Do Go On - 16 - Curse of the Pharaohs

Episode Date: February 9, 2016

WARNING: This episode can and probably will curse you! This week Dave talk's about the curse of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Since Howard Carter ended King Tut's 3000 year slumber in the 1920s, many people associated with the tomb's discovery have died under very suspicious circumstances. Shootings, poisonings, smotherings and mosquito bites gone bad... Tut is pissed and he's going to make the world pay. Twitter: @DoGoOnPodInstagram: @DoGoOnPodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoGoOnPod/Email us: [e-mail] the show and get rewards like bonus episodes:www.patreon.com/DoGoOnPod  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melbourne and Canada, we got exciting news for you. And we should also say this is 2026. Jess, what year is it? 2026. Thank God you're here. Right now, I'm in Melbourne doing my show with Serengy Amarna, 630 each night at the Cooper's Inn Hotel, having so much fun. We'd love to see you there. Canada, we are visiting you in September this year.

If you've somehow missed the news, we are heading up Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Toronto for shows. That's going to be so much fun. Tickets for all this stuff, I believe, are online. And I'm here too. Hello and welcome to DoGo on a podcast with myself, Dave Warnocky, and I'm joined, as always, by two people that I will introduce at the exact same time. Well, one first than the other, but it is Matt Stewart and Jess Perkins. Hello, it suits both of us at the same time. Hello.

Was me by a whisker there? You were exactly, we had to go to the tape, and Matt was just in front of Jess. How were both of you, but answer one at a time, please. I'm pretty good. I guess. Oh my God, there's going to be one of those bad improv games. We have to say the same words at the same time. Is that a bad improv game?

Yes, it is. I need a word, Dave. Give me a podcast. Podcasts, okay. Podcasts, all right. Podcasts. Podcasts. Is that how the game works?

You give them one word and you both say it at the same time. Yeah, that works. Give us another word. How about good podcasts where people don't talk at the same time? Good podcast where people don't talk at the same time. Good podcasts where people don't talk at the same time. Thank you for inviting me that the improv teacher, if you will, felt like a teacher role there, to be part of this show. Mate, you're always the teacher role on this show.

Thank you. No, that's not good. They're not fun. I want to be fun. You're not fun. I'm sorry. You can't force it. Don't try to be fun.

That's not how fun works. You wouldn't know that because you're not any fun. Yeah. As soon as people ask, what? as fun, you know that you're not going to be able to explain it. But don't the funest people not even realise that they're fun? No. Now we know.

All right, well, I'm here. And I'm going to tell you what this show is, guys. It's not going to be much fun because it's my turn to do a report on a topic of my choosing. It's probably tax. It's all about account. You hate accountants. I fucking hate tax. Well, don't worry.

It's not about tax. Great. then I'm back on board you're back in Matt how about you you if I don't talk about tax can I win you over yeah or tax

I'd love to learn about tax yeah actually you know I actually hate it because I don't understand it would be a really helpful episode wouldn't it if I could explain how tax works

and while education is obviously a part of the show I don't want it to be all of the show and I don't feel like I could make tax fun not even you could make tax fun and I'm the funniest of the three of us well yes

it's definitely not true that's true I think that's true. I think we all agree that you're the funniest, even yourself, which makes you the Beyonce. Funny but very arrogant. I'll put that on a poster.

What about me? So I'm not fun, but I'm also... What about me? Dave, that sums you up. In a nutshell. Get on with the fucking show. Well, what about me and my topic,

which I'm going to introduce by asking you a question to jump straight into it, we always start with a question. and this week's question no right or wrong answers as the improt teacher would say. Well there's got to be a right answer though isn't there because there's an answer. Well there's an answer but you'll know the answer and I can't decide either way.

The question is do you believe in curses? No. No. Curses. Curses. All right. Curses. No, not really. So you don't believe in curses.

What about? I did for a little while believe in the Kennet curse where Hawthorne lost to Geelong like 12 times in a row after Kenneth said that they'd never lose to them again. See, there is, I wanted to start by, I'm going to talk about a curse here today. That is the topic. But there's a lot of sports-based curses. The curse of the big Bambini. Bambino.

Bambino. Bambini is just a baby, I think. Bambino when he was a baby. All right, I've got a little bit on a famous superstitious sport is baseball. And one of the most famous curses, as you have said, is the curse of the Bambino. which was a superstition evolving from the failure of the Boston Red Sox baseball team to win the Baseball World Series in an 86 year period. So they were really good, and then from 1918 to 2004, could not win it.

And the curse happened apparently after they sold Babe Ruth, who's nicknamed the Great Bambino, to the Yankees who went from being a very average team to being one of the most successful in the North American professional sports scene. and Babe Ruth was left-handed. See, they're the kind of facts that I'm interested in, Dave. I feel like that every time I bring up someone who's left-hand... Do you have a catalogue of all the most famous left-handed people?

I have a book called The History of Left-Hand-Head. Left-Handed history of the world is what it's called. Who else is left-handed? Lots of presidents. Of America. I'm pretty sure Clinton. Obama is. Maybe Clinton?

Yeah. Who else? Paul McCartney, I always bring him up. Queen Victoria, Babe Ruth. Jimmy Hendricks. Jimmy Hendricks. There's lots. There's lots.

Like 10% of the population, there's a lot of people. There's a lot of us. Well, there you go. By achieving. Molly Dukas. Yeah. Sinister. I think that means left.

Southpour. Southpour. That's what Southpour means. It was a Tomahawk song. Oh, there you go. Never knew what it meant. Means it like a lefty. Radio.

Gotcha. I think of Southpores, it's a left-handed boxer. Yeah. If you're a Southport, that's your style. Another curse is a curse of Superman. Have you heard of this one? Curse of Superman. Yeah, it's after Superman got traded.

That's a good point. No, it's affecting people that adapt Superman into TV and film. It's a bit of curse. So a couple of them, the two most famous are George Reeves, who starred in Adventures of Superman on TV in the 50s. He died of a gunshot wound at age 45 under very disputed circumstances, possibly suicide, murder, maybe just an accident.

And then there's Christopher Reeve, no relation, but he also played Superman in four films in the 70s and 80s, and famously paralyzed in a 1995 horseback riding accident and then died nine years later. And then there's other people that are connected to the Superman, these things have gone. And I could do whole episodes about the Great Bambino and The Adventures of Superman. but the curse that I really want to talk about with you today has been around for a lot longer. Can I guess it? I'm just going to tell you it's in fact probably the oldest curse in history.

That's best. Can I guess? Nah. No, you're sure. Is it the curse of Norm Smith where he got fired from the demons? And Matt brings it back to AFL. Please tell me about Norm Smith. Norm Smith was one of the most successful coaches

in the VFL history. I think it was called maybe Super Coach. Was that him? Anyway, he, I don't know if that's right, actually. But he got fired, and Melbourne had won like a dozen premierships. And he got fired, and they haven't won one since. They rehired him, but apparently that wasn't enough to break the curse. Wow.

Do they rehire him for the... Because people, the baseball ones especially, they do, like, ceremonies and things to try and appease the curse. Yeah. What? Like superstition sort of ceremonies doing? There's one called the Curse of the Billy Goat. where a man kept taking his goat to the baseball game. Sure.

And then one day the goat was really smelly, so they asked him to leave. And then he said, you'll never win again. And they couldn't win. So then he died and they would get his relatives to walk goats across the field and things like that because they're very, very superstitious people in baseball. Wow. Can I have another guess? So it's older than Norm Smith.

I'll tell you that. Tutankham. It is the famous curse of the fairer. The Curse of the Pharaohs is this episode. Curse of the Fairos, that's a heavy metal song by... By who? It was a song by Merciful Fate. Merciful Fate.

Yeah. I don't think I'd ever heard of it called the Curse of the Pharaohs. So that's all of the Pharaohs. So there's a... Curse of the Pharaohs is sort of an overarching name for many possible curses from dead pharaohs and the curse of Tutankhamun, or Tuncumun, as people keep saying in documentaries that I watched, is the... You do a lot of research.

I have spent a lot of time on this because growing up my dad is very big into Egypt. So I've had this... If you asked me when I was eight what I wanted to be, I would have told you an archaeologist. Oh, cute. And I've said it before, but when I imagine you guys as kids, I just imagine tiny cartoon versions of what you look like now. Muppet babies. Yeah, kind of, yeah. I didn't look very much different.

I'm not going to lie. I'm sure. Has your dad ever been to Egypt? Yes. Oh, thank goodness. About five or six years ago, Hilman and my mum went just before this sort of Arab Spring, in Egypt's a pretty dodgy place now. But they went there and had the best time ever,

and I witnessed that by watching 3,500 travel photos one night. Oh my God. So I know a little bit about Egypt, and I've been interested in this topic, so I want to talk about the curse of King Tut, as people colloquially know him. Oh, Toot. King Tut.

Sit on your Toot. Got to hit the Toot. Do you guys know much about King Tut? Love that. How much of the stuff in The Mummy and the Mummy returns was true. The Mummy has never returned. The Mummy has never come back to life. I went to an exhibition, I'm pretty sure.

A Toot and Carmen exhibition. Yeah, a couple years ago. Yeah, a couple years ago. I went to that. I don't remember a lot. So I'm sure it's going to come back, but right now, can't think of any facts. But that's okay. Do you know what?

Do you know he was left-handed? What? Not true. I don't know. I don't know. But he did play for the. the Melbourne demons. Ah, and he was in Tism, so.

Long-term listeners will enjoy that? That's possible. He was a child, right? Well, he was once a child, that is great. Ah, knew it. I knew it. Very good. Thank you.

No, that's very good. So he was born in 1341 BC, and he died about 18 years old in 1323 BC. And he spent nine years on the throne, so that makes him, he became the king when he was only nine or ten. So he was just a child king. And it's such a long time ago that not that much is known about his life in comparison to many other pharaohs.

It was not that much record of him. But just to put into perspective when he was alive, that's 3,300 years ago. So the great pyramids of Egypt, the pyramids of Gis were already 1300 years old. So they're really, really old. But he died more than 1,300 years before Jesus Christ was born. Oh, is that...

Do you think they're connected? somehow. Some sort of curse. But King Tut, his father was the Pharaoh. That's how he became Pharaoh. And his mother and father were brother and sister. Oh. And then King Tut married his half-sister,

Anaksenamun, who had a different mother, Nefertiti. And both of these names are used in the Brendan Fraser films, The Mummy. And the characters are very loosely based on them. So there you go. There's a little bit there, man. Wow.

Tut and his wife, who was... His sister wife. His sister wife. This is a Siamese twin. I'm afraid it didn't work out that so well for them. They had two daughters, both of them still born. Because he was so young when he became king, it's assumed that he had political advisors do a lot of work for him.

No, I reckon a nine-year-old knows what they're doing. No, I want to change everything. He's got good policies. Chocolate milk all the time. Famous for their chocolate milk Egyptians. Just want to watch Rugrats. I don't know. Are you too old for Rugrats at nine?

I don't know. Well, you're probably 3,000 years too early for regret. Good point. Probably too early for chocolate milk too, eh? Well, I say he didn't do much, but the country was quite weak economically following his father's reign, who didn't do that well. But King Tut before he was 18, he did change a few things, like the location of the capital city. He changed the god they worship, and he built a few shrines. So he did a couple.

He did quite a bit. He changed the god they worship, but he didn't do much. Yeah, so his dad was like, nah, it's all about this god. and then he became king and he was like, nah, it's all about this god. Okay, cool. And when you're a Egyptian peasant, you just got to say two thumbs up. You got it, king. Yeah, yeah.

You got it king. I was fully dedicated to this god yesterday. But... But if this child says so, I now believe in a different cat. Yeah. They've got a praised... Spike the dog from Rugrats. They're all praising.

They'd be praising. They'd be praising Spike. Praise be to Spike. Um, his body has been examined, this is King Tut. And it's thought that he walked with a cane because of deformations or deformities in his left foot. Left foot. Left foot. So, yes, left foot was the bad one, I'm afraid.

Yeah, no, it always is. He also had a slightly cleft pellet, possibly a mild case of scoliosis, which is where you have a spine is curved slightly. So he didn't get around very well. He sounds hot. Oh. And I've seen, if you go on the internet, you can Google. They've done like, uh, imaging. of like they've recreated what he would look like,

and he looks hot. Like he's in pain. He looks hot, yeah. He's also wearing some sort of big, sort of nappy shroud is this only thing he's wear. I don't know why they decided to pick that. Real sexy. Real sexy life. I've got a bit of a crush on tut.

Does it make you, do you get hot for tut when, um... Hot for Tut. Please tweet that. That'd be so good. That he's so great. In DNA tests of his mummy, scientists found DNA from mosquito-borne parasites that cause malaria. was currently the oldest known genetic proof of malaria. Oh, Mama.

See, he's a trendsetter. He was not doing so well. It's a sack of disease. These factors combined with the fractures in his left thigh bone, which scientists discovered in 2005, may have ultimately killed the king when he was very young. So he was struggling health-wise. But his parents were brother and sister.

Is that right? That's right. And then his... When did people figure out that that isn't the way to do it? Wait, his parents were brother and sister. And then he also married his half-sister. He had a different mother, that's right. And his wife, she did quite well.

She remarried a powerful political advisor after King Tut got out there, who became Pharaoh for four years. But then he was usurped. He was taken off by a guy who decided to erase all the memory of King Tut and his family. So he deleted... Like men in black and he just erased everyone's memories. He just used that little device. And no one remembered him.

Wow. But our Tut was buried before he was forgotten and in tomb to the famous valley of the kings. You guys heard of the Valley of the Kings? Yes. It's where pharaohs and other rich people, they were buried for nearly 500 years. But his memory was all but forgotten.

And in terms of famous pharaoh, for a long time, he was nowhere near the top. So these days you probably say, think of a Pharaoh. King Tut probably comes to mind straight away. But to draw a political analogy here for you, Matt. It's kind of like a former Australian Prime Minister today that barely anyone's heard of like Sir Earl Page,

who was PM for 19 days in the 60s. In 3,000 years, he's the one that everyone talks about, but no one's heard of... He did change our God, remember? Mm-hmm. Oh, I remember. For 19 days in the 60s. Yeah, remember that time we all worshipped that cat?

Yeah, I remember. In the 60s? If you were there, if you say you're in the 60s worshipping a cat, you weren't really there. But King Tut lay there for over 3,000 years, pretty much... Lazy prick. What a nap. His tomb was small for a king, probably because he died so young.

You said he died at... 18 or 19. 1819. So, I mean, that is probably fully grown, right? What kind of gross spurt are you expecting to have? No, I'm still hoping for a little growth spurt. I'd like to be a tiny bit taller. A little bit?

Yeah. You're hoping to get maybe two more centimetres out? Yeah, just something. Wow. Just have some sort of... When was the last gross spurt you had, Jess? I remember when I stopped growing. Maybe like 17.

So there's an eight-year gap. Yeah, but there's still hope. Jess, look at me. I can't. Jess, look at me. Please? Oh no. Jess.

It's not going to happen, mate. Jess, I believe in you. Thanks, Dave. I reckon you're going to be the tallest girl on the podcast. Hey, thank you. Dave, don't promise the things you can't deliver. I'm so sorry. Thanks.

Hey, but you know what? I don't think you're going to die young like King Tut because they were caught off guard when he died. So they had to put him in someone else's tomb. They weren't ready for him. So that's why he's in this really small tomb. And early on, tomb robbers managed to break in and do some thieving, but there were signs that they got caught, probably killed, let's be honest. And they didn't get away with a whole lot.

So they quickly tidied up the tomb and filled the hole. And then about 100 years later, the rock and dirt from digging another tomb was just tossed over where King Tuts was, and the location was lost forever. So when the era of massive tomb robberies began, a few dynasties of pharaohs later, But no one broke into his tomb. They just let it, let it, because no one knew was there. It was a great era. Great era.

Magical time. Again, if you remember... The 21st Dynasties, that what you're talking about, Matt? If you remember the tomb robbing, you weren't really there. Ugh. Now, there'd been a few stories of curses pertaining to Egyptian mummies and tombs and they're like floating around for a few hundred years. But the discovery of King Tut took this idea of a pharaoh's curse to a whole new level,

and at the same time, it launched a whole new era of Egyptology and archaeology in the area. Egyptology. It's like musicology. Cuts to the 19th century, an English aristocrat named Lord Carnarvon. It was born in 1866. It can only be described as exceedingly wealthy. His family home was High Clear Castle, which you may know as the real-life location of the building known to viewers of Downton Abbey.

Oh my God. I don't watch Downton Abbey, but when you said might be known, I thought, Downton Abbey. That's cool. You know that building? I'm seeing pictures, yeah. Yeah, so he was. rich enough to own that and live there.

And he owned and raced horses. Was Maggie Smith there then? Oh yeah, she was... Was she a butler? I never watched it. Neither. But I do enjoy the castle and the theme song. Good violin work.

Okay. Yeah, I'm unfamiliar, but... Just imagine a really sweet like 18th century castle house. Oh, I like it. I like it a lot. Now I had some violin. And now Google Maggie Smith's face.

No need to Google that. It's always there. burned in. Maggie Smith. Don't know her. Should I know her? Maybe, after the show, genuinely Google her.

All right. All right. So this guy, Lord Knavon, he owned and raced horses. He's also recklessly raced cars, which I mentioned, because he had a terrible accident

whilst driving erratically. Oh, no. Did he play Superman? No. He was not as a super lord. He was ordered by his doctors to get out of England, out of the cold,

and go to Egypt to recover in the dry heat. You know that thing that your doctor says? Go to... Egypt was winter. That's how rich this guy was. He was keen to do that because he was an amateur Egyptologist and he'd already sponsored other digs

when he was given permission in 1914 to dig in the famous valley of the kings, which I mentioned earlier. Can you just quickly explain Egyptology to people who haven't heard of that term? It's kind of just like archaeology, but specifically Egyptian antiquities. Right.

That's cool. It feels like you hear those things a lot and I just feel like bullshit things Just like anything with ology in the end Oh there's so many Study of Jess Gessology Yeah, Gisology

Perkology That sounds like one though doesn't it? Perkology Yes it does And I reckon I reckon there's people out there right now Studying away Well we heard on the McDonald's episode

About I still can't get over Hamburger University Yeah it's pretty great I still think that that's lie is it? I don't know. But this guy, he's an amateur Egyptologist, which means he's just got a lot of money and he sort of sponsors digs and says,

yeah, I'll collect the winnings, pretty much. Then an archaeologist named Howard Carter, very important to this story, you know, Howie, Howard Carter. Howard Carter. He'd been employed as an assistant on Knavan's earlier Egyptian sponsored digs, and he was employed by Knavan on this new dig that he got to go at the Valley of the Kings. Howard Carter, in 1914, when he was hired by Knavan,

He was 40 years old at this time. He was already very experienced as an archaeologist, and he'd been a dig supervisor, and had risen to become the chief inspector of antiquities for the Egyptian government. There's a wanky tartar for you, Matt. Not bad. But a combination of a fractious personality

and commitment to actually do his job ended up in Howard getting sacked from his government post. What happened was quite controversial. Some French tourists got Rowdy, at one of the Department of Antiquities sites. Not surprised. Not surprised. But they were pretty high up Frenches.

And he told them to get the hell out, because that's his job. Then they complained to Howard's boss, who told Howard to apologize, and he refused. Yeah. How do you reckon he told him to get out, Matt? I reckon he would have said. Do an impression, which you're famous for. English impression. He's English.

He's English. He got an English accent. Oh, okay. Chapsis is not all. Get Out Tootsweet. Okay. I will not apologize. And that kind of language got him fired.

Get out Tootweet. Yeah. No, seriously, fuck off. That's what I was fishing for. I wanted whatever. You setting him up to. I wanted a classic Matt Stewart, fuck off. Excuse me there, Boyo.

I'm, I've had it up to here, okay? Now, a P.O. No, seriously, now. Fuck off. I've got a catchphrase. I love it. I definitely enjoyed that. But he got fired because of that fuck off.

He got fired. And he got replaced by another archaeologist. Arthur Weigel and Arthur in 1912, he found a tomb that he claimed was King Tut's tomb. He was like, yeah, this is totally it. Claim. Yeah, the climb makes me feel like it's probably not. That's right. By this time, well, by the time, serious digging began in Egypt in the late 18th, early.

early 19th century, what remained of the tombs that were finding were mostly long dark corridors extending into the ground, and they had barely any treasure left in. There was mainly like collapsed corridors, and they would just go in there and get the rubble out. That was pretty much what archaeologists were doing for a long time. Not much treasure remained at all at this time, and no pharaoh had ever been found in their tomb undisturbed, just as priests had left them when they died. So that was completely unheard of. They'd all been found with like... You know when your friend passes out at a party and you draw like a whiskers away?

Yeah, text her in a party hat. Hand in a bottle of warm water. Piss all over the mummy. That's a myth apparently. The hand in the water. Mummies won't piss. Mommies won't piss. Mammies won't piss. Once they're dead, they don't do it.

That's weird. It's a myth. No, I don't believe it. I reckon it's true. Oh, you know. Now, our rich man, Carnarvan, he's gotten the rights to dig in the valley of the king from a wealthy American lawyer called Theodore. who'd been digging there for years

and he'd had a lot of great success finding stuff but he thought that everything was already discovered. He was like, well, listen here, see? I found it all, I've found it all before. Wait, is that Sydney? Yeah, Sydney's back. That's Sydney's great-grandfather. Theodore Scheinberg.

He was like, there's no point to search in here, boys. I've found it all and I'm going back to Keish Lorraine. That's a weird callback to Back to the Future episode. That's right. If you haven't heard that, then... Go listen to it. Fuck off. Good on you, Matt.

I mean, really, when you patted me on the head, as you said, that really hammered home the point, I think. I was just in, it was a good way of saying, you're all right, Matt. You're all right by me. But Canarvan and Carter, they were told, hey, there's nothing here, but you can have my dig site. That's cool. So you had to get permission, and there was only a certain amount of people that were allowed to dig there per year. So they got permission, but they were certain there was at least one tomb remaining and discovered. And they were searching for the real tomb of King Tut.

Carter had been told that the guy I mentioned earlier, Arthur Weigel, who'd claimed he'd found it, actually hadn't. But what he'd found was remains from the funeral banquet. Oh, just a bit of leftovers. So he found a bit of turkey. Yeah, he felt like a canapes. Fake potatoes. Half a half a bottle of champagne. Minimum chips.

Inside the paper. You never, I was talking about someone about this recently. They never gets finished, does it? Minimum chips. Chips. Because I was out with some people And they bought two big bags of chips And they're like

We were worried that we wouldn't And we wouldn't have enough But I don't know No matter how many chips you have There's always leftover chips How about this theory If you get Say it's $4 for a minimum chips

Yeah But you just ring up and ask for $8 of chips Do they give you two minimum chips? I don't think they do I think they get one minimum chip And add a bit more So I think you're best to ask for two minimum chips That's my tip.

Is it still a minimum chips if you get two of them? That's one of those questions of, you know, tree full in the woods sort of style. The tree full in the woods. Did the bear eat the chips? Bears don't eat chips. Think about it, guys. True question. I'm not falling for that again. Got him on technicality.

But these dudes in the desert there, so they found this funeral banquet, so they knew where to start looking. So they were like, if the banquet was here, the tomb's probably close by, because you have the banquet near the tomb. So they had a place to start digging, which sounds really promising, right? Yeah. Well, they dug in the sand for the next seven years and didn't find anything. Oh. Every day.

How do you know where to start digging? Oh, because of that, they were like, oh, the guy found... Yeah, no, no, but like you've just found one bit. Anyway. Oh, this guy can't... I'm no age oftologist. Well, the archaeologist Carter, he was really methodicals. He would just do meter by meter, like, dig here, nothing.

Dig here, nothing. And there's a lot of desert out there to find. They didn't find anything. What if it was two meters down? I think he probably went 300 meters down with every... every metre. Oh, no wonder it took seven years. Yeah, that makes sense. This is Carter. It got to 1922, and Lord Kanaven told Carter that he could no longer afford to fund what he thought was a useless project. You've been digging for seven years, mate. We found nothing. Cut it off. Carter begged

for one more season. He said, give me one more year. I'll do it even if I have to pay for it myself. So Knavin agreed, and only three days later, workers discovered stone steps that led to a doorway and it was stamped with an ancient seal. That seal was quickly realized to be the mark of royalty. So they got really excited. Carter sends a telegram to the Earl, Tukinawan, saying, hey man, I found the thing, but we'll wait for your arrival. You've paid for this.

We've waited. So they wait for him to come over from England. What would that have sounded like, Matt, when he's on his way over from England? Just ordering refreshments on the airplane. Well, I'm on my way over now. Might just have a bit of a nap. Pretty good. Exciting times.

Yeah. In the 20s. Well, I asked for that impression. Me too. They don't call them the roaring 20s for nothing. He's still a character. Just settle in here. Get myself comfortable.

Are you on the plane? Plain? Yes, I'm here on a plane. Boat? How many have you got there? A plane? Another whiskey, please. I'm just going to have a little nap.

Another one, two naps. It's probably not taking a long time. It's a long flight. I haven't settled into the first nap. Now, enough talk back there. Is he flying the plane? Enough talk back there. Quite you?

Quite a doubt. I'm trying to nap while flying this plane. Jeez, Louise. Well, while he was waiting for the Earl to arrive, Carter back at home in Egypt at his house, he had the first sign of something bad happened to him. He had bought a yellow canary bird to help keep him company. The unmarried man needed something to.

come home to for seven years after digging to the sand for 12 hours every day. I think a little canary is going to do the job? It's going to be really inappropriate then. Well, let's see. What did you have? Let's see how inappropriate was. Cards on the table. No, it's fine.

Just keep going. Now it's not funny because I've said I was going to be inappropriate. Now you just have to edit this out anyway. Well, apparently, all the guys on the expedition were excited about the colorful bird. Oh! And they said it would lead them to the tomb and saw the bird as a symbol of hope. But Carter came home that night And his servant ran towards him

With a bundle of yellow feathers in his hand Saying he'd heard a rustling And a cobra Was eating the canary in the cage Well He added, Master, this is an omen, Don't go into that tomb Because the cobra is on the headdress

Of many pharaohs And he used to strike enemies To protect the pharaoh And the local workers freaked out Because they thought this was the pharaoh Himself coming to eat Their symbol of hope Oh man

I don't really believe any of that No, I do. I'm 100% on board. Matt, you're with Carter. He said to his servant, don't be such a fool. I don't even believe it happened. Well, take my word for it. I read it.

On the internet. It's on the internet. Oh, sorry. No, I didn't realize it was on the internet. It just feels like one of those things that was beefed up later. No, Carter said to his servant, don't be such a fool. Just make sure the cobra is not in the house. Yeah, good call.

So it's pretty practical this guy. Yeah, no, that makes sense. I'll check that. Yeah. In fact, I'm going to check my house. house when I get home to some case. Yeah, I think that's a smart move. When I go home to my lonely canary bird tonight.

Oh, your canary bit is lonely. Well, that's the thing. If you're, like, you've got a canary for your loneliness. What about the canary? You're each other's companions. When you're out at work during the day? Digging? Yeah.

Digging for 12 hours a day. Canary's got heaps to do at home. Like what? What's the canary doing, Jess? The dishes. The dishes? Reading. That's not.

That's not companionship. That's having cheap animal labour. They're checking the house for gas at all times. Really? Smelling a gas leak. What do they do? They die if they do that. Yeah, they got very sensitive lungs,

so they smell gas before anyone else. So that's why you used to take them down the coal mine. Right. Do they smell it and alert them, or do they just... No, they look over, and if the bird's dead in the cage, they go, gas and run out. It's a very horrible job for the poor little bird. It's not a job.

It's a suicide bomb. me. It's a suicide. Well, write to your local coal mining union and save the birds, everyone. Perhaps I would. Then on November 26, 1922, the workers had uncovered a second door,

this one with the seal of the king himself, Tutankhamen. It however also showed signs of thieves that I mentioned before, and it was visible where the tomb had been broken into, so Carter was really worried that he was 3,000 years too late, that someone had already beaten him. Just by the skin of his bloody teeth.

Now, here's the open. of this tomb. Canarvan was sent a letter by the mystic Cairo. Cairo at the time was the sort of world famous fortune teller for celebrities. He read fortunes for people like Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde and things like this. And his letter warned the Lord to not enter the tomb. It read Lord Canarvan not to enter the tomb. Disobey at peril. If ignored would suffer sickness, not recover, death would claim him in Egypt.

So he went, Can I ignore the letter Found himself in the passageway of the tomb With his daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert Howard Carter, the archaeologist And Carter's assistant, A.R. nicknamed Pecky calendar, which I enjoy that name. Pecky.

Pecky. I love that. Peck dog is, Look in the goods. It took forever, but Carter, so it's just the four of them in there, and there's one door between them and the tomb that they've been waiting for ages.

Took forever, but Carter, chiseled or drilled a hole in the, the final door into the tomb. He lit a candle, put it through the hole, and he peered inside, and Knave had whispered, Can you see anything? A bit of effect there. Carter replied, yes, wonderful things.

What he could see was a chamber absolutely packed full of treasures. The entire room was glistening with gold. Wow. Now, what he tells people he dig next was that after looking through the hole, he then resealed it and waited three days for the Egyptian, an official to arrive as the law required. You had to have a local person go in there with you first.

But if you'd been digging for seven years and you'd just discovered a tomb full of gold, would you wait to go in? Yeah, I would. I'm a stickler for rules. Rules are rules for a reason, Dave, and I'm not one to push them. What kind of system is like... You waited seven years, you can wait three more days. English people go over and just steal treasures from another country.

How does that work? At this time, there was a deal where it was 50. If you discovered it, you would share the riches 50% with the country, 50% with yourself. There's a lot of money to be made for these people. But howicado, I think, was actually quite, he had the right intent. But he still probably broke in that night. They'd been waiting for nearly 10 years, so they secretly spent all night in there. And Lady Evelyn, the daughter, she was the smaller, so she went in first.

That'd be pretty cool to go in where someone hasn't been for 3,000 years. It'd be creepy Super creepy Middle of the desert Candlelight only Yeah not creepy as hell Actually I probably wouldn't go in there I wouldn't go

I'd be too terrified Yeah You're going into it It's just someone's grave Yeah gross No thank you Yeah how do we feel about that Obviously people

It's called archaeology now But at the same time It's also grave desecration But just in 3,000 years We've talked about death a lot On this show before Would you be caring

If someone dug up your bones In 3,000 years Couldn't give a shit I'm dead. And I've been dead for a very long time. 3,000 years. No, I guess not. What are they going to do with them?

Yeah, but even then. Put them in a museum. Museum. Cool. Do it. Podcast Museum. I'm happy to be shown in the podcast museum. Yeah, they dig up your bones.

The bones of the greatest podcast. Mark Maron's on display there. I'll have to put my dust on display there, as we discovered in the death episode. Yeah, they'll have to put my pyre on display. They won't find me. I'll be in space. Yeah, they won't find it. They won't find me.

I'll disappear under very suspicious circumstances. Anus-related. Anus-related mishap. News of the story of the discovery quickly spread in Carnarvon, Carter and King Tut became celebrities overnight. Newspapers around the world carried the story because people had been mocking them for years and they thought they were digging up sand for nothing.

But they'd done it. They'd found what was thought to not actually even be there. It was the first archaeological dig to be filmed, so camera crews came out and filmed. Oh, that's cool. very early on. Carter and Carnarvon made the first big mistake when they sold the rights of this massive worldwide story exclusively to the London Times newspaper and they were accused of profiteering because Egypt was especially pissed because they felt that they didn't get rights to

their own story because it's their history and then only the London Times is getting the interviews and stuff like that. So they were really, really mad about it and people were writing sensational stories about them. Sort of people were threatening to sort of protest at the dig cite, this kind of stuff. And Knaven defended himself. He said that you made the deal for the money, yes, but also because he saw it in that way. He'd only have to deal with one press outlet. He'd do one interview and then they'd get back to the dig.

That was what he said. But let's be honest, he just wanted the cash. He's all about the archaeology. He spent a lot of money on this. And then we get to the tomb itself. There's an easier, like you could, if you were just wanting to not do interviews, rather than selling it to one, you could just say, I'm not doing any at all. That would be even quicker, right?

Yeah. Yeah. That'd be even more mysterious. How about that, Carnarvon? Dick Eddard. Oh, Dickhead's strong. Don't worry, something's coming for him. Tutt's Tomb had, it's just four small rooms,

but it was literally packed with thousands of objects. Oh, my God. They were so old that some of them would completely fall apart at the touch of a 20th century hand, so they had to be really careful with it. The rooms were packed with... The hands are different in this century. The 20th century hand.

Different. They'd never been touched by an Englishman. It could tell. That vase could tell. Not gentle. Like racist fars. The rooms were packed with major artefacts, statues, cabinets, vases. Even five chariots are inside that then be dismantled so he could ride them in the afterlife.

Sure. So he gets the afterlife. And there's a dismantle. So he's got to first get out like an Alan key. Yeah, Ikea style. You're going to rebuild it. Bloody hell. That seems silly.

That's not what you want to do in the afterlife. No, you want to just get on with partying. Also, there's five chivalies. carry it's. That's too many. Especially with a man who probably couldn't even ride one in his real life because he had a bung foot, a bung back and a broken thigh bone. Oh, well in the afterlife, all that stuff gets...

Yeah, true. Of course, because he worshipped the right God, remember? He changed it. Yeah. Thank goodness for that. Any one of the objects that they found would have been considered enough to repay the effort of a year's dig. Wow.

So it's literally the greatest archaeological find the world has ever seen. Wow. For this king, the world. was not even, like he was, before he was even buried. Yeah, that's weird. But I guess all the ones that were... Ransack, you make you think about all the hundreds of pharaohs that,

like the really famous ones. What were they being buried with? Must have been amazing, but they, yeah, just got... Six chariots? Probably. Six and a half chariots. Wow. What did we get into with a half?

Spare parts. Very good. And you both pointed at each other. It was very cute. It's a great improv game we're doing here. Spare parts. Spare parts. parts.

So the mummy itself was inside a sarcophagus, inside three mummy coffins, each nestled inside the other, sort of a bobushka doll. Like a booshka doll style. The two outer coffins were highly decorated wood, and the third was solid gold, the inside one. What? And you know the famous blue and gold mask that everyone knows? Yeah.

That's probably the most famous symbol of Egypt. That was his death mask put over his face inside of the coffin. Solid gold coffin Solid gold Because we talked on the Death Burial Cremation episode We talked about how expensive coffins and caskets are Bloody four

This is probably towards the top end of the scale Probably Yeah Probably I don't know what would be more expensive What's more expensive than gold Double gold Boom

Yeah Logic Also mate you were saying before About who's getting the riches So I told you that at the time the Egyptian government gave any excavators a 50-50 split of whatever they found, there was, however, a massive catch. And that was, if an archaeologist found an intact tomb,

which means no one had been there before, then the agreement of equal division of the artefacts was a null and void. And everyone agreed to this because they thought they'd never find one that was untouched. So then the Egyptian Department of Antiquities could claim everything, because the theory is the collective value of everything together is much more of the sum of its part. Keeping it together as sort of what... It shouldn't be split up. Should be put in a museum is what they thought.

So then they had this big battle over whether it was intact because those grave robbers had been in there a little bit and then got caught. And they were saying, is that intact? Is that not intact? And whilst all this was happening, the first signs of the curse started. On March 19th...

Everyone died. Everyone died. The first sign was everyone died. A second sign. Everyone stayed dead. Oh. No one came back to life. No, March 1923, a few months after it had been opened,

Lord Carnarvon was shaving, and he cut himself where he'd earlier been bitten by a mosquito bite. Oh. It became infected, and he died. Four months and seven days after the opening of the term. Are you serious? Yeah, so he... He nicked himself shaving on a mozibite dead.

And he died. And this guy had survived like a major, crazy bad car accident. What? Only to be killed. By nicking himself shaving. At the time of his death, reportedly all the lights in Cairo went out. Get out. The British army who was in charge of utilities at the time couldn't find a reason for them going out.

Just as quickly as they'd gone out, they magically came back on 20 minutes later. Nah, creepy. Also, 2,000 miles away back in England, at the time of his death, the exact second at High Clea Castle, where they filmed down to Abbey. Knavon's Fox Terrier, Susan, was asleep in her basket in the castle at the time of his death, she got up, hailed and dropped dead. Fuck off! You've got to be kidding.

It's the truth. Gospel. Matt, you are so in awe that you're not going to comment and say how this is bullshit. Okay. So somebody must have discovered them, right? Somebody must have discovered his body. I could say that housekeeper comes in, finds him and the dog both dead.

But 2,000 miles apart. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Never mind, then. So someone heard the how. Someone, so maybe, I mean, it kind of makes sense that he would have nicked himself shaving if all the lights in the whole city went out.

Yeah, it was just the darkness. No, it had been infected for many days before he actually died. But the curse was widely reported around the world. And this is where the shutting out of the world's press really backfired on them. Because the press, who were annoyed that they didn't get to cover the actual story, they started writing these really sensationalised stories about the tomb being cursed, and they started quoting scriptures or inscriptions that were reportedly found inside

about people that disturbed this. Death will come on swift wings, stuff like that. The media is going crazy, but Carter shrugged off the curse is ridiculous. This is our logical man again. But because he'd been shielded by Carnarvan from the press before, now Carter was the center of attention, and tourists began descending en masse at the dig side of the side of. Tut's tomb to see the riches and treasures being dragged out.

So suddenly he's being swamped by these people. And all he wants to do is get back to work, because he's literally obsessive with getting, cataloging the treasures. Not many people were allowed inside the tomb, but one of the few civilians allowed inside was George J. Gould. Great name. He was a very rich man who was invited by Carter.

After his private tour, that night he came down with a fever, and by the next day he was dead. No. Yes. But this is the night. 1920s, right? Like, everyone died all the time back then. Well, you take that in consideration?

It's such a naysayer. What people did die all the time, Matt, in 1923, two men suddenly died after entering the tomb. Doctor said it was a fever, but some thought it was King Tut's curse. Next to go was Pecky Calendar. Pecky, not Pecky. She was the bird, right? That was the assistant, one of the first four people in.

Oh, okay. He was a cowardice assistant. Oh, Becky. Pecky. What a great name. See, I love it. I get perky, but Pecky's better. Some reason I was thinking that was the little yellow bird.

We didn't think we named the bird. Would you like to name the bird 100 years afterwards? Pecky. Can I call it Pecky? Pecky's a great bird now. I'd call my bird Peck. Oh, that's cute. Both of them dead.

Pecky and the bird. Carter, people kept handing him about the curse trying to get interviews. He's repeatedly dismissed the curse and then he set his eyes on the body of King Tut. See, that would be creepy. I'd find that really weird You know how in movies when they like open a coffin And oh I couldn't do that No

So you know So that coffin had been there for 3,000 years or whatever That's too long Because it's in four rooms They have to go from room to room And they get the treasures out of one room Then move to the other It actually took

Like several months before They actually found the actual sarcophagus With Oh really With you know that golden bit So they got the treasures out of the first room first And they had to move to another room So I just imagine that you'd go in there, have a look around, be like, yep, cool, cool, but no, they went room by room.

So do they know he was in there when they first found that they assumed he was in there, right? Yeah, but they just couldn't quite get to it yet. Room by room they were worried that people had, you know, because they saw signs of people that had broken in. So they're thinking, oh, this room's intact, but how about the next room? Because they were very secretive with, they made it so if you broke into one room, it'd be hard to break into the next. Oh, wow. So, like, it was all sealed from each other. So, you know, the Egyptians, they said they'd take the lot if it was intact?

Yep. What would the English archaeologists get if they were, if the Egyptians took it all, do they get anything? Do they get just like a, you know, a certificate of appreciation or something? A voucher for a junior burger at McDonald's, something about. What I was thinking. No, I mean, so they're still doing all the work. Like, I got no problem with Egypt.

at all. I think that makes sense, but it just seems weird that, it seems weird to me that, it's, um... I spent all that time and they get nothing. Well, we'll get to what he got. We'll get to that. I mean, they all got death, obviously, but if they survived. Well, Kana, so he was, I was just going to say, he moves onto the corpse, which was wrapped in 13 layers of linen, and inside the linen, there's 143 amulets that are wrapped inside to ward off evil. 143.

Yeah, it's a weird number, I know. So it's like, and they're all, you. They're all jewels and they're all gold. They're like worth millions of dollars. No, I hate that. I hate that. I hate, oh. What, how, what, do you draw the line 142? No, I really like rounded numbers.

Oh, so like 140? It doesn't have to be even. Well, even that would kind of, get seven more 150. Yeah. That makes more sense to me. Anyway, but the rest of the, the, the rest of the stuff that Egyptians did to their bodies makes perfect sense to you. Oh, 13 layers.

Again, 13 layers of linen. Why 13? It's an unlucky number. 13. 10 or 15. Oh, so you five increments of five. Yeah, kind of, yeah. So, 145 would have been okay?

145. See, that bothers me a little bit, but yeah, better. So close to 150. Yeah, just to just get 150. Would you like me to lie and say, 145? I don't think anyone's going to tweet in, but if you would like to and correct me,

I do go on pod. It would make you feel better. So it was wrapped in this stuff, but the resins and oils that were used to embalm the body had turned to glue over 3,000 years, and to get the amulets, he couldn't get them out, so Kanta had to diso,

remember the corpse. He cut it up, including removing the head. Oh, my God. So if you think that there's some sort of curse going on, would you literally get the guy that may be cursing everyone and just chop his body out? I would be terrified. Let me have a think about that. Just for the, like, if you're an archaeologist, he's trying to, like, find and preserve history,

is that what archaeologists do? Yeah, but you want to be... Why are you chopping up the body? 143 amulets is probably the reason. 145. And you're thinking, 145 amulets. Within two weeks of performing this operation, so Carter oversaw it,

two of its participants were dead. No. Two more dead. Geez, what a body count. How many, have we got a count there? Have we, like a body count? Yeah, let's start a tally, body count. All right, so we've lost...

The bird? We've lost the bird. Body count. I'm running it down. We've lost Lord Carnarvon. We've lost his dog. Pecky. We've lost the rich guy that had a fever

the night he came in, George, five. And then we have these two more guys. Seven. We're up to seven. King Tart, obviously, is dead, but we won't count him. I don't know. Should he count? Well, he was.

He's the one cursing, though. I reckon, he's part of the curse. That bumps us up to eight. I reckon let's keep count him in. Tut in as well? All right, we're up to eight. I'll keep going with the tally then. You got a little body tally.

It's going to look weird on this piece of paper that I leave in the studio. When somebody else comes in here to record, you're going to be very confused. It says body count. It says body count, and it's just got a tally underneath. It's quite creepy. I love that. So Carter kept digging He was not perturbed by any of this

He saw the dig site as his own And only let certain people inside the tomb He'd let his friends in People he was happy to let die Yeah, he would let his friends in And he would tell the authorities That they were all scientists But he wouldn't actually let Egyptian government officials in

Because he would say they, quote, weren't qualified Sure God So one day he wanted to take a tour of his friends And their wives on a tour of the dick He wanted to let them in But the women were not allowed in as the government was like, hey, they're not scientists.

You're using double standards here. You can only let scientists in if you're not letting us in. Women can't be scientists. Carter cracked the shit. I know it sounds a bit sexist, but Carter cracked it. He put up huge iron gates in front of the tomb and locked everyone out. He said, no one else can come in. This is my dig site.

Drama queen. And as you can imagine, the Egyptian officials were not happy with this. And he worked out. They killed him. Well, they close. No. basically his life was over. He woke up one morning and they cancelled his concession,

which allowed him to come in, and they kicked him out of Egypt. Yeah, fair enough. Like, what a fucking idiot? Yeah. What a diva? What do you think was going to happen? It's my dig site.

Fuck off. It's probably like a billion dollars. Yeah, and it's our country. Yeah, and there's a billion dollars of gold in there. So, come on. There's probably a lot of corruption going on. But when the government couldn't get anyone to do as good a job as Carter, because he was so obsessive,

he was allowed back in one year. later. Oh, that sucks. But the deal was he had to give up the claim to any of the treasure. Oh. So, like, yeah, you can keep working on it, but you can't have any cash for it. Oh. So what does he get?

It's just, gets a volunteer on us. He spent the next 10 years in the tomb on his own cataloging over 5,000 items. 5,000, you'd be pretty happy with that, Jess. Oh, yeah, no, 5,000's good by being. Happy with that. 5,000 and 6, fuck off. Here's a little fun fact for the side here. You know how that Egyptian death mask I was talking about before.

You know how it's got like a really long beard, like a little goatey type thing? Yep. When they find that, found it inside that had snapped off. So they reattached it. So two and a half kilos of solid gold. What? Inlaid with blue lapis lazuli. Two and a half kilos of solid gold.

So in the 40s they reattached it with a piece of wood to put on display. But in August 2014, the beard fell off when the mask was taken out of its display case for cleaning, museum workers responsible used a quick drying glue in attempts to fix it, hoping that no one would notice, but they left the beard off centre. Oh my God. No one noticed the damage until January 2015, and it had to be repaired by a team of German and Egyptian experts who reattached it using beeswags. So how long between it being botched and...

So for five months it sat there and no one noticed. And those people who botched it are now dead. Well, well, you say that in January this year, fuck off. They were put on trial, and I'm not sure what's going to happen to them. Oh, my God. They won't be executed, but they might be, they've lost their jobs, and they could be jailed for the year,

because it's desecration of, like, Egypt's most famous thing. There was an accident, right? Yeah, but what should they have done then? Probably called the German Egyptian team and not trying to just sort of stick it back together. Superglot back on. Oh, my God. You would be mortified.

Man, those, if they live, they'll be cursed for sure, right? If they live. But back to the curse. Well, the curse seemed to have stopped. That guy's back on site a year later. Well, the curse is going now, right? Well, we've got to go back in time. So during the time that Carter was madly cataloging his 5,000 items,

many other deaths were attributed to the Ferris curse. So get that death telly, ready, Jess. Good. Other deaths. 10th of July, 1923, Prince Ali, 23-year-old. Prince Ali Babiababab. I forgot the glorious he part, but yes. What's that from?

Glorious he, that's it. Aladdin? Aladdin? I panicked away. Yeah. Well, they talk about Thebes in the... You know, I said he changed the capital. Tutankarmon.

He changed the capital back to Thebes. That was one of his claims to fame. Thieves. Thebes. Thieves. T-A-G-B-E-S. Where is... And are these cities still around?

Thebes. And what did he change it from? I can't remember. I'm not sure, to be honest. Cairo is the capital now. Capital Now, yeah. And also a some sort of a future teller. Fortune teller.

Stars. I wrote that down. Oh, that was, it's spelled very differently, but yes. It's probably Chiro, C-H-E-I-R-O, Chiro. So Prince Ali. So Prince Ali, he's a 23-year-old Egyptian prince, shot dead by his French wife of six months, Marie Magarita, in London's Savoy Hotel shortly after he was photographed visiting the tomb. So the curse worked through his wife. That's right, the French wife. A curse is a curse.

So sometimes the curse works in the form of a fever, sometimes it works in the form of a dog having a heart attack. Sometimes it's someone who can't shave properly. Yeah, it's an interesting, you know, curses. Sometimes it's murder. Curses work in mysterious ways. How about this one? September 26, 1923,

Aubrey Herbert, Lord Carnarvon's half-brother, became nearly blind and died from blood poisoning related to a dental procedure that was intended to restore his eyesight. Boom, up to ten, baby. Ten deaths. Nearly blind. and died. I feel like the nearly blind part

probably gets usurped by the death. He's negated by the fact that he didn't use his eyes at all in death. I feel like, yeah, death in a lot of ways you are blind, right? Good point.

Good point. Yeah. Just... He was blind dead. Dead blind. Body count. Sir Archibald Douglas Reed, radiologist who x-rayed

Tudan Carmen's mummy died in January 1924. He was 102. No. From a mysterious illness. Mysterious illness, Matt. That's more. curse-ish.

That's more curse-ish. November 1924. 1924 still, Sir Lee Stack, Governor General of Sudan, was assassinated while driving through Cairo shortly after visiting. By a cobra. Get out.

There you go. We're after 12. Arthur Mace, a member of the excavation team died in 1928 from arsenic poisoning. Oh! Poisoning. So the curse is also slipping

arsenic into people's drinks. It's like an agatha christic novel, isn't it? A curse is a curse. Canarvan's The other half-brother died on 26th of May, 1929, reportedly from Malarial pneumonia. He's got Malarial pneumonia. Yeah, that's what Tart had, possibly.

Oh, cursie, cursie. And, you know, what often carries malaria? Mozzies. And the other guy before got bitten by a mozzie and then done. He's controlling the mozzies. So there was just a malaria outbreak. And a few, you know, a couple of... Curse.

Yes, what are we up to? 14. How about this one? Gun-related shootings, I was going to say. Richard Bethel, November 15th, 1929, Carter's personal secretary, died in his sleep but was possibly smothered. You wrote that, the man? Smothered by a curse. Then, three months later, Bethel's father, Lord Westbury, committed suicide when he plunged seven floors to his death from the top of St. James' apartment, where he reportedly kept tomb artifacts gifted by his son.

Get out. The curse was just whispering, is he? He left a note, blaming his son's death. death on the curse of King Tut. On the way to the cemetery, Lord Westbury's hearth struck and killed an eight-year-old boy. Fuck off. Reportedly, at the exact moment the boy died, so did an employee of the British Museum. His field, Egyptology.

No! Chock it up. Reportedly. This is getting looser and looser. I've sourced all of these people. Edgar Steele, only four days later, 57, who was in charge of handling the tomb artifacts at London's British Museum, died after. a minor stomach operation.

Died. Dead. Killed. Gone. Passed on. Cursed. I'm not even... We're bloody halfway there. Sir Ernest Wallace Budge, November 1934. A former keeper in the British Museum's Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities. We're up to 20, baby. He was found dead in his bed in Bloomsbury, aged 77.

That's really old. That's really old back then. A friend of Lord Carnarvon, he had been responsible for displaying the art artifacts found in Luxor. Oh, Matt. Dead. What do you think of that, Matt? Next one.

Muhammad, and this is, we're cutting to the 60s. It's still going. Muhammad Ibrahim, Egypt's director of antiquities, argued with the government against letting the treasures from the tomb leave Egypt for an exhibition in Paris. He pleaded with the authorities to allow the relics to stay in Cairo because he had suffered terrible nightmares of what would happen to him if they left the country. Ibrahim left a final meeting with the government official.

stepped out into what looked like a clear road on a bright sunny day, was hit by a car and died suddenly. Dead. Dead. 21. The treasures of the tomb were transported to London from a prestigious exhibition at the British Museum. Dr. Mehez, Ibrahim's successor, the guy that replaced the guy that just died in Cairo as director of antiquities.

He scoffed the legend, saying this, his whole life he had spent in Egyptology and that all the deaths and misfortunes through the decades had been pure coincidence. He died the night after supervising the packaging of the relics for transport to England by Royal Air Force Plain. Dead. Boom. He died whilst. How did he die? He died while he was supervising.

The night after he scoffed at it and he packed the antiquities to go on a tour that night. Dead. How did he die? Dead. Death. His cause of death? Stopped breathing or his heart. Do you think where, like, because you guys, you believe in this, obviously.

Well, Matt, do I... The evidence, is not going to be the evidence? Are we bringing ourselves into the end of the gun? We've got? By talking about it? Possibly. Are we putting ourselves? I thought I was thinking before, because we're talking about it.

We've got two more deaths. But we've got a recording talking about it too, so... Oh, man. Okay, if we go, let's assume Evan has access to this. Evan don't release it, because then everybody who listens to the podcast is going to die. Oh, no. Which is... That's a lot of people.

It's millions. Potentially. Podcasts are free and accessible to many millions. I'll call this Curse of the Fairos in brackets. This podcast could kill. And then, like, if that happens, right, if we die having just talked about this curse, then it would be newsworthy. And so then it would attract even more attention.

It would be great for past episodes. Oh, yeah, it would be really good. I will only sell our story to the London Times. Good move. That's a good move. All right. One of the first people to see touched treasures in London was the only surviving member of the first four people

to enter the tomb in Egypt, and that was Lady Evelyn Herbert. So Knavan's daughter. She was often interviewed over the decades about the curse, but would laugh and say, I'm alive, I'm kicking, I'm 70. I don't believe in it. Oh, you idiot.

She was the first in. If she wasn't the first to die, it doesn't exist. Yeah, but then she turns around and goes, I don't believe in the curse. Well, now she's going to die. She's dead. She's 100% dead. The curse is going to have to, yeah, send a minute.

This is going to have to be like, okay, I liked you and I was letting you off. So after her father died, she wouldn't go back to Egypt. So she never saw the stuff again until it came to London where she was living. Leaving the museum on her fifth visit, she suffered a stroke on the steps, which did not kill her, but left her very paralyzed. So send her a message. Oh, no, I've already put a stroke down on the list. She has since died.

Yes. Yes. I mean, I just celebrated it. How old she lived to? In some time into her 70s. So a few years later she died. A few years later, dead. I'm counting it.

How about this one? Final one. A workman drops dead. TG.H. James. At one time, the Egyptian curator at the British Museum, told how when the Tutt exhibit came to the museum in 1972, the foreman of the crew involved in setting up the exhibit suddenly dropped dead. Not in the gallery, but somewhere else. No one believed that this was due to anything but natural causes, but still the museum officials were so worried the death would be played up as the curse of King Tutt.

they swore the crew to secrecy and everyone kept their mouths shut for over 20 years. Jess, chalk it up. I'm really unhappy with this because I need one more for it to be a rounded number. How many is it? 24. Wait, 5.15 between 20.

24. How about this one? Howard Carter himself, the main guy. He lived for 16 years after he opened the tomb and died in 1939, age 64. Does he disprove the curse? Or was that just King Tut looking out for him is the only one with the dedication and precision to properly look after his tomb.

That's what you've got to ask yourself, Matt. Well, he still died young. Yeah, she was in his 60s. That's right. Jess? I want to count it so that it can be a rounded number. Well, people claim that 25 deaths, which we just got up to, can be argued to have been caused by the Pharaoh's curse.

But is it actually a thing? Yes. All right, I'll tell you this. Egyptians did use curses, and they did put them up on the wall in the hieroglyphics. but the reality is there wasn't any written on the walls of King Tut's tomb. Maybe it was written somewhere else. Well, many of the rumours started after Lord Carnarvan sold the exclusive rights to the story. It was paper getting back at him.

Wow. So they were using rumour-filled copy to sell copies of their paper and make him look bad for selling the story to other papers. But does that discount the... Still, enough of them died in weird ways. Like, yes, a few of them died from, you know, like illness or injurious and like that, fairly normal reasons, but a few of them were weird, so I'm going to say the curse is real. The curse is real? Matt?

I don't believe that you guys actually believe it. So that's not answering the question at all, though, is it? What do you think? Well, I know, I don't believe it, but that's the famous last words. I'm just bloody sign my own death warrant. Oh dear. I haven't, because I believe it. I believe it.

I respect you, King Tunt. I'm on board. I respect the curse. I think King Tuts a fuck out, and he should. You glad he died when he was. Yeah, true. If you've already signed your own death papers, you may as well just go. Go out.

Go out on a high. Go out swinging. Hey, I can't wait to ride your horsesies with you in the buddy, your five horsey chariots with you. Horsey? Your fucky. You fuck, fuck, fuck out. Wow, we've sworn a lot of this episode. I will say the final note on the story here.

Carter had made peace with Tutt and the Pharaoh's bones were put back together and put back in the tomb and are still there to this day. Oh, and that broke the curse. So maybe that broke the curse? or maybe it's still out there. It might be, who knows? You can go and visit the tomb. It's open to the public. You can go in and have a visit and you can see the bones.

Is there still stuff in there? They have left some things in there. But because over the years, so many people have gone in there, the Egyptian government have started building a replica tomb and they're going to possibly close the original one to the public in the foreseeable future. So if you want to get out there, guys, and you want to get the actual curse,

I suggest going over to Egypt, You'd have to go to the Valley of the Kings. Wow. Why would you go to a replica one, feels like a... What's still in the valley? A waste of time. Well, it's still like dug into the sand. Yeah, it would still look cool.

I'd go. Would you go, Jess? Or do you be scared of the curse? I'd be, well, I wouldn't be scared of the curse. I'd just be freaked out by the whole tomb thing. Yeah, no thank you. No, thank you for you. But where's the body?

So the body's still in there? Yeah, so it's inside the tomb. So in the end, Egypt did keep the lot? What would I have seen at that exhibition then? There was stuff there. So, yeah, the main stuff like that death mask, that famous thing I keep talking about, the beer that broke off, that's in the Cairo Museum, yeah. I feel like I saw the gold coffin, but probably not, right?

I don't remember a lot about that exhibition. So you went to Cairo? No, this was in Melbourne. Art, sent it around, yeah, gotcha. It went on a world tour. I love when art and artifacts go on world tours. So good. 3,000.

It's weird. Picture him out of the back, just partying. The weirdest part is that he's been dead for 3,000 years, and then he goes on a world. That's weird, right? Yeah. But I'm hoping our comedy careers are similar. Oh, yeah.

After we're dead. Three thousand years strong. Yep. It's going to be the name of my solo show in 3,000 years. 3,000 years strong. Still on top. The Jess Perkins' extravaganza. Wow.

Extravaganza. Yeah. I feel like after 3,000 years, so you can be ambitious, you know. I think that's fair. Yeah. Wow. Are we done?

That was... Well, that's all I've got on that. I just want to say that after I really liked Egypt as a child, like I was saying at the start, and this has rekindled my thing, and I really, really want to go now. That was really interesting, like really fascinating. And now I'm terrified of the curse. And if we die any time soon, in fact, when we die, I'm going to be very confident it was curse-related, even if it's in 50 years.

Yeah, you'll be on your deathbed at 8. It's a curse. It's a curse. It's a curse because of that podcast, that one episode of the podcast we did. I'm so sorry that I've cursed all our listeners as well. Sorry, everyone. A lot of those deaths did happen a long time after, so. Yeah. Yeah.

But a lot happened pretty soon after as well, so. That's right. And some could say that all those people would be dead now anyway, but would they? Yes. Yes, almost certainly. That'd be the oldest people alive. Wow. That was really cool.

Thanks, Dave. Thank you guys. I hope you enjoyed that, Matt. You are probably the most skeptical person on the show, but I think that I may have won you over there. Yeah, I feel like you got him. Claim that, but... Yeah, no, I'm in.

Yeah. Great, because now you believe you won't die. Perfect. And when you're tweeting to us, make sure you use that hashtag I came up with earlier that I've forgotten. Hashtag hot for tat. That was it. Hashtag hot for tat.

Hot for tat. Well, if you do... We love it when our Twitter account lights up. We don't get as many tweets as we'd like. So if you want to jump on there, Don't make us sound needy. We don't get as many as we'd like. I've got a million tweets.

It wouldn't be enough. I am needy. That sounds very needy. It's at DoGoon pot. At Dogoon pot. You want to find that one. They can email us as well. Do Goonpot at gmail.com.

That would be exciting. That'd be fun. Find us on Facebook too. Oh, yeah. Go on Facebook now. Give us a bloody like, mate. Do that. And we'll be back next week with another report, Matthew.

Yeah. I think I'm actually going to, people have been sending in suggestions. You might pick up a suggestion. Yeah, I've started collating a list. I'm going to put them all in a hat and pluck one out. Great idea. I think that'd be awesome.

Yeah, I might start doing that a little bit more because I don't think we've taken any. Not yet, no. Not yet, but we do. So, I don't know. If you want to send some in. I've got quite a, quite a long list going. Well, I mean, it's not, it's not super long. But it's not so long.

There's no chance of you getting it in, yeah. Yeah. I think Yeah, send them Send suggestions, please Please and thank you P-O box lock bag No, we don't have that

Just tweet them in Email them in So thanks so much for listening guys And we will see you next week And until then Be good Or the curse will get ya Watch out the curse of King Tart

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