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LATEST UPDATE: PHARAOH DID NOT DIE OF BLOW TO
HEAD!
BY JM
PREVIOUS PAGE
 Lord
Carnarvon's half-brother apparently took his own
life while temporarily insane, and a further 21
people connected in some way with the dig, were
also dead. Of the original tomb raiders,
excavation, only Howard Carter lived to a ripe old
age, dying in 1939 from natural causes.
Mohammed Ibrahim, Egypt's
director of antiquities, in 1966 argued with the
government against letting the tomb's treasures
leave Egypt for an overseas exhibition. He had
suffered terrible nightmares of what would happen
if they left the country. Ibrahim left a final
meeting, stepped out into a clear road on a bright
sunny day. A car hit him and he died instantly.
In 1972, when the treasures
of the tomb were taken to London for an
exhibition, the Curse again manifested. Dr Gamal
Mehrez, Ibrahim's successor in Cairo scoffed at
the legend, saying that his whole life had been
spent in Egyptology and that all the deaths and
misfortune through the decades had been the result
of `pure coincidence'. He died the night after
supervising the packaging of the relics for
transport to England by a Royal Air Force plane.
Several crew members of that aircraft suffered
death, injury, misfortune and disaster in the
years that followed their cursed flight.
 Rationalists
argue that more people from Howard Carter's
expedition died of natural causes than any curse.
In fact, a vast section of scientists too rule out
any possibility of any curse. Gotthard Kramer, in
1999, analysed 44 mummies and asserted that
dormant spores and molds lying hidden in the tomb
for thousands of years could have suddenly come to
life on receiving fresh air and light.
Pharaoh Tutankhamun is
believed to have lived - and died - a painful
death. Scientists discovered a chipped bone in his
skull, which led to increased speculation that he
could have been hit with a hard object, leading to
his death. In life, he was supposed to have been
afflicted with a spinal disease, which forced him
to use a head-collar-like contraption. Walking
sticks also were part of the mind-boggling
inventory unearthed from the Tutankhamun tomb.
Now, across millennia,
Tutankhamun's Curse has come back to haunt.
Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, who supervised the first
CT scan of the mummy of the boy pharaoh
Tutankhamun this week, said the experience
suggested it might be unwise to write off the
legendary “curse of the pharaohs.” The CT, or
computed tomography, scan produced
three-dimensional images X-ray of the boy
pharaoh’s remains.
“I cannot dismiss the legend
of the curse because today many things happened.
We almost had an accident in a car, the wind blew
up in the Valley of the Kings and the computer of
the CT scan was completely stopped for two hours,”
Hawass said in videotaped remarks. An Egyptian
team carried out the CT scan in the Valley of the
Kings near the southern town of Luxor on January
6, 2005 evening.
It
was only the fourth time that the mummified body
of the king has been examined in detail since
Howard Carter found King Tutankhamun's tomb
intact. Archaeologists last opened the coffin in
1968, when an X-ray revealed the bone fault in the
skull. “The mummy needs preservation. We need to
keep the temperature inside the sarcophagus
(stable) and also restore the golden mask,” Hawass
said.
Hawass, well known around
the world for his enthusiastic television
appearances in documentaries on ancient Egypt, has
previously spoken about spooky experiences he has
had while excavating tombs and taking mummies out
of sarcophagi. “I think we should still believe in
the curse of the Pharaohs,” he says.
The ancient tomb opened by
Howard Carter in 1923 still remains a mystery.
Pharaoh Tutankhamun's CT scan results are expected
only in four weeks. Its result may throw light on
the boy king's untimely death - and his unknown
life. But the bigger secret remains impenetrable:
is Tutankhamun's Curse for real? 3,500 years after
the young Pharaoh died of mysterious reasons, the
mist fails to lift. Tutankhamun lives.
BY JM
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The
magic begins! Read all about 
Peeping
Toms! Why do they do it?
FWD:
Jhelo this stuff! 