TUTANKHAMEN CURSE

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 124, 18 February 1933, Page 2

TUTANKHAMEN CURSE

Queer Pieces of Wood INCIDENT IN LABORATORY) (Reuter —Letter to "Dominion.”) Superstitious persons, and many others, hare been watching with interest an investigation which is being carried on by the Imperial Forestry Institute at Oxford into the properties of some pieces of wood from the shrines outside the sarcophagus of Tutankhamen, which have recently arrived from Egypt. An extraordinary series of accidents has delayed the investigation, recalling the legend of a curse resting on ail who handled the contents pf the tomb. The pieces of wood were passed on from one assistant in the department to another. Some appear to bare lieeu genuinely frightened of them, while others aided and abetted the revival of the legend more or less by way of a joke. There was a pointed sequel. One of the junior assistants into whose unwilling hands the wood finally passed was taken ill suddenly and confined to bed for over a month. The wood itself proved very difficult to handle for cutting, and a beaker in which it was being boiled splintered to pieces. Later the bottle in which it was placed blew up in the laboratory.