Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant
Speaker 1: and makes this stuff you should know the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: walking like an Egyptian Worth. You nailed that too, Jerry
Speaker 1: and now were singing the old Steve Martin King tut
Speaker 1: song and you were like, what is that? I know
Speaker 1: what it is? And I'm young. I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I don't know the lyrics. Yeah, you were. You were
Speaker 1: on the cusp there, that was. That was a big
Speaker 1: deal when I was a kid, And I was like
Speaker 1: to when I think when that came out? Yeah, he
Speaker 1: missed it by a few years. Yeah, I mean, it
Speaker 1: wasn't like twenty five and going to see Steve Martin
Speaker 1: or anything, what I like sixty. So, Chuck, I know
Speaker 1: you're familiar with Steve Martin, but are you familiar with
Speaker 1: a little boy king by the name of King two
Speaker 1: tongue common, Yes, I am, are you? Yeah, Well, let's
Speaker 1: wrap about him. Man, did you go see the exhibit? No? No,
Speaker 1: the Discovery one in Times Square. Well it travels you know.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, you we saw that one. I didn't
Speaker 1: see it though it saw bodies, so that was pretty neat.
Speaker 1: I think I told you about that. I didn't see
Speaker 1: bodies yet. I did the dialogue in the Dark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about this. Yeah, bodies was pretty cool. But
Speaker 1: you're like, wow, this is really nuts. Yeah, um, but no,
Speaker 1: I didn't see King Tych did you? Did you know
Speaker 1: there's a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit now in Times Square?
Speaker 1: Discovery has you know, Discovery has like this basically like
Speaker 1: a museum, like an exhibition show in Times Square and
Speaker 1: the newest one is the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like the
Speaker 1: Dead Sea Scrolls are there in Times Square right now.
Speaker 1: You can sign your name on it, right Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: Well let's get back to King Tut because we got
Speaker 1: a little off topic. If you ask me, um, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell you what I know about King Tutt, and
Speaker 1: then you tell me what you know and we'll combine
Speaker 1: the two. So like, for example, um, I found out
Speaker 1: that King Tut was an Avid chariot racer. Did you
Speaker 1: know that he was buried apparently in tombed I should say,
Speaker 1: with six chariots. It's kind of like you're uber wealthy
Speaker 1: boy president, right, who's like sixteen and then you know
Speaker 1: dies at a eighteen is buried with like his eight
Speaker 1: camaros or something. That's kind of what they did with
Speaker 1: King Tutt. He was also an avid ostrich hunter. He
Speaker 1: used to hunt in the desert with just him and
Speaker 1: his dog. Is pretty cool. Um. He also married his
Speaker 1: sister and had two babies with their both of the
Speaker 1: both of which were um born prematurely and dyed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of inbreeding going on back then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of rumors that he was in bred,
Speaker 1: or a lot of speculation or I should say a
Speaker 1: lot of factual conjecture that he was him self also inbred. Um.
Speaker 1: And they think that there's this huge mystery going on
Speaker 1: right now that he was club footed. Did you know that.
Speaker 1: I did not know that. So they think that he
Speaker 1: may have been club footed, which would definitely support the
Speaker 1: inbreeding UM argument, not that people who have club feed
Speaker 1: are inbred, but I think if you are inbred, you're
Speaker 1: likelier to have something like a club foot. But they
Speaker 1: can't tell. It looks like he's club footed, but his
Speaker 1: his cadavers. Corpse has been so mistreated over the decades
Speaker 1: since it was discovered that, Um, they can't tell if
Speaker 1: somebody just broke his foot or if he was born
Speaker 1: that way club foot? Is that all yet? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: all right, we should boy it. Uh. He was short.
Speaker 1: He had a weird shaped head. Have you ever seen
Speaker 1: a skull? Uh, it's it looks like an egg. It's
Speaker 1: really weird looking. And they measured it and found that
Speaker 1: it just qualifies as quote normal. But he Uh. All
Speaker 1: all the paintings back then showed all the pharaohs and
Speaker 1: the Egyptian pharaohs had these weird shaped heads, and they thought, well,
Speaker 1: those are just the artist. But then they found his
Speaker 1: skull and they're like, no, he has a weird shape dead.
Speaker 1: So Eric van Daeken here would say something like, well,
Speaker 1: it's because aliens came down and bred with them. The
Speaker 1: guy who wrote um Highways of the Gods, I believed
Speaker 1: that Runways of the Gods basically the seventies dude who
Speaker 1: who printed all these books basically saying that the ancient
Speaker 1: Egyptians were in contact with aliens of them all this stuff,
Speaker 1: and there's all this evidence throughout like hieroglyphics and things
Speaker 1: like you know, two tone commons, skull or whatever that
Speaker 1: show that Aliens came down and bred with the Egyptians,
Speaker 1: and that's how human civilization just advanced by leaps and bounds.
Speaker 1: I believe it already just from that. Anybody who it's
Speaker 1: like their acupuncture podcast came back, weren't just turned that
Speaker 1: off at the mention of his name. Yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about how he died though,
Speaker 1: because that's the big you know, we know that he ruled,
Speaker 1: he was the boy king from nine to nineteen and
Speaker 1: then just died. And over the years there have been
Speaker 1: some theories, and the leading three theories was one that
Speaker 1: he died from war wounds too, that he died in
Speaker 1: a chariot accident that seems possible, or because of a
Speaker 1: chariot accident, and the third was murder, that he was
Speaker 1: clubbed in the back of the head or poisoned. I
Speaker 1: didn't see the poison one. So the club one, uh, well,
Speaker 1: let let's get into this. Then there was a lot
Speaker 1: of political intrigue going on and there were people that
Speaker 1: may have wanted him dead. Well. Yeah, one of the
Speaker 1: high priests, Um inherited the throne after Tout's death, and
Speaker 1: they were all in a very close close position to
Speaker 1: have murdered him. And he owned the club yeah exact,
Speaker 1: used to carry they called him clubby clubby the High
Speaker 1: priest Um. So his body has been uh, we'll get
Speaker 1: to the beginning. But it was found at first in
Speaker 1: the twenties and just mangled. They mangled this dude, yeh.
Speaker 1: They think now. The hole in the head was when
Speaker 1: they were taking off his ceremonial mask that really punctured
Speaker 1: a hole in his head. That's where the hole came from. Well,
Speaker 1: he was, he was. They used a lot of like
Speaker 1: resins and things back then to help mumify the body,
Speaker 1: and because of that, he was stuck to the coffin.
Speaker 1: And uh, Howard Carter, he was the lead chief archaeologist
Speaker 1: on this dig Um, had his guy heat up a
Speaker 1: knife and was just like cutting through his body. And
Speaker 1: in the end they you know, they were like dozens
Speaker 1: of fractures and they couldn't tell, you know, are these
Speaker 1: fractures here because his team mismanaged it or were they
Speaker 1: real fractures. So the mystery like builds up over the years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had a broken leg too, and that could have
Speaker 1: been from the chariot accident, could have him from that, dude,
Speaker 1: well not even they proved that it was pre mortem
Speaker 1: and it started to heal, well, it started to react.
Speaker 1: It wasn't healing yet. But all this came about because
Speaker 1: unnamed TV network funded a like a million dollar dig
Speaker 1: to make the show The Secrets of tut in Common
Speaker 1: or something like that, and they got a ct A
Speaker 1: cat scan on site, a portable one and for the
Speaker 1: first time, we're able to run his body or what
Speaker 1: was left of it through a cat scan, which pretty cool,
Speaker 1: and they found out a few things. He had a
Speaker 1: severely impacted wisdom tooth. Then you should have seen it
Speaker 1: was like literally growing sideways in his mouth. I know.
Speaker 1: They said it most definitely hurt. But through the ct
Speaker 1: scan they were able to find there was no sign
Speaker 1: of infection, so that didn't kill him. He had the
Speaker 1: weird shaped skull, but they were shown that that wasn't
Speaker 1: because of wrapping. They do a lot of like head
Speaker 1: wrapping when they were babies, but they said that that's
Speaker 1: just the way their family skull was shaped, maybe because
Speaker 1: in breeding. Uh. They found he had no stern um
Speaker 1: or rib cage what and uh. But through the CT
Speaker 1: they found that the ribs were shown to be cut
Speaker 1: away and not fractured. Remember we I don't remember talking
Speaker 1: about removing the ribs, but remember we talked about them
Speaker 1: getting the internal organs out and then re stuffing it
Speaker 1: in the qualificat four inch fracture in the back of
Speaker 1: the skull not related to the little coin size hole
Speaker 1: and uh. Later on they found out that that wasn't
Speaker 1: actually a fracture. It was just where the skull wasn't
Speaker 1: fully fused because he was still a kid. Wow, so
Speaker 1: it's just a line. So they learned all this stuff.
Speaker 1: They end up finding that the fracture was shown to
Speaker 1: be pre mortem because they found embalming resin inside the
Speaker 1: fracture and if it would have happened afterwards, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have like gone in the route that it went in. UH.
Speaker 1: Showed that it was beginning to react, which means it
Speaker 1: was healing. And they eventually found out that they think
Speaker 1: he died between one and five days after this leg fracture,
Speaker 1: which could have been a compound fracture which they think
Speaker 1: might have been infected. So that's the leading theory. I
Speaker 1: didn't see anything on this bone disease and the special though,
Speaker 1: did you find out about that? No, but I know
Speaker 1: I've seen that before. That has to do with him
Speaker 1: breeding as well a vascular bone necrosis, which is a
Speaker 1: degenerative bone disease. So and there's also malaria. People say malaria. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't see that in the special either. The broken
Speaker 1: bone thing though, was like, uh, I mean that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Of course, he could die from an effective bone back then, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and his kneecap was gone on that leg. It was
Speaker 1: just man, that must have been a bad accident. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they think it could have been a chariot or
Speaker 1: they think he could have been hurt and battle, which
Speaker 1: is why the chest was all messed up to like
Speaker 1: after he was down on the ground, they were just
Speaker 1: like pummeling them or it was clubby, which is not true. So, Um,
Speaker 1: just King Tut's death alone is uh. It's considered a
Speaker 1: world mystery as far as I understand, I'd certainly consider
Speaker 1: it that less of a mystery now though. Um. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons why it was he's such a celebrated
Speaker 1: king is because of his tomb. His tomb was the
Speaker 1: first and only UM royal tomb found that contained like
Speaker 1: just vast riches like everything that that Egyptologists which were
Speaker 1: basically like um antiquities, crazed Westerners who were running all
Speaker 1: over Egypt and um bribing officials to get stuff out
Speaker 1: of the country. And it was a strange time. But
Speaker 1: also you could call it the birth of archaeology. Um.
Speaker 1: The the Egyptologists had always hoped for a find like this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was only one that had been rated like outright. Supposedly.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of speculation around that too, which we'll
Speaker 1: get too. Oh yeah, yeah, um there there there was
Speaker 1: supposedly um it had been looted at least twice, and
Speaker 1: Howard Carter, the guy who led the dig that found
Speaker 1: Um King Tut's tomb uh suggested that it was in
Speaker 1: ancient times. The value of the kings, we should say,
Speaker 1: is this um area in Luxe or that qualifies as
Speaker 1: a necropolis, which is a city of the dead. And
Speaker 1: it was a functioning city of the dead. There are
Speaker 1: a bunch of different tombs, There were local officials and
Speaker 1: administrators and a local police force, and it was a
Speaker 1: very sacred place that was off site. Howard Carter alleged
Speaker 1: that at least once or at least twice, possibly more times.
Speaker 1: Thieves had um breached King Tut's tomb in ancient times
Speaker 1: and it eluded it, but to an extent, they didn't
Speaker 1: make it all the way in. So I saw that
Speaker 1: they weren't looted, but they were they broke in but
Speaker 1: didn't have a chance to loot it. Oh, he said
Speaker 1: they looted all sorts of stuff. He was basically saying, like,
Speaker 1: they looted this, and then he was very specific. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but the the when when Carter found the King Tut's tomb,
Speaker 1: it's called k V sixty two, was the sixty sixty
Speaker 1: second tomb found in the Valley of the Kings. There's
Speaker 1: still a bunch of mountain there too. Well. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: the the most recent when they found was kV sixty three,
Speaker 1: and that was just in the last couple of decades,
Speaker 1: I believe. I think they said they found one every
Speaker 1: ten of twenty years at this point. Oh really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So kV sixty two was found in the twenties and
Speaker 1: kV sixty three was found in the twenty one century.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, um, so it was a big deal when
Speaker 1: they found King Tut's tomb, which is one reason why
Speaker 1: I celebrated. The richest inside were another reason. But um,
Speaker 1: I think there's like four thousand objects that they found
Speaker 1: inside this um his his royal tomb. It was the
Speaker 1: big daddy. But one of the other things that has
Speaker 1: made King Tuts so famous is the supposed the curse
Speaker 1: that was upon his tomb that supposedly befell a large
Speaker 1: number of people who were either present when the tomb
Speaker 1: was breached or were connect it familiarly or um financially
Speaker 1: to the people who were there, including a dog, the Susie.
Speaker 1: I don't know the dog's name, Susie. Was it really okay?
Speaker 1: You think I just made that up? Yeah, that sounds
Speaker 1: like something I would say. I wouldn't name it Susie.
Speaker 1: You know, Susie had three legs. I would love three
Speaker 1: legged dogs. I want one. Well, you would love Susie. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: until Susie died. So let's talk about this, Chuck, Let's
Speaker 1: talk about the kurs on King Tut's tomb. Yes, it
Speaker 1: all started with the financer financier excuse me, behind the
Speaker 1: whole operation or Carter's operation was a Lord Carnarvan and
Speaker 1: he was very rich guy. He was in very bad health.
Speaker 1: He had had a really bad car accident and apparently
Speaker 1: was just kind of a wreck of a human. Like
Speaker 1: during the dig, he would sit in a suspended cage
Speaker 1: lined with gauze. I'm serious. Yeah, he was in that
Speaker 1: bad of health until they actually opened it and then
Speaker 1: he was like I gotta get in there. Uh so
Speaker 1: he actually went in. Yeah he Um. He made it
Speaker 1: from uh England to Egypt in like record time. He
Speaker 1: took um a ship, a train, and a steamer down
Speaker 1: the Nile to get to Luxor. Once he found out
Speaker 1: that they were making headway. Yeah, and he got there
Speaker 1: in like two weeks, which was like, that's like really fast.
Speaker 1: Fact and especially if like you normally sit around in
Speaker 1: a suspended cage filled with gauze, lined with gauze. I
Speaker 1: kept trying to picture that. I wish I had a picture.
Speaker 1: I wish I couldn't picture it, Like I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna vomit a little bit, especially like old timey
Speaker 1: wicker you know, like those old wheelchairs that are so disturbing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: from like the turn of the century, creepy. So what
Speaker 1: happened to him was he had a mosquito bite on
Speaker 1: his cheek he shaved one day with a straight razor
Speaker 1: and cut that mosquito bite open and uh died because
Speaker 1: of blood of blood disease from infection. Well, you're leaving
Speaker 1: a big point out. This was two months after he
Speaker 1: was there at the opening of King Tut's tomb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is breaking news. He had actually snuck in. This
Speaker 1: is when. Yeah, this is the un official unveiling. But uh,
Speaker 1: four months previous they poked their head in to take
Speaker 1: a look around. I think so. It was actually six
Speaker 1: months later I heard it was, And by Lord Carnavan's
Speaker 1: um own uh words, they did a lot more than
Speaker 1: poke their head in the party. Basically, they partied like
Speaker 1: they went supposedly. This is how Carter told it, and
Speaker 1: this is how he kept his job and his reputation
Speaker 1: still to this day. They opened the door just a
Speaker 1: little bit enough so we could peek in and so
Speaker 1: that there were so many riches, pulled the door shut
Speaker 1: and went and alerted the Egyptian antiquities authorities, right, which
Speaker 1: is exactly what supposed to do. Lord carbon On uh
Speaker 1: said no, actually we pushed the door. Carnavan Carvan, yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, Carnavon, Yeah. He said that they pushed the
Speaker 1: door open, went in, pushed another door open, went in,
Speaker 1: went as far as the shrine. UM pocketed a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff. There's like stuff in Kansas City, there's stuff
Speaker 1: in Cleveland, there's things in at the met Um at
Speaker 1: the louver that. Yes, they are definitively linked to King
Speaker 1: tuts Toom that should not be there because UM, under
Speaker 1: the auspices of the agreement that ultimately fell between UM
Speaker 1: carbon On and UM Egypt, they were allowed to take
Speaker 1: nothing out, but they stole a lot of stuff. So yes,
Speaker 1: you're right. They entered in November and then Um he
Speaker 1: died in April. But in the meantime, though, and this
Speaker 1: definitely didn't help to spell any rumors of a curse,
Speaker 1: he kept losing his teeth, like one by one, his
Speaker 1: teeth were falling out before he died. I know the feeling.
Speaker 1: So imagine this Victorian era dude in a wicker cage
Speaker 1: with gauze, losing teeth. Yeah, that's that's what he looked
Speaker 1: like in the months leading up to his death. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was in bad shape. Supposedly, at the moment of
Speaker 1: his death, the power the power grid of Egypt failed
Speaker 1: and then Susie and then Susie and then uh, well
Speaker 1: she died. Yeah. Back in England they said that she
Speaker 1: bade once and fell over death and he said she
Speaker 1: had let out a howel and died. And uh. Carter
Speaker 1: also had a pet canary that he got for good
Speaker 1: luck on the stig and it died on the day
Speaker 1: the tomb was officially opened. Some say it was killed
Speaker 1: by a cobra, which is a symbol of the pharaoh's
Speaker 1: so it must be a curse. Crazy. Uh. The rumors
Speaker 1: started spreading because this was a time when you couldn't
Speaker 1: readily get information, so they think that journalists got a
Speaker 1: little uh, took some liberties, started making up some more stories,
Speaker 1: spreading the word that it's actually a curse. Oh, they
Speaker 1: jumped all over it. The British press was crazy for this,
Speaker 1: but I think they actually made stuff up right, Um,
Speaker 1: they still do. Have you heard the news of the world? Um?
Speaker 1: And actually I read two sources for this idea of
Speaker 1: a mummy's curse, Chuck. One was um an American painter
Speaker 1: named Joseph Smith who told the tale about King Tutt's
Speaker 1: father in law, not King Tutt, but his father in law.
Speaker 1: Um canaton, I cannot one of the two his father
Speaker 1: in law slash cousin probably probably Um I cannot, who
Speaker 1: was known as the heretic King because he um he
Speaker 1: opped worshiping all the old gods, the pantheon of gods,
Speaker 1: and just um basically created in a monotheistic religion based
Speaker 1: on just raw. Yeah, I thought that was his dad.
Speaker 1: It was his father in law. Yeah, like you said. Um.
Speaker 1: The the Um priests clubby may have even been among them,
Speaker 1: because King cut came to the throne right after a
Speaker 1: knat and um he uh the priests cursed him to
Speaker 1: separate his body and his spirit forever. So that's the
Speaker 1: possible origin for the idea of a mummy's curse, because
Speaker 1: think about it, there's probably times when nobody thought of
Speaker 1: mummies and curses going hand in hand. Um. And then
Speaker 1: the other one comes from a short story called Lost
Speaker 1: in the Pyramid Colan The Mummy's Curse by none other
Speaker 1: than Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women, So she
Speaker 1: may have started the idea of a mummy's curse too.
Speaker 1: Yeah you read Little Women. No, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: chick book, remember most his lack readit really Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was reading it to uh, an orphan. I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty funny. So, uh, this whole notion of a curse
Speaker 1: is that something was inscribed on the tomb. I've seen
Speaker 1: a couple of different versions. One is they who enter
Speaker 1: the sacred tomb shall swift to be visited by the
Speaker 1: wings of death. That's pretty cool. The other one was
Speaker 1: death will come on swift opinions to those who disturbed
Speaker 1: the rest of the pharaoh. Is it one or the
Speaker 1: other or was it even there? There's a third one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no shirt, no shoes, no dice. Uh. So everyone in
Speaker 1: Europe and the United States at the time was really
Speaker 1: like they called it Egypt Domania, which kind of bothered me,
Speaker 1: but that's really what was going on. Like all things
Speaker 1: Egypt were really like enthralling at the time to the
Speaker 1: public because it was just like they seemed like a
Speaker 1: cult of death fetishists, right, And this is also the
Speaker 1: time when they're like we're mediums holding seances all over
Speaker 1: like America and England. So the Victorians are really into
Speaker 1: like death and like shrines to death. And this person
Speaker 1: was loved it, ate it up. And it wasn't just
Speaker 1: um Lord Carnarvan who was the one who died. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just him. UM. By ninety six, which was three
Speaker 1: years after UH, they opened the tomb, well a little over, UM,
Speaker 1: there were eleven people dead who were either at the
Speaker 1: um opening of the tomb or we're connected. And then
Speaker 1: by twenty one dead just Westerners. Yes, that's that's it.
Speaker 1: That's UM. Very good to bring up. There was. There
Speaker 1: have been two papers that have over the years that
Speaker 1: have debunked this. The first one came in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: three UM a German Egyptologists named George Stendorf. He was
Speaker 1: German UM he U. He wrote a paper that basically said, look, man,
Speaker 1: there is no Mummy's curse. UM. These people who are dying,
Speaker 1: who are like struck by the curse, they're barely even
Speaker 1: connected to these people, UM. Some were more connected than others,
Speaker 1: like UM. Howard Carter's personal secretary died UM, and then
Speaker 1: his personal secretary's father killed himself. He left a note.
Speaker 1: His last words were, UM, it was the curse. I
Speaker 1: really cannot stand anymore horrors and hardly see what good
Speaker 1: I am doing here. So I am making my exit.
Speaker 1: And then he let out a window. He went out
Speaker 1: the window. It sounds to me like he had mental
Speaker 1: instability that's possible and was not cursed possibly um, but
Speaker 1: there and there there was some like Lady Elizabeth Carnavan
Speaker 1: who was actually there at the opening with her father, Um,
Speaker 1: who I guess changed his gauze. That was her role. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Um she died as well. So people connected, we're dying.
Speaker 1: But really for the most part, it was just wild
Speaker 1: rumor and speculation, according to Professor Steindorf. And then we
Speaker 1: come to the twenty one century and a guy named
Speaker 1: Mark R. Nelson of Monash University in Australia created a
Speaker 1: paper that ran in the British Medical Journal, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Did you read it? Well, I didn't read
Speaker 1: the whole paper. Uh. He actually got a little more
Speaker 1: scientific with it and examined survival rates of uh forty
Speaker 1: four Westerners identified by Carter as being in Egypt during
Speaker 1: the examination. So and it just chose Westerners for good reason.
Speaker 1: That was uh if at the time, Egyptians lifespans would
Speaker 1: have been so radically different, average life expectancy would have
Speaker 1: been so different from Trusterners that it would have totally
Speaker 1: skewed the results, which makes sense. And he also only
Speaker 1: included people that were there at the time, because he
Speaker 1: worked on the assumption that it was the curse was
Speaker 1: a physical into d So only if you were there
Speaker 1: when the coffin was opened or present, then you would
Speaker 1: be afflicted by this curse. Right, And there were four
Speaker 1: opportunities to be afflicted by the curse by being present, right,
Speaker 1: four official ones. Yet and he actually his whole papers
Speaker 1: is bunk because he has the wrong dates. He completely
Speaker 1: leaves out the first entrance. Well that's what I'm saying, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the one yeah, right, But so he's got February seventy three,
Speaker 1: which is the opening of the the third door. This is
Speaker 1: supposedly the first time Carter and his expedition have gone
Speaker 1: into the shrine, into the tomb, but it's not. This
Speaker 1: is months after they've actually gone in and already started
Speaker 1: to looted. Yeah, and it was found by accident, which
Speaker 1: is one of the cool things. Oh no, no, I
Speaker 1: thought some kid happened upon the top step. Uh. Supposedly
Speaker 1: Carter's team came within a couple of centimeters of discovering it,
Speaker 1: and then Carter, they're working this one area for years
Speaker 1: and years and years, come within a couple of ser
Speaker 1: centimeters are discovering it, and then car it's like, let's
Speaker 1: stop working here, let's move over there. And then right
Speaker 1: when Carnavan says that's it, I'm not funding your expeditions anymore,
Speaker 1: Carter talks him into one more try, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, there's the there's the tomb. So a
Speaker 1: kid found the step and told Carter. Right, one of
Speaker 1: Carter's workers came over and said, hey, I found it.
Speaker 1: But apparently Carter was like, oh, that's great, good thing.
Speaker 1: He knew he was. He was supposedly not quite the
Speaker 1: the gentleman adventure that he's made out to be like.
Speaker 1: He was definitely a thief who sold antiquities like on
Speaker 1: the black market for his own personal game. Well, it
Speaker 1: sounds like some Egyptian kid found the step and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: it's over here. Yeah. No, apparently he knew it was
Speaker 1: all along. Yes, Well, that kid begs to differ, I'm sure. Well,
Speaker 1: and the reason it's so hard to find was because
Speaker 1: during construction of other tombs, the I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: you could call it a construction crew, an ancient construction
Speaker 1: crew said their home base on top of what was
Speaker 1: uh touchstoom, And so the ruins they are kind of
Speaker 1: obscured things. And I think tout was either in the
Speaker 1: eighteenth or nineteenth dynasty, do you know so? And then
Speaker 1: the the home basis construction crew were alive during the
Speaker 1: twenty dynasty, so they came much later. All right, So
Speaker 1: sorry about that sidebar. Back to the dates. February three, uh,
Speaker 1: the opening of the sarcophagus, October tenth, ninety six, opening
Speaker 1: of the coffins, and then November eleventh, nineteen six, which
Speaker 1: was when they actually examined and mangled and broke apart
Speaker 1: the body because they had to get the gold off.
Speaker 1: They disattached the head from the body. I mean, they
Speaker 1: just mangled it all the bits um and what uh,
Speaker 1: what Mark Nelson found was that these exposures were absolutely
Speaker 1: no predictor of early death at all. And actually I
Speaker 1: was looking at a graphic compile wild Um, if you
Speaker 1: were exposed three or more times, your chances of dying
Speaker 1: early actually decreased. So that he really yeah, his data.
Speaker 1: His data showed that um, of the twenty five Westerners
Speaker 1: present during an opening or an examination or both, um,
Speaker 1: they lived in average of twenty eight years after exposure.
Speaker 1: The other Westerners that were in Egypt at the time
Speaker 1: that we're not exposed. During those four times lived twenty
Speaker 1: eight point nine years, like an eight year difference. Right.
Speaker 1: That was the curse I think was you shall die
Speaker 1: eight point one year sooner. Exactly. The mean age of
Speaker 1: death for people who were exposed to the curse seventy years,
Speaker 1: for those who were unexposed seventy five years. You shall
Speaker 1: not see seventy one, right exactly. Yeah, there's there's um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially back then, who musts to be seventy five not me? Um?
Speaker 1: So there you have it. There was no curse there,
Speaker 1: but it is possible that there is a scientific basis
Speaker 1: for people who were exposed to the tomb to have
Speaker 1: actually died younger than they would have otherwise had they
Speaker 1: not breached King Tut's tomb. That's right. And this special
Speaker 1: on this unnamed network also covered this. Uh So, what
Speaker 1: we're talking about, for the most part are bacteria, mold,
Speaker 1: fungus trapped in these tombs. Uh breathe and and and
Speaker 1: multiplies upon hitting oxygen. So when they open these things up,
Speaker 1: perhaps these people get sick, or people that were already
Speaker 1: sick get sicker and die. And Carter was actually he
Speaker 1: was aware that this is a possibility. He took air samples,
Speaker 1: he took sport samples. Um, or he tried to take
Speaker 1: sport samples. He said that there was like the place
Speaker 1: was sterile. Now he said there was mold and fungi. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: okay um. He said his air samples were sterile, which
Speaker 1: is just absolutely impossible. But he made a point that
Speaker 1: like if Lord Carnavan did die of a bacteria or
Speaker 1: an infection, he was far likelier to pick it up
Speaker 1: in Cairo at the time than he was in King
Speaker 1: Tut's tomb. That makes sense, it does, and that's been confirmed. Um.
Speaker 1: There are some other deadly things that you might encounter
Speaker 1: if you were to breach a tomb that hadn't been
Speaker 1: opened in several thousand years um from malde hyde, hydrogen, sulfide, ammonia.
Speaker 1: They all build up from decomposition um. One of the
Speaker 1: cool things that Carter noted um upon entering the shrine
Speaker 1: that the coffin shrine made of gold. This thing was
Speaker 1: a room within a room, and this room was made
Speaker 1: of gold. And there were coffins within coffins too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think five of them nesting coffin UM. But on
Speaker 1: top of the outer coffin. I guess which is the sarcophagus.
Speaker 1: There were still lotus flowers and berries that have been left.
Speaker 1: You know. However, how when did King tell live? I
Speaker 1: think that it was like three thousand years earlier, three
Speaker 1: thousand years before they left these lotus flowers on it,
Speaker 1: and it hadn't been touched since, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty cool. Um, these things also meet. You know,
Speaker 1: you gotta have your meat when you're traveling through the
Speaker 1: afterward life. Well, that's the idea, is that you want it.
Speaker 1: That's why you had six chariots, as you want to
Speaker 1: have everything you need for the next life. You want
Speaker 1: to have your favorite camera or five. Um. These things
Speaker 1: dee decompose themselves. They can attract mold like asper Gillis
Speaker 1: niger and Aspergillis flavis um. And there was a bacteriologist
Speaker 1: working in the late twentieth century who looked at medical
Speaker 1: records of workers um like modern Egyptian workers at the
Speaker 1: Valley of Kings, and found that a lot of them
Speaker 1: had been exposed to these things too. And apparently you
Speaker 1: can find those in tombs, so it's possible to be
Speaker 1: felled by that as well. Yeah, they they on this
Speaker 1: TV show, I saw they found another sealed tomb, which
Speaker 1: was the first one in like twenty years they did. Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean it wasn't a pharaoh. It was just like
Speaker 1: a priest or something. But they found a sealed tomb,
Speaker 1: and they thought, this is our opportunity to test a
Speaker 1: sealed tomb for pathogens. So they in the in the
Speaker 1: tomb itself, they found like vast quantities of mold, like
Speaker 1: tons and tons of mold, toxic mold. And then for
Speaker 1: the actual coffin, they used a vacuum sampler to suck
Speaker 1: out an air sample before they even opened it from
Speaker 1: this two thousand year old grave. And don't I saw
Speaker 1: the thing. It was something like that. And uh, what
Speaker 1: they found was exactly what he said for malde hyde, hydrogen, sulfide,
Speaker 1: ammony gas, all these toxic, uh, toxic fumes. But in
Speaker 1: the end they don't think that it could have been
Speaker 1: at a high enough level to actually like kill somebody.
Speaker 1: So while it was present, while all that mold was there,
Speaker 1: although you know, if he was already sick, it certainly
Speaker 1: might have contributed. He does it, he does thickly um.
Speaker 1: And then one last one, another bacteriologist from Germany at
Speaker 1: the University of Leipzig, UM conducted a study of forty
Speaker 1: mummies and found that every single one of them contained
Speaker 1: potentially dangerous mold. So of course it does. It's possible,
Speaker 1: but unlikely, and it's almost definitely was not a mummy's curse.
Speaker 1: I would say it very much definitely was not a
Speaker 1: curse of Louisa may Alcott. It was the curse of
Speaker 1: science and mold growing. So that you have it, man,
Speaker 1: that's your answer. Was there really a curse on King
Speaker 1: Tut's tomb? And oh uh, if you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about it, you can tell been King Tutt. That'll
Speaker 1: bring up a bunch of stuff on the site. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you just have to type it into a handy search
Speaker 1: bart how stuff works dot com And I said handy
Speaker 1: search bar, So let me use it's time for listener mail. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know they recreated his face too that I think
Speaker 1: that made a lot of press at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. He didn't seem to look abnormal though. Well
Speaker 1: if you look from the profile, he's got a money
Speaker 1: shaped head for sure. And it wasn't from rapping. They
Speaker 1: said it wasn't from rapping. Craig I say, that's just
Speaker 1: the family head. Have you ever heard of foot binding? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What is that? I don't know if it was in
Speaker 1: China or Japan or both, but um, like in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, late nineteenth century, probably further back, it
Speaker 1: was considered attractive for a woman to have a foot
Speaker 1: like a duck, like a triangle. So they would bind
Speaker 1: your feet to to this like bonzai into the shape
Speaker 1: for years, and then eventually you would have this deformed
Speaker 1: foot that was like the the point of the triangle
Speaker 1: was your heel, and then it went out into the
Speaker 1: other two points and there was your your foot, and
Speaker 1: it was considered very um and outlawed. It was definitely
Speaker 1: outlawed in China, and like you could get in big
Speaker 1: trouble if your you know, daughter was found to have
Speaker 1: bound for Wow, I've heard of that. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what it was. Odd mystery salt all right, Uh listener, Mayle, Hi, Chuck, Josh,
Speaker 1: and Jerry. By the way, Josh, I'm gonna call this,
Speaker 1: Uh that's why sk saving lives. Oh, this is a
Speaker 1: good one. Yeah, greetings from a long time listener in
Speaker 1: your new Atlanta neighbor. I don't think he literally lives
Speaker 1: next door to one of us. I think he just
Speaker 1: is a new in town. Got Jerry just laughed at that.
Speaker 1: I want to take a few moments to tell you
Speaker 1: how s Y s K contributed to saving my friend's
Speaker 1: life back in January of this year, a co worker
Speaker 1: and good friend of mine. I'm glad he said he
Speaker 1: was a good friend because when I read it initially,
Speaker 1: I didn't see that. It's like this guy came up
Speaker 1: a kidney for a co worker. Uh. A co worker
Speaker 1: was diagnosed with in stage kidney failure shortly after. He
Speaker 1: told me, you guys publish how organ donation works. After
Speaker 1: hearing about how long it might take on the waiting
Speaker 1: list and how many transplants were done each year, I
Speaker 1: decided that the least I could do was get tested.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, the other members of his family
Speaker 1: were disqualified due to a number of reasons, including age
Speaker 1: of medical history. But lo and behold, I was a match.
Speaker 1: And in parentheses, he says, that'll teach me the volunteer.
Speaker 1: What a good guy? No kidding, Mann ribs himself. Over
Speaker 1: the course of the summer, he and I were run
Speaker 1: through a battery of tests to match blood type and
Speaker 1: to prep the anti rejection drugs he would need after surgery,
Speaker 1: and then on October eighteenth, we did the transplant. I
Speaker 1: am thrilled to report now only a little over a
Speaker 1: month later, both of us are completely almost recovered and
Speaker 1: doing great. I would love it if you would encourage
Speaker 1: anyone on the fence about getting tested to go for it.
Speaker 1: The process is a little intimidating, but definitely worth it. Also,
Speaker 1: the unlimited and berry juice and chicken broth are great perks.
Speaker 1: And that is Dustin who gave up a kidney for
Speaker 1: a coworker. And you know what, it's one of our
Speaker 1: long standing s Y s K model mottos. Give up
Speaker 1: a kidney for a coworker slash friend, get a stuff
Speaker 1: you should know T shirt. So, Dustin, if you want
Speaker 1: to come down to the office, we will gladly shake
Speaker 1: your hand and give you your T shirt. If you
Speaker 1: are the type who doesn't like to leave the house,
Speaker 1: will also maail it to you. Just contact with me
Speaker 1: an email. If you like I'll give up a kidney,
Speaker 1: I will contact you. We have his email, but yes,
Speaker 1: expect a T shirt at the very least, and if
Speaker 1: you want to come by, we'd love to meet you,
Speaker 1: so thank you for doing that. That's awesome. I mean,
Speaker 1: that is awesome, so cool. Um, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: even feel like a bad person or less of a
Speaker 1: person because it's so colossally out of something I would
Speaker 1: do for a co worker that like co workers that
Speaker 1: I love a kidney for. Jerry would say, I know
Speaker 1: you would, totally would. You wouldn't for me, though, would you. Well,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't for me either, but we both do it.
Speaker 1: For Jerry, it's a wash. Yeah, exactly. Um that. I
Speaker 1: just think that that's great, So thank you for that.
Speaker 1: If you have a fantastic, amazing story you want to
Speaker 1: toot your own horn, that's fine, that's cool man. You
Speaker 1: do something like that, you get to once in a while,
Speaker 1: you can tweet it to us. If you can tell
Speaker 1: us your story in a hundred and forty characters or less. Um,
Speaker 1: you can tweet that to s y SK podcast. Uh.
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Speaker 1: dot com slash stuff you should Know, or you can
Speaker 1: send us an email at stuff podcast at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
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