 Valley of the Kings is a valley in Egypt where from the 16th century BC to the 11th century BC many pharaohs and noblemen were buried. This valley is on the west bank of the Nile River and as of 2008, 64 tombs had been found. This is now a world heritage site and it does attract tourists from all over our planet. However, one of the most intriguing aspects of this valley isn't the tombs themselves, but a curse. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Make sure you hit that subscribe button and give us a like. Special shout out again to our producer Tiffany Monroe. Again, she is a rakey master here based out of Atlanta, Georgia. If you would like to get into contact with Tiffany if you're interested in exploring some alternative healing, her email address is listed down below. I also would like to say thank you to all of our patrons and our new patrons. If you have emailed me your story that you would like for me to cover, but I have not responded yet, there's a good chance that I've missed the email. We have been traveling a lot and with the state of our world right now, I am behind on my emails, so I apologize. Do me a big favor and send me an email again. And in the subject line, please put Patreon request so I know to check that first. All right, let's get started. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta. My name is Bryce and today on Mystery Monday, we are going to be talking about the curse of the pharaohs. Last week on this channel, we talked a lot about the Ptolemy dynasty. Well, today, we're going to go back way back long before the Ptolemy's ever entered Egypt, long before the birth of Jesus Christ. We're going to go back to a young pharaoh, a young pharaoh we now call King Tut. King Tut's real name was King Tutankhamen and he was one of the youngest rulers our world has ever known. In fact, he was only eight years old when he took the throne as pharaoh. You see, eight-year-old Tutankhamen had a lot of pressure on his back when he became the pharaoh. His father was not the best ruler Egypt had ever known. In fact, through his father, they had experienced a bit of a dark age. A lot of the temples had been destroyed. And with Tutankhamen taking the throne, the people of Egypt felt like it was a time where things were going to be restored and there was going to be prosperity. And for the next 10 years of Tutankhamen's reign, Egypt did experience a lot of prosperity. But the thing is, Tutankhamen only lived 10 more years. He died very young, around the age of 18. Now, we know from looking at Tutankhamen's body today that he had a lot of health problems. We know one of his legs was messed up and in his tomb, there were a lot of canes indicating that he did walk with a limp. We know that his immune system was compromised because it seems that he got malaria quite a lot. His body just could not fight it off. Was this from inbreeding? I don't know, but I would guess so. In fact, Tutankhamen himself was married to his sister when he became pharaoh. Now his sister and Tutankhamen did have two children, but unfortunately they did not survive. Was this because they were super inbred? I have no way of knowing. But needless to say, Tutankhamen died and did not leave an heir. This will come into our story next Monday. But alas, in 1325 BC, Tutankhamen died. They went to bury him in the valley of the kings. Now, when Tutankhamen became pharaoh, it was customary that at that time of their crowning, they would go ahead and select a place in the valley to eventually beat their tomb. Now, I guess nobody expected Tutankhamen to die so young because his tomb is not the biggest of all the tombs in the valley. It was almost like his death was a surprise. But nonetheless, once Tutankhamen passed away, his person, his story was erased from our history books for about 3,000 years. Howard Carter was born in London, England in 1874. He was the youngest of 11 children. And unfortunately, Howard was born sick as a baby. And so his parents thought it was best that they sent Howard outside of London to be raised with his aunts because the heir in the city was probably not going to be beneficial to his health. This decision by Howard's parents ended up paving the way to Howard's legacy because you see Howard Carter and King Tut will forever be intertwined. Now, Howard's family was not a wealthy family. And in fact, Howard had a very limited education. He was out of school by the time he was 15 years old. But there was one thing that Howard was really good at. And that was drawing. Didlington Hall is a great manor that was mere miles away from Howard Carter's aunt's house. And so Howard Carter would find himself in their garden drawing all the time. Well, he took the attention of the Amherst family who owned this manor. They say that it's not what you know, but who you know in life that counts. Well, the Amherst family had jumped on the Egyptian craze that was coming into Europe in the late 1800s. The Amherst family themselves had lots of Egyptian antiques in Didlington Hall, their manor home. And Howard Carter developed a slight obsession with drawing these antiques. By 1891, Lady Amherst herself raised enough money to send young Howard Carter off to Egypt to assist her friend and Egyptologist, Percy Newberry. At this time, Howard Carter was only 17 years old. When Howard got to Egypt, he spent his time drawing antiquity. You see, back then there were not a lot of crazy cameras we could set up and quickly take pictures of the insides of these tombs. They had to have artists down there to sketch everything to make sure all the inventory and everything was in its place. Howard's drawings became vital to our understanding of Egyptian history. Over time, and through the luck of fate, Howard himself was able to apprentice to become an archaeologist. In 1898, everything changed for Howard Carter. You see, there was a freak storm that happened in Luxor, Egypt, around the Temple of the Western Thieves. Howard was sent to this temple to sketch out all the damages that had been done. And while he was headed back home, he stumbled upon something that had been revealed through the storm. This revealed that there was possibly a young pharaoh named Tutankhamen somewhere within this land that nobody had found before. Thus would begin the culmination of Howard Carter's life's work. By 1901, Howard Carter had the backing of an American tycoon named Theodore Davis. But by 1905, all of that would change when he would meet Lord Kavanaugh. Lord Kavanaugh was like any English aristocrat in this time. You see, he had been in an accident. And a lot of times back then, the doctors in England would tell these rich people who could afford it to go down to Egypt to recover because of the weather. We do that here in America, but for us, that's Arizona. Arizona is also a dry heat. It's also a desert. And a lot of people get sent there if their help isn't that great. And they need that dry heat to help them. Lord Kavanaugh all of a sudden became so enchanted by the mystery of this Egyptian culture. And he ended up backing Howard Carter and out Howard Carter's expedition to try to find this mysterious King Tut. By 1914, Howard Carter and Lord Kavanaugh had be given a permit to dig within the Valley of the Kings. Now after this time, there was some halts and some stuff going on because we did go into World War One. And that changed a few things. But nonetheless, after the war was over, they got back to digging. And as time went on, it was Lord Kavanaugh that started to tire of this expedition. They hadn't found anything. And money was just being spent haphazardly on a project that wasn't showing any results. Well, as any good story goes, right before Lord Kavanaugh was about to give up, Howard Carter found Tutankhamen's burial place in the Valley of the Kings. And on the 26th of November in 1922, Howard Carter, Lord Kavanaugh and his daughter Evelyn entered Tutankhamen's resting place. Now a lot of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings had been tomb raided before they got there. In fact, before any of us in our modern world had gotten there, there was graffiti in these tombs from the Roman Empire. That's how long people have been looting this area of Egypt. But Tutankhamen's tomb, it had not been touched. Maybe it's because Tutankhamen himself had fallen off with the history books and nobody knew he was there or maybe maybe the curse is real and it was just protected for such a long time. But nonetheless, when they entered his burial place, they stood there and looked upon golden treasures that had not been seen by the sun for about 3000 years. The media went crazy. We had what they called Tut craze. All of a sudden, everybody all over the world was obsessed with this young pharaoh that had lived all these years before and died at a very young age. Well, all except maybe some locals. The curse of the pharaohs was well known amongst the people and it does appear that when Kavanaugh and Carter and Kavanaugh's daughter entered the tomb, it specifically said on the wall, those who enter the sacred tomb shall soon be visited by the wings of death. The first indication that there was some validity to this curse happened before the media got even a hold of the story. You see after Carter realized he had found the tomb, the canary that he had at his house died. But not just any death, you see a cobra snake had entered into his house and eaten the bird. The workers in his house thought that this was an omen of bad luck because the cobra was the snake of the pharaohs. But nonetheless, Howard Carter persisted and continued to excavate Tutton Common's tomb. And then in 1923, the most bizarre death of them all happened with Lord Kavanaugh himself. It appears that Kavanaugh was shaving one night and he cut himself where a mosquito had bitten. Such a minor accident turned into a huge ordeal when the infection from the mosquito bite spread throughout Kavanaugh's body resulting in blood poisoning. Two very strange things happened at the moment of Lord Kavanaugh's death. For starters, the power in Egypt went off and the British army who was in charge at that time couldn't get the power to turn back on for 20 minutes. Also, Lord Kavanaugh had a dog up in England, a little dog named Susie. At the exact moment of Lord Kavanaugh's death, Susie stood up out of her bed and died. By 1930, there would be 22 deaths revolving around Tutton Common. Now, many people do believe that there might be some validity to this curse. Many people believe that the paintings on the wall inside the tomb possibly contain poison. Whether intentional or not, many people believe this might be why people die. And others still believe it's just one big coincidence. And then again, there are others who believe the spirit of the young pharaoh himself is the one taking vengeance on those who dare to mess with his final resting place. So let me know what you think. I have actually been to an exhibit and seen the stuff from Tutton Common's tomb. I've seen his coffin. I've seen it all. I saw it in Los Angeles, not in the Valley of the King, so maybe there's a difference there. But I don't feel like I was cursed from having that experience. In fact, being able to see all these artifacts from 3,000 years ago is one of my most favorite memories. However, even though I don't feel like I was cursed from seeing these artifacts, I'm certainly not someone who believes in coincidence. And 22 people dying around an excavation that promised death for those who entered is pretty chilling to me. Alright guys, thank you again for sitting through another story. Remember to leave your comments down below. Also, if you would like to purchase our opening song, we have a link down below. And if you would like to support Todd Roderick's band, I'll link to that down below as well. Alright, I'll talk to you soon. Bye.