Tutankhamun curse was created by Daily Mail journalist to bury rival reports, says documentary

The death mask of King Tutankhamun. Photo / File

The curse of Tutankhamun was created by a disgruntled Daily Mail newspaper journalist, angry the exclusive story on the tomb discovery had been given to The Times, a new documentary claims.

British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh on November 4 1922, and entered the teenage king's burial chamber with Lord Carnarvon in February the following year.

The tomb was intact and packed with treasures including the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun.

Yet within six weeks of the opening, Lord Carnarvon was dead, quickly followed by a series of mysterious deaths of people who had either worked on the excavation or had visited the tomb, triggering a slew of newspaper articles suggesting they were victims of an ancient curse.

Now, a new Channel 4 documentary has claimed that the curse rumour was started by Arthur Weigall, an Egyptologist-turned-reporter who was annoyed that the exclusive story had been given to The Times.

Egyptologist Bob Bianchi, an expert on the history of the Tutankhamun curse, said: "He was working for the Daily Mail, which was a rival of The Times and he was not able to get the scientific information from Carter on a daily basis, because The Times had the exclusive, and so he had to be able to tell his readers a parallel story."

On the day of the tomb opening, an already frustrated Weigall heard Lord Carnarvon joking as he prepared to enter the burial chamber and warned he would be dead within six weeks if he continued to show such disrespect.

When the prophecy proved true, Weigall and the other journalists left out of the exclusive jumped at the chance of a new, sensational, angle.

Lord Carnavon died on April 5, 1923, at the Grand Continental Hotel, in Cairo, from pneumonia and blood poisoning caused by an infected mosquito bite.

Within six weeks, another visitor to the tomb, George Jay Gould, a financier, died of a similar lung infection and a year later, Egyptologist Hugh Evelyn White, who had attended the tomb opening, took his own life.

He left a note, saying he had "succumbed to a curse".

Palaeoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi, who fronts the documentary, said: "For the newspapers these exotic deaths were a gold mine and they started to splash stories of a curse."

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