Pharaoh's curse: Suez Canal crisis hits after mummies were disturbed

This topic is actively discussed in local social networks, reports the Daily Mail. Bloggers noticed a suspicious coincidence: all the emergency began after the authorities announced that on April 3, more than two dozen mummies would be transported from the Cairo Egyptian Museum to a new location - to the Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat. Immediately after that, disasters began: a giant container ship blocked the Suez Canal, two trains collided in Sohag, which killed 32 people, and in Cairo a 10-storey building collapsed, burying 25 people under the rubble...

Local bloggers believe that all this is not accidental, and remind of the curse of the pharaoh, which says: "Death on fast wings will overtake anyone who touches the grave of the pharaoh". These words, supposedly inscribed in the tomb of Tutankhamun, began to come true after 99 years ago, archaeologists disturbed his mummy.

The version about the newly earned curse was so widespread in the country that local TV was forced to call on scientists for comment. The famous Egyptologist Zahi Hawass appeared on the Al-Arabiya TV channel, claiming that there is no curse in nature, and the deaths of those who worked on the excavation of tombs in the past were caused by the action of poisonous microorganisms. “The procession of transporting royal mummies is the best advertisement for Egypt”, - the scientist added. “Within 40 minutes, the eyes of the whole world will be riveted on our country”.

Among the museum exhibits that are planned to be transported on April 3 are the mummies of the pharaohs Ramses II, Sekenenr Taa II, Thutmose III and Seti I, as well as the queens Hatshepsut, Meritamon and Yahmos-Nefertari.

The legend of the curse of the pharaoh appeared after 22 people from the expedition of Lord Carnarvon, one way or another associated with the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, died in the next few years from strange deaths. The curse was allegedly released by the archaeologist Howard Carter, who was the first to disturb the mummy. A few days after the opening of the tomb, a canary living in Carter's Luxor home was eaten by a snake. In Egyptian mythology, snakes hit the enemies of the pharaoh, so immediately after the incident, rumors of a bad omen spread. And soon from blood poisoning after a mosquito bite, the leader of the expedition, Lord Carnarvon, died, thus laying the foundation for the countdown of the deaths of victims of the curse.

Today, scientists, trying to explain the mass deaths of those involved in the excavations, put forward several versions: the cause could be the poisons laid in the sarcophagus during burial, radioactive elements in the grave, or a fungus living in mold.