Gandon was a researcher at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris when the paper was published. 'Indeed, the mysterious death of Lord Carnarvon after entering the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun could potentially be explained by an infection with a highly virulent and very long-lived pathogen,' Sylvain Gandon wrote in the 1998 journal article.

In an effort to determine whether a long-lived pathogen could have caused the 'curse,' scientists used mathematical modeling to determine how long a pathogen could survive inside a tomb, according to papers published on the subject in 19 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. While the notion of a 'curse' may sound ridiculous, it has actually been studied seriously by scientists, with several papers published on the topic.

No writing from ancient Egyptians mentioning a curse was found in the tomb. After Carnarvon's arrival, they ventured into the tomb, seeing the 'wonderful' artifacts buried with Tutankhamun. When Howard Carter found the tomb in November 1922, he delayed exploring inside until Herbert could arrive from Britain. The gold coverings and the care taken in embalming the mummies so far discovered are an indication that the dead had been rulers and the wealthy of their time, said Gaballah Ali Gaballah, the chairman of the state's supreme council of antiquities.Carnarvon had been financing the search for and excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb. The items found with the dead included pottery, copper, jewellery and funerary accessories. 'The dig will continue for several more years in order to retrieve the estimated 10,000 more mummies in the necropolis,' he added.įifty mummies were found stacked in piles in each of four tombs in the four-mile-long cemetery, which dates from between 330BC and AD400. They expected to make more discoveries in the area.Īs well as the mummies with golden masks, there were others 'coated in plaster or covered with linen, while some mummies were inside terra cotta sarcophagi bearing representations of the human head,' Mr Hawas told the Egyptian news agency Mena. The archaeologists said selected mummies were being examined by other experts in Cairo. Many other items were found after those searching for the fallen donkey reported what they had seen. Zahi Hawass, director of Cairo and Giza antiquities, who led the dig near Bahariya Oasis, 185 miles south-west of Cairo, was quoted as saying that some of the mummies wore golden masks 'with magnificent designs of ancient Egyptian divinities on their chests'. The site has been dubbed the 'Valley of Mummies'.

Why were some mummies lined with gold