# The Mummy's Curse (Classic)

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 10 Feb 2023, 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-ae390037ac53/0960b863-834c-4c57-a70f-af9c00df7dd5/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

A hundred years ago, the Tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun was officially opened - despite the widely held belief that disturbing the remains of the Egyptian pharaohs could incur a deadly curse. Why did a team of archeologists risk inciting the wrath of King Tutankhamun by entering his burial chamber? And how many of them met a premature end for their impudence? For a full list of sources for this episode, go to timharford.com If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts, be sure to sign up for our email list at pushkin.fm. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

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

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