A Curse on a Curse

In Boston last week wintry winds whined around the Massachusetts General Hospital but their mournful sound went unheard by a tall thin patient who lay at death's door. The critical illness of Albert Morton Lythgoe, 66, made headlines in newspapers the length & breadth of the land, not because he was once Curator of Egyptology in Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art, but because ten years ago he saw opened the sarcophagus of a footling little man named TutankhAmen who ruled Egypt 13 centuries before Christ. Was it not written: "Here lies the great King and whoso disturbs this tomb, on him may the curse of the Pharaoh rest"?

Dr. Lythgoe's wife ordered the hospital not to disclose the nature of his illness. But when the Press, eager to build up a "curse" story labeled his malady "mysterious," friends promptly revealed that Dr. Lythgoe had cerebral arteriosclerosis, the by no means rare condition of hardening of the brain arteries.

For believers in the curse of Pharaoh the Press once more reeled off the roll of alleged victims. First was Lord Carnarvon, sponsor of the expedition to Luxor. Shortly after the inner tomb was opened he was bitten by a mosquito, scratched the bite, died of infection. A Canadian university professor visited the tomb, died of sunstroke the next day. Two Roentgenologists, summoned to x-ray the mummy, died before they reached Egypt. Lord Carnarvon's halfbrother, the Hon. Mervyn Herbert, one of the first to enter the inner tomb, died, as did the Hon. Richard Westbury, wrote "I can't stand any more horrors," jumped to his death from a window. During his funeral the hearse killed an 8-year-old boy.

The crop of curse stories was especially thick last month when Arthur Weigall, distinguished Egyptologist who had visited Luxor, died of an undisclosed cause (TIME, Jan. 15). Searching the rosters of expeditionists, tomb-visitors and their near & distant kin, Hearstpapers found that no less than 20 persons had shared the ancient penalty. Dr. Louis Dublin, master statistician of Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., examined the list of the dead, found that in 1923 their average expectancy of life was 20 years. Out of him was wormed the admission: "There is something uncanny about it."

A man on whom the curse might be expected to rest heavily is healthy Herbert Eustis Winlock, the Metropolitan Museum's present Curator of Egyptology, who was very much in the thick of things at Luxor. Not for ten years did skeptical Mr. Winlock, 50 this week, bother to comment on the curse legend. In Manhattan last week, concerned about his friend and predecessor, he called the Boston hospital daily to learn Dr. Lythgoe's condition. When he found the hospital telephones so jammed by calls from curse-believers that he could hardly get his own calls through, Mr. Winlock in exasperation summoned newshawks, did his best to put the curse of cold fact on the curse of TutankhAmen. Mr. Winlock's facts:

1) Howard Carter, expedition leader and most conspicuous target for any curse, is quite alive at 61. Of 40 persons who saw either the inner tomb or the sarcophagus opened, only six are dead. They and their ages at death:

Carnarvon 57

Sir William Garstin 77

Arthur C. Mace 54

Hon. Mervyn Herbert 48

Hon. Richard Bethell 48

Sir Charles Cust 68

None died of an undiagnosed disease. Of the ten men present when the mummy was unwrapped none is dead.

2) There was no "curse." Mr. Winlock read every inscription in the tomb, found no threat. Only malediction ever discovered in any Pharaoh's tomb was in that of Amenhotep, threatening despoilers with poverty and ostracism, not death. The curse story started when Howard Carter's pet canary was swallowed by a snake. A poetic native remarked: "The serpent from the crown of the King has eaten the golden bird. Bad luck will follow." That was an inspiration to certain newshawks who were disgruntled because exclusive story rights for the Carnarvon expedition had been given to the London Times.

3) Is it possible that some noxious thing in the tomb air or on TutankhAmen's mummy may have infected at least one or two men? No. Samples of the air taken in vacuum containers were found clean and pure. Howard Carter passed a swab over the mummy at the first opportunity, and no germs were detected on the swab. An 1,800-year-old mummy brought to the U. S. and examined for a month by the Rockefeller Institute's famed Alexis Carrel was pronounced absolutely sterile.

Four days after Mr. Winlock thought he had the "curse" story dead and buried it rose to mock him with fresh headlines recording the death of Dr. Lythgoe.

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