker 1: mil LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, Julia Barton, John Schnarz,
[36:34] Speaker 1: Carlie mcgliori, Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor, An Yellow, Lakhan, and
[36:40] Speaker 1: Maya Kanig. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.
[36:46] Speaker 1: If you like the show, please remember to rate, share,
[36:50] Speaker 1: and review.

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