https://vo.rs/tags/egyptomania/Recent content in Egyptomania on vo.rsHugoenThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.Sat, 06 Jan 2024 10:00:00 +0000https://vo.rs/unravelled/the-curse-of-tutankhamun-the-mosquito-and-the-headline/Sat, 06 Jan 2024 10:00:00 +0000https://vo.rs/unravelled/the-curse-of-tutankhamun-the-mosquito-and-the-headline/<p>In the early hours of 5 April 1923, in a hotel room in Cairo, George Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, died of blood poisoning. He had nicked a mosquito bite while shaving, the wound had become infected, erysipelas set in and then pneumonia, and a man already weakened by a car crash years before could not fight it off. He was fifty-six. Five months earlier he had stood behind Howard Carter as the archaeologist made a small breach in a sealed doorway in the Valley of the Kings, held up a candle, and saw &ldquo;wonderful things&rdquo; — the almost intact tomb of a boy-king dead for three thousand years. By the time Carnarvon died, the discovery of Tutankhamun was the biggest story on earth. And so a shaving cut became a curse, and a mosquito became the instrument of a pharaoh&rsquo;s revenge. The story of how that happened is a small masterclass in how the modern world manufactures its ghosts.</p>