Stuff You Should Know - Was there a curse on King Tut's tomb?

Episode Date: January 5, 2012

When Howard Carter opened Tutankhamen's tomb, some believe he unleashed a curse on everyone associated with his expedition. But there's no such thing as a curse, right? Learn the scientific basis beneath King Tut's curse as Chuck and Josh Meet the Mummy! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant that makes this Stuff You Should Know the podcast. I'm walking like an Egyptian. You sure were. You nailed that too.

Jerry and I were singing the old Steve Martin King Tut song, and you were like, what is that? I know what it is. I'm young. I don't know that. I don't know the lyrics. Yeah, you were on the cusp there. That was a big deal when I was a kid. I was like two when that came out. Yeah, you missed it by a few years. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't like 25 and going to see Steve Martin or anything. What? I'm like 60. So, Chuck, I know you're familiar with Steve Martin, but are you familiar with a little boy king by the name of King Tutankhamen? Yes, I am. Are you? Yeah. Well, let's rap about him, man.

Did you go see the exhibit? No. No. The discovery one in Times Square? Well, it did travels, you know. Oh, yeah. No, you saw that one. I didn't see it though. It's cool. I saw bodies. That was pretty neat. I think I told you about that. I didn't see bodies yet. I did the dialogue in the dark for now. Yeah, we talked about this. I'm disappointed. Yeah. Bodies was pretty cool, but you're like, wow, this is really nuts. Yeah. But no, I didn't see King Tutankhamen, did you? Yes. Did you know there's a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit now in Times Square?

Discovery has, you know, Discovery has like this basically like a museum, like an exhibition show in Times Square. Oh, yeah. And the newest one is the Dead Sea Scrolls, like the Dead Sea Scrolls are there in Times Square right now. You can go sign your name on it. Kilroy was here. Right. Yeah. All right. Well, let's get back to King Tut, because we got a little off topic if you ask me. I'm going to tell you what I know about King Tut. Okay. And then you tell me what you know, and we'll combine the two. Hey, that's the show. So like, for example, I found out that King Tut

was an avid chariot racer. Did you know that? I did. He was buried apparently or entombed, I should say, with six chariots. Yeah. It's kind of like your uber wealthy boy president, right, who's like 16 and then, you know, dies at age 18 is buried with like his eight Camaros or something. Yeah. That's kind of what they did with King Tut. Yeah. He was also an avid ostrich hunter. Yeah. He used to hunt in the desert with just him and his dog. And it's pretty cool. He also married his sister and had two babies with her, both of which were born prematurely

and died. Yeah. There's a lot of inbreeding going on back then. Yeah. There's a lot of rumors that he was inbred or a lot of speculation or I should say a lot of factual conjecture that he was himself also inbred. Yeah. And they think that there's this huge mystery going on right now that he was clubfooted. Did you know that? I did not know that. So they think that he may have been clubfooted, which would definitely support the inbreeding argument, not that people who have club feet are inbred. Right. But I think if you are inbred, you're likely to have something like a clubfoot.

Okay. But they can't tell. It looks like he's clubfooted, but his cadavers, corpse, has been so mistreated over the decades since it was discovered that they can't tell if somebody just broke his foot or if he was born that way. Yeah. Yeah. Clubfoot. Is that all you got? Sure. Yeah, that's all right. We should volley it. He was short. He had a weird shaped head. Have you ever seen a skull? No. It looks like an egg. It's really weird looking. And they measured it and found that it just qualifies as quote normal. But he, all the paintings back then showed all the pharaohs and the Egyptian pharaohs had these weird shaped heads and they thought, well, those are just the artist.

But then they found his skull and they're like, no, he has a weird shaped head. So Eric Von Dakin here would say something like, well, that's because aliens came down and bred with them. Who's that guy who wrote Highways of the Gods, I believe. I didn't know that. Runways of the Gods. Basically the 70s dude who printed all these books basically saying that the ancient Egyptians were in contact with aliens and all this stuff. And there's all this evidence throughout like hieroglyphics and things like, you know, two-tone common skull or whatever that show that aliens came down and bred with the Egyptians. And that's how human civilization just advanced by leaps and bounds. I believe it already just from that. But anybody who disliked

their acupuncture podcast, just turn that off at the mention of his name. Yeah, exactly. So let's talk a little bit about how he died though, because that's the big, you know, we know that he ruled, he was the boy king from nine to 19 and then just died. Yeah. And over the years, there have been some theories and the leading three theories was one that he died from war wounds. Two that he died in a chariot accident. That seems possible. Or because of a chariot accident. Yeah. And the third was murder, that he was clubbed in the back of the head. Or poisoned. I didn't see the poison one. I saw poisoning. Oh yeah. So the club one, well, let's get into this then. There was a lot of political intrigue going on and there were people that may have wanted him dead. Well, yeah, one of

the high priests inherited the throne after Tut's death. And they were all in a very close position to have murdered him. And he owned a club. Yeah, exactly. Case closed. He used to carry it. They called him clubby. Right. Clubby the high priest. So his body has been, we'll get to the beginning, but it was found at first in the 20s and just mangled. They mangled this dude. Yeah, they think now the hole in the head was when they were taking off his ceremonial mask. Oh, really? Punctured a hole in his head. That's where the hole came from. Well, he was, he was, they used a lot of like resins and things back then to help mummify the body. And because of that, he was stuck to the coffin and Howard Carter, who was the lead chief archaeologist on this dig, had his guy heat up

a knife and was just like cutting through his body. And in the end, they, you know, there were like dozens of fractures and they couldn't tell, you know, are these fractures here because his team mismanaged it or were they real fractures? Right. So the mystery like builds up over the years. Yeah. He had a broken leg too. And I think that could have been from the chariot accident, could have been from that dude. Well, not anymore knife. They proved that it was pre mortem. Okay. And it started to heal. Well, it started to react. It wasn't healing yet. But all this came about because a unnamed TV network funded a like a million dollar dig to make the show the secrets of Tutankhamen or something like that. And they got a CT, a CAT scan on site, a portable one.

And for the first time, we're able to run his body or what was left of it through a CAT scan. It's pretty cool. And they found out a few things. He had a severely impacted wisdom tooth. Then you should have seen it was like literally growing sideways in his mouth. I know they said it most definitely hurt. But through the CT scan, they were able to find there was no sign of infection. So that didn't kill him. He had the weird shaped skull, but they were shown that it wasn't because of wrapping. They do a lot of like head wrapping when they were babies. Yeah. But they said that that's just the way their family skull was shaped. Maybe because of inbreeding. They found he had no sternum or rib cage. What? And but through

the CT, they found that the ribs were shown to be cut away and not fractured. Yeah. Remember, we, I don't remember talking about removing the ribs, but remember, we talked about them getting the internal organs out and then restuffing it in the modification episode. Totally. Four inch fracture in the back of the skull, not related to the little coin size hole. And later on, they found out that that wasn't actually a fracture. It was just where the skull wasn't fully fused because he was still a kid. Wow. So it's just a line. So they learn all this stuff. They end up finding that the fracture was shown to be pre mortem because they found embalming a resin inside the fracture. And if it would have happened afterward, it wouldn't have

like gone in the route that it went in showed that it was beginning to react, which means it was healing. And they eventually found out that they think he died between one and five days after this leg fracture, which could have been a compound fracture, which they think might have been infected. So that's the leading theory. I didn't see anything on this bone disease and the special though. Did you find out about that? No, but no, I've seen that before and it has to do with inbreeding as well. A vascular bone necrosis, which is a degenerative bone disease. And there's also malaria. People say malaria. Yeah, I didn't see that in the special either. The broken bone thing though is like, I mean, that makes sense. Of course,

you could die from an effective bone back then. Yeah. And his kneecap was gone on that leg. It was just, man, that must have been a bad accident. Yeah. So they think it could have been a chariot or they think he could have been hurt in battle, which is why the chest was all messed up too. Like after he was down on the ground, they were just like pummeling them. Or it was clubby. Or it was creased, which is not true. So just King Tut's death alone is considered a world mystery as far as I understand. I'd certainly consider it that. Yeah, less of a mystery now, though. One of the reasons why it was he's such a celebrated king is because of his tomb. His tomb was the first and only royal tomb found that contained like just vast riches, like everything

that the Egyptologists, which were basically like antiquities, crazed Westerners who were running all over Egypt and bribing officials to get stuff out of the country. And it was a strange time. But also you could call it the birth of archaeology. The Egyptologists had always hoped for a find like this. Yeah, it was the only one that had been rated like outright. Supposedly there's a lot of speculation around that, too, which we'll get to. Oh, yeah? Yeah. There was supposedly it had been looted at least twice. And Howard Carter, the guy who led the dig that found King Tut's tomb, suggested that it was in ancient times. The Valley of the Kings, we should say, is this area in Luxor that qualifies as an acropolis, which is a city of the dead. Yeah. And

it was a functioning city of the dead. There are a bunch of different tombs. There were local officials and administrators and a local police force. And it was a very sacred place that was offsite. But Howard Carter alleged that at least once or at least twice, possibly more times, thieves had breached King Tut's tomb in ancient times and eluded it. But to an extent, they didn't make it all the way in. See, I saw that they weren't looted, but they were, they broke in, but didn't have a chance to eluded. Oh, he said they looted all sorts of stuff. He was basically saying like they looted this and then he was very specific. Oh, really? Yeah. But when Carter found the King Tut's tomb, it's called KV62. It was the 62nd tomb found in the Valley of the Kings.

There's still a bunch of them out there, too. Well, yeah. But the most recent one they found was KV63. And that was just in the last couple of decades, I believe. Yeah. I think they said they found one every 10 to 20 years at this point. Oh, really? Yeah. So KV62 was found in the 20s. And KV63 was found in the 21st century. It's a big gap. Yeah. So it was a big deal when they found King Tut's tomb, which is one reason why he celebrated. The riches inside were another reason. But I think there was like 4,000 objects that they found inside this, his royal tomb. It was the big daddy. But one of the other things that has made King Tut so famous is the supposedly curse that was upon his tomb that supposedly befell a large number of people who

were either present when the tomb was breached or were connected familially or financially to the people who were there. Right. Including a dog. The Susie. I don't know the dog's name. Susie. Was it really? Yeah. Okay. You think I just made that up? Yeah. Sounds like something I would say. I would have named it Susie. You know Susie had three legs. She was a three-legged dog. I would love three-legged dogs. I want one. Well, you would love Susie. Well, yeah, till Susie died. So let's talk about this, Chuck. Let's talk about the curse on King Tut's tomb. Yes. It all started with the financier behind the whole operation, or Carter's operation, was Lord Carnivorn. And he was a very rich guy. He was in very bad health. He'd had a really bad

car accident and apparently was just kind of a wreck of a human. Like during the dig, he would sit in a suspended cage lined with gauze. I'm serious. No. Yeah. He was in that bad of health until they actually opened it. And then he was like, I got to get in there. So he actually went in. Yeah. He made it from England to Egypt in like record time. He took a ship, a train, and a steamer down the Nile to get to Luxor. Oh, once he found out that they were making headway? Yeah. And he got there in like two weeks. That's like really fast back then, especially if you normally sit around in a suspended cage filled with gauze lined with gauze. I kept trying to picture that. I wish I had a picture. I wish I couldn't picture it. Like I feel like I'm going to

vomit a little bit, especially like old timey wicker, you know, like those old wheelchairs that are so disturbing. Yeah. From like the turn of the century. Oh, yeah. Those are so creepy. So what happened to him was he had a mosquito bite on his cheek. He shaved one day with a straight razor and cut that mosquito bite open and died because of a blood disease from infection. Well, you're leaving a big point out. This was two months after he was there at the opening of King Tut's tomb. Not so. Oh, yeah. This is breaking news. He had actually snuck in. Oh, I saw this too. Yeah. This is the official unveiling, but four months previous, they poked their head in to take a look around, I think. So it was actually six months later. I heard it was,

and by Lord Carnivans own words. They did a lot more than poke their head in. Oh, really? They partied? Basically, they partied. Like they went, supposedly, this is how Carter told it, and this is how he kept his job and his reputation still to this day. Right. They opened the door just a little bit enough so he could peek in and he saw that there are so many riches. Right, right. They pulled the door shut and went and alerted the Egyptian antiquities authorities, right? Okay. This is exactly what it's supposed to do. Sure. Lord Carbonon said, no, actually, we pushed the door Carnivans. Is it Carnivans? Yeah. He said, Carnivans. Yeah. Yeah. He said that they pushed the door open, went in, pushed another door open, went in, went as far as the

shrine, pocketed a bunch of stuff. There's like stuff in Kansas City. There's stuff in Cleveland. There's things at the Met, at the Louvre. On display. That, yes, that are definitively linked to King Tut's tomb that should not be there. Yeah. Because under the auspices of the agreement that ultimately fell between Carbonon, Carnivans, and Egypt, they were allowed to take nothing out. But they stole a lot of stuff. So, yes, you're right. They entered in November and then he died in April. Right. But in the meantime, though, and this definitely didn't help dispel any rumors of a curse, he kept losing his teeth. Like, one by one, his teeth were falling out before he died. I know the feeling. So, imagine this Victorian era dude in a wicker cage with gauze losing teeth.

Yeah. That's what he looked like in the months leading up to his death. Yeah, he was in bad shape. Supposedly, at the moment of his death, the power grid of Egypt failed. Yeah. And then, Susie. And then Susie, and then... Well, she died. Yeah. Back in England, they said that she bade once and fell over dead. Yeah. He said she let out a howl and died. Yeah. And Carter also had a pet canary that he got for good luck on this dig. And it died on the day the tomb was officially opened. Some say it was killed by a cobra, which is a symbol of the pharaohs. So, it must be a curse. Crazy. The rumor started spreading because this was a time when you couldn't readily get information. So, they think that journalists got a little... took some liberties, started making up some more

stories, spreading the word that it's actually a curse. Oh, they jumped all over it. The greatest press was crazy for this. But I think they actually made stuff up. Oh, I'm sure. Like, it wasn't just reporting. Right. They still do. Have you heard of news of the world? Yeah. And actually, I read two sources for this idea of a mummy's curse, Chuck. One was an American painter named Joseph Smith who told the tale about King Tut's father-in-law, not King Tut, but his father-in-law, Akhenaten, Akhenaten, one of the two... His father-in-law slash cousin, probably. Probably. Akhenaten, who was known as the heretic king, because he stopped worshiping all the old gods, the pantheon of gods, and just basically created a monotheistic religion based

on just raw. Yeah, that's a huge deal, too. Yeah. I thought that was his dad. It was his father-in-law. Yeah. Okay. Like you said. What's the difference? Right. The priests, clubby may have even been among them, because King Tut came to the throne right after Akhenaten. The priests cursed him to separate his body and his spirit forever. So that's a possible origin for the idea of a mummy's curse. Because think about it. There's probably times when nobody thought of mummies and curses going hand in hand. Sure. Then the other one comes from a short story called Lost in the Pyramid, colonned the mummy's curse by none other than Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women. So she may have started the idea of a mummy's curse, too. Really? Yeah. You read

Little Women? No. It's kind of a chick book. Remember, most Sislak read it. Oh, really? Yeah. He was reading it to an orphan, I think. And he started crying at the end. It's pretty funny. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs? Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as

guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Who do we become when we travel? I have never flown without wearing a suit in time. I refuse to do it. Who are we allowed to be? Those blue American passports as powerful as they are, it doesn't work the same for everyone. And where is everybody going? I do love to sit near the ocean and drink. Join me, Brendan Francis Nunnam for Not Lost Chat,

a new season of the travel podcast that the New York Times, the Economist and the Atlantic named Best of the Year. In each episode of the new season, I'll share an audio postcard from where I've been, talk to a travel writer about their work, and invite a famous frequent flyer to come by and answer your travel questions. If I'm sitting in the seat and the person beside me is acting irate, I'm going to call a flight attendant before I stick my size 13 foot up their tiny ass. Ah, the joys of air travel. Listen to Not Lost on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. So this whole notion of a curse is that something was inscribed on the tomb. I've seen a couple of different versions. One is they who enter the sacred tomb shall

swift be visited by the wings of death. That's pretty cool. The other one was death will come on swift pinions to those who disturb the rest of the pharaoh. Is it one or the other or was it even there at all? There's a third one. Oh really? Yeah. No shirt, no shoes, no dice. So everyone in Europe and the United States at the time was really like they called it Egyptomania, which kind of bothered me, but that's really what was going on. Like all things Egypt were really like enthralling at the time to the public. Right, because it was just like they seemed like a cult of death fetishists, right? Yeah. And this is also the time when there were mediums holding seances all over like America and England. So the Victorians were really

into like death and like shrines to death. So this first thing was like they loved that. Loved it. Oh yeah. Aided up. And it wasn't just Lord Carnivon who was the one who died. It wasn't just him. By 1926, which was three years after they opened the tomb, well a little over, there were 11 people dead who were either at the opening of the tomb or were connected. And then by 1935 there are 21 dead. Westerners only, correct? Just Westerners, yes. That's very good to bring up. There's been two papers that have, over the years, that have debunked this. The first one came in 1933, a German Egyptologist named Jörg Stendorf. He was German. He wrote a paper that basically said, look man, there is no mommy's

curse. These people who are dying, who are like struck by the curse, they're barely even connected to these people. Some were more connected than others. Like Howard Carter's personal secretary died. And then his personal secretary's father killed himself. He left a note. His last words were, it was the curse. I really cannot stand any more horrors and hardly see what good I am doing here. So I am making my exit. And then he left out a window. He went out the window. It sounds to me like he had mental instability. That's possible and was not cursed. Possibly. Okay. But there were some like Lady Elizabeth Carnivon who was actually there at the opening with her father, who I guess changed his gauze. That was her role. She died as well.

So people connected were dying, but really for the most part it was just wild rumor and speculation according to Professor Steindor. And then we come to the 21st century and a guy named Mark R. Nelson of Monash University in Australia created a paper that ran in the British Medical Journal. Which is pretty cool. Did you read it? Well, I didn't read the whole paper. It was neat. He actually got a little more scientific with it and examined survival rates of 44 Westerners identified by Carter as being in Egypt during the examination. And it just chose Westerners for a good reason. That was if at the time Egyptians' lifespans would have been so radically different, average life expectancy, would have been so different from Westerners that it would

have totally skewed the results. Yeah, which makes sense. And he also only included people that were there at the time because he worked on the assumption that the curse was a physical entity. So only if you were there when the coffin was opened or present, then you would be afflicted by this curse. Right. And there were four opportunities to be afflicted by the curse by being present, right? Four official ones, yeah. And he actually, his whole paper is bunk because he has the wrong dates. He completely leaves out the first entrance. Well, that's what I was saying. Yeah. The one, the sneaky one? Yeah. Right. But so he's got February 17, 1923, which is the opening of the third door. This is supposedly the first time Carter and his expedition have gone into

the shrine, into the tomb. But it's not. This is months after they've actually gone in and already started to loot it. Yeah. And it was found by accident, which is one of the cool things. Oh, no. No. Oh, I thought some kid happened upon the top step. Supposedly, Carter's team came within a couple of centimeters of discovering it. And then Carter, they're working this one area for years and years and years. Come within a couple of centimeters of discovering it. And then Carter's like, Oh, let's stop working here. Let's move over there. And then right when Carnivan says, that's it. I'm not funding your expeditions anymore. Carter talks them into one more try. And then all of a sudden there's the, there's the tomb. So, I saw a kid found the step and told Carter.

Right. One of Carter's workers came over and said, Hey, I found it. But apparently Carter was like, Oh, that's great. Good thing. He knew. He was supposedly not quite the gentleman adventurer that he's made out to be. Like he was definitely a thief who sold antiquities like on the black market for his own personal gain. Well, it sounds like some Egyptian kid found the step and was like, Hey, it's over here. Yeah. No, apparently he knew what it was all along. Yes. Well, that kid begs to differ. Right. I'm sure. I'm sure. Well, and the reason it was so hard to find was because during construction of other tombs, the, I mean, I guess you could call it a construction crew, an ancient construction crew, set up their home base on top of what was

Tut's tomb. Right. So the ruins, they are kind of obscured things. And I think Tut was either in the 18th or 19th dynasty, do you know? 18. So, and then the home base's construction crew were alive during the 20th dynasty. Yeah. So it came much later. All right. So sorry about that sidebar. Back to the dates. February 17. Yep. 1923. February 3, 1926. The opening of the sarcophagus. Yeah. October 10, 1926. Opening of the coffins. And then November 11, 1926, which was when they actually examined and mangled and broke apart the body. Because they had to get that gold off. They disattached the head from the body. Yeah. I mean, they just mangled it. Yeah. All the bits. Yes. And what Martin Nelson found was that these exposures were absolutely no predictor of early

death at all. And actually, I was looking at a graph he compiled. If you were exposed three or more times, your chances of dying early actually decreased. That really? Yeah. His data showed that of the 25 Westerners present during an opening or an examination or both, the 25 lived an average of 20.8 years after exposure. The other Westerners that were in Egypt at the time that were not exposed during those four times lived 28.9 years. Like an eight-year difference, right? That was the curse, I think, was you shall die 8.1 years sooner. Exactly. So the mean age of death for people who were exposed to the curse, 70 years. For those who were unexposed, 75 years. You shall not see 71. Right, exactly. So, yeah, there's, yeah, especially

back then. Oh, yeah. Who wants to be 75 in 1930? Not me. Not me either. So there you have it. There was no curse. There was no curse. But it is possible that there is a scientific basis for people who were exposed to the tomb to have actually died younger than they would have otherwise had they not breached King Tut's tomb. That's right. And this special on this unnamed network also covered this. So what we're talking about for the most part are bacteria, mold, fungus, trapped in these tombs, breeze and multiplies upon hitting oxygen. So when they open these things up, perhaps these people get sick or people that were already sick get sicker and die. Yeah. And Carter was actually, he was aware that this is a possibility. He took air samples,

he took spore samples, or he tried to take spore samples. He said that there was, like the place was sterile. Now he said there was mold and fungi. Oh, okay. Well, no bacteria. Okay. He said his air samples were sterile, which is just absolutely impossible. But he made a point that like if Lord Carnovan did die of a bacteria or an infection, he was far likelier to pick it up in Cairo at the time than he was in King Tut's tomb. That makes sense. It does. And that's been confirmed. Yeah. Yeah. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds

of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Who do we become when we travel?

I have never flown without wearing a suit in time. I refuse to do it. Who are we allowed to be? Those blue American passports as powerful as they are, it doesn't work the same for everyone. And where is everybody going? I do love to sit near the ocean and drink. Join me, Brendan Francis Nunnam for Not Lost Chat, a new season of the Travel Podcast that The New York Times, The Economist and The Atlantic named best of the year. In each episode of the new season, I'll share an audio postcard from where I've been, talk to a travel writer about their work and invite a famous frequent flyer to come by and answer your travel questions. If I'm sitting in the seat and the person beside me is acting irate, I'm going to call

a flight attendant before I stick my size 13 foot up their tiny ass. Ah, the joys of air travel. Listen to Not Lost on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. There are some other deadly things that you might encounter if you were to breach a tomb that hadn't been opened in several thousand years. Fromaldahide, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, they all build up from decomposition. One of the cool things that Carter noted upon entering the shrine, the coffin shrine, made of gold. This thing was a room within a room and this room was made of gold. Yeah, and there were coffins within coffins too. Yeah, I think five of them nested in coffins. But on top of the outer coffin, I guess which is the sarcophagus, there were still lotus flowers

and berries that had been left. However, when did King Tell live? I think that it was like three thousand years earlier. Three thousand years before they left these lotus flowers on it and hadn't been touched since, which is pretty cool. It is pretty cool. These things also meet. You know, you got to have your meat when you're traveling through the afterlife. Well, that's the idea is that you want it. That's why you had six chariots is you want to have everything you need for the next life. You want to have your favorite Camero or five. These things decompose themselves. They can attract mold like Aspergillus Niger and Aspergillus flavus. And there was a bacteriologist working in the late 20th century who looked at medical records of workers like modern Egyptian

workers at the Valley of Kings and found that a lot of them had been exposed to these things too. And apparently you can find those in tombs. So it's possible to be felt by that as well. Yeah. On this TV show I saw they found another seal tomb, which was the first one in like 20 years. Really? They did. I mean, it wasn't a pharaoh. It was just like a priest or something. But they found a seal tomb and they thought this is our opportunity to test a seal tomb for pathogens. So in the tomb itself, they found like vast quantities of mold, like tons and tons of mold, toxic mold. And then for the actual coffin, they used a vacuum sampler to suck out an air sample before they even opened it from this 2,000-year-old grave. They used like a phlobe?

I saw the thing. It was something like that. And what they found was exactly what you said, formaldehyde, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia gas, all these toxic fumes. But in the end, they don't think that it could have been at a high enough level to actually kill somebody. Gotcha. So while it was present, while all that mold was there, although, you know, if he was already sick, it certainly might have contributed. He does sound a little sickly. And then one last one, another bacteriologist from Germany at the University of Lipsig conducted a study of 40 mummies and found that every single one of them contained potentially dangerous mold. So, of course it does. It's possible. But unlikely. And

almost definitely was not a mummy's curse. I would say it very much definitely was not a mummy's curse. It was the curse of Louisa Mayalka. It was the curse of science and mold growing. So there you have it, man. That's your answer. Was there really a curse on King Tut's tomb? And oh, if you want to learn more about it, you can type in King Tut. That'll bring up a bunch of stuff on the site. Yeah, you just have to type it into our handy search bar at howstuffworks.com. And I said handy search bar. So that means it's time for listener mail. You know, they recreated his face too. I think that made a lot of press at the time. Yeah, he didn't seem to look abnormal though. Well, if you look from the profile,

he's got a funny shaped head for sure. And it wasn't from wrapping. They say it wasn't from wrapping. They say that's just the family head. Have you ever heard of footbinding? Yeah, what is that? I don't know if it was in China or Japan or both. But like in the early 20th century, late 19th century, probably further back, it was considered attractive for a woman to have a foot like a duck, like a triangle. So they would bind your feet to this like bonsai into the shape for years. And then eventually you would have this deformed foot that was like the point of the triangle was your heel. And then it went out into the other two points. And there was your foot. And it was considered

very alluring. And it was outlawed. It was definitely outlawed in China. And like you could get in big trouble if your, you know, daughter was found to have bound feet. Wow. I'd heard of that. I didn't know what it was. Odd. Mystery solved. All right. Listener mail. Hi, Chuck, Josh and Jerry. By the way, Josh, I'm going to call this S.Y.S.K. Savin' Lives. Oh, this is a good one. Yeah. Greetings from a long time listener in your new Atlanta neighbor. I don't think he really lives next door to one of us. I think he just, this new in town. Got you. Jerry just laughed at that. I want to take a few moments to tell you how S.Y.S.K. contributed to saving my friend's life.

Back in January of this year, a coworker and good friend of mine. I'm glad he said he was a good friend because when I read it initially, I didn't see that. Yeah. It's like this guy gave up a kidney for a coworker. A coworker was diagnosed with in-stage kidney failure. Uh, shortly after he told me, you guys publish how organ donation works. Yeah. After hearing about how long it might take on the waiting list and how many transplants were done each year, I decided that the least I could do was get tested. As it turns out, the other members of his family were disqualified due to a number of reasons, including age and medical history. But lo and behold, I was a match. And in parentheses, he says that'll teach me to volunteer.

What a good guy. No kidding, man. He even like ribs himself. Over the course of the summer, he and I were run through a battery of tests to match blood type and to prep the anti-rejection drugs he would need after surgery. And then on October 18th, we did the transplant. I am thrilled to report now only a little over a month later. Both of us are completely almost recovered and doing great. I would love it if you would encourage anyone on the fence about getting tested to go for it. The process is a little intimidating, but definitely worth it. Also, the unlimited cranberry juice and chicken broth are great perks. And that is Dustin, who gave up a kidney for a co-worker. Yeah, and you know what?

It's one of our long-standing SYSK models. Give up a kidney for a co-worker slash friend, get a stuff you should know t-shirt. So Dustin, if you want to come down to the office, we will gladly shake your hand and give you your t-shirt. Absolutely. If you are the type who doesn't like to leave the house, we'll also mail it to you. Just contact us via email. If you like, I'll give up a kidney. We'll contact you. We have his email. But yes, expect a t-shirt at the very least. And if you want to come by, we'd love to meet you. So thank you for doing that. That's awesome. I mean, that is awesome. So cool. I don't even feel like a bad person or less of a person, because it's so colossally out of something I would do for a

co-worker. Hey, we're co-workers. I'd give up a kidney for Jerry. I know, I would too. I know you would. You totally would. Yeah. You wouldn't for me though, would you? Well, you wouldn't for me either. But we'd both do it for Jerry. It's a wash. Yeah, exactly. I just think that that's great. So thank you for that. If you have a fantastic, amazing story, you want to toot your own horn, that's fine. That's cool, man. You do something like that you get to once in a while. You can tweet it to us if you can tell us your story in 140 characters or less. You can tweet that to syskpodcast. You can go on to Facebook and go to facebook.com slash stuff you should know. Or you can send us an email at stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com.

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