CURSE OF TUT-ANKH-AMEN.

Matamata Record, Volume VII, Issue 580, 10 November 1924, Page 7

CURSE OF TUT-ANKH-AMEN.

THE PARCHMENTS THAT BROUGHT DEATH. A Strange Tragedy. All the dabblers in occultism and the believers' in superstition have recently been stirred by the strange premonitions of tho late Mr H. G. EvelynWhite, the scholar and Egyptologist, whoso tragic death by suicide has boon so much deplored. In tho last letter written by Mr Evelyn-White before the unhappy occurrence, the sentenco occurs: "I knew there was a curse on me." It seems that the writer was in Egypt when the tomb of Tut-ankh-amcn was discovered, and the curse under which ho imagined he was living had some connection with some ancient manuscripts in his possession.

These manuscripts had been found in an ancient Egyptian monastery, and had been guarded for centuries. So struck was the scholar by these documents that he obtained permission to remove them to the Coptic Museum in Cairo, where he said later the "monks told me the curse for removing them would work all the same." In tho last letter written before the final tragedy of shooting himself in a taxi, Mr Eve-lyn-White wrote: "Now it has done so."

The belief in tho curse of Tut-ankh-amen is widespread. First came the death in April, 1923, of the late Earl of Carnarvon, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle suggested that the "elementals" or spirits placed in tho tomb by ancient Egyptians might have caused his death. This death was followed in September 26 of last year by that of Colonel Aubrey Herbert, who had also entered the tomb of Tut-ankh-amen, and remarked at the time:: "Something dreadful is going to happen to our family." Then in January last came the death of the famous radiologist, Sir Archibald Douglas Beid, who had agreed to X-ray the mummy of Tut-ankh-amen. In the next month Professor Laffleur, of the McGill University, who also went to see the tomb, died of pneumonia in Switzerland.

The tragedy of Mr Evelyn-White's death this hist month, and his own belief that the "curse" was working its sinister influence over him, lent further credence to the superstitious belief in the evil of the dead and gone, King Tut-ankh-amen.