just wanna know if you'll believe this............

TITANIC CURSE OF THE MUMMY: Of all tales of the supernatural, this one is perhaps the best documented, the most disturbing and the most difficult to explain.

The Princess of Amen-Ra lived some 1,500 years before Christ. When she died, she was laid in an ornate wooden coffin and buried deep in a vault at Luxor, on the banks of the Nile. In the late 1890s, four rich, young, Englishmen visiting the excavations at Luxor were invited to buy an exquisitely fashioned mummy case containing the remains of Princess of Amen-Ra.

They drew lots. The man who won paid several thousand pounds and had the coffin taken to his hotel. A few hours later, he was seen walking out towards the desert. He never returned. The next day, one of the remaining three men was shot by an Egyptian servant accidentally. His arm was so severely wounded it had to be amputated. The third man in the foursome found on his return home that the bank holding his entire savings had failed. The fourth man suffered a severe illness, lost his job and was reduced to selling matches in the street.

Nevertheless, the coffin reached England (causing other misfortunes along the way), where it was bought by a London businessman . After three of his family members had been injured in a road accident and his house damaged by fire, the businessman donated it to the British Museum . As the coffin was being unloaded from a truck in the museum courtyard, the truck suddenly went into reverse and trapped a passer-by . Then as the casket was being lifted up the stairs by two workmen, one fell and broke his leg . The other, apparently in perfect health, died unaccountably two days later . Once the Princess was installed in the Egyptian Room, trouble really started . Museum's night watchmen frequently heard frantic hammering and sobbing from the coffin . Other exhibits in the room were also often hurled about at night . One watchman died on duty; causing the other watchmen wanting to quit. Cleaners refused to go near the Princess too . When a visitor derisively flicked a dust cloth at the face painted on the coffin, his child died of measles soon afterwards. Finally, the authorities had the mummy carried down to the basement . Figuring it could not do any harm down there. Within a week, one of the helpers was seriously ill, and the supervisor of the move was found dead on his desk.

By now, the papers had heard of it. A journalist photographer took a picture of the mummy case and when he developed it, the painting on the coffin was of a horrifying, human face. The photographer went home then, locked his bedroom door and shot himself.


Soon afterwards, the museum sold the mummy to a private collector. After continual misfortune (and deaths), the owner banished it to the attic. A well known authority on the occult, Madame Helena Blavatsky, visited the premises. Upon entry, she was seized with a shivering fit and searched the house for the source of "an evil influence of incredible intensity". She finally came to the attic and found the mummy case. "Can you exorcise this evil spirit ?" asked the owner . "There is no such thing as exorcism. Evil remains evil forever . Nothing can be done about it. I implore you to get rid of this evil as soon as possible". But no British museum would take the mummy; the fact that almost 20 people had met with misfortune, disaster or death from handling the casket, in barely 10 yrs, was now well known.

Eventually, a hard-headed American archaeologist (who dismissed the happenings as quirks of circumstance), paid a handsome price for the mummy and arranged for its removal to New York . In April of 1912, the new owner escorted its treasure aboard a sparkling, new White Star liner about to make its maiden voyage to New York.

On the night of April 14, amid scenes of unprecedented horror, the Princess of Amen-Ra accompanied 1,500 passengers to their deaths at the bottom of the Atlantic. The name of the ship was Titanic.


sorry if it's 2 long....

Edit: Removed needless quote.
BurnSide

Theres many mysteries about egyptian curses
None of them have ever been proved to be factual.
There was no plaque above the door of tuts tomb saying that death on swift wings will visit those who disturb his sleep.
If any of this story is true then there would be real names in the story rather than just saying "one man"
also you'd might be interested to know that there was never a princess called amen ra.
Amon Ra was a god, so i'm more inclined to believe that it was a priestess of Amon Ra
so if you strip away all the myth surrounding this tale you have an ancient egyptian mummy case excavated in egypt (normal) then sold to a british museum (normal) then sold to a private collector (normal) and shipped back to his home (normal)
The fact that it was the titanic is also not abnormal, it carried a lot of freight and made up a lot of its expense in that fashion (remember the movie what kate and leo got up to in the car. why was the car there).
also any story that has Madame Blavatsky as a credible witness is i'm afraid quite laughable
Nice story though. Its all over the web

Once again Snopes.com comes to the rescue to debunk such myths.

Quotes from the article:

"These claims cannot both be true, because Helena Blavatsky died of influenza in 1891, but the Titanic's first and only voyage didn't take place until 1912."

"Though the cargo included raw feathers, linen, straw, hatter's fur, tissue, auto parts, leather, rabbit hair, elastics, hair nets and refrigerating apparatus, not so much as one mummy was listed. "

"Stead and Murray crafted an elaborate horror story about a mummy that was brought to England and set up in the drawing room of an acquaintance of theirs. The morning after the mummy arrived, they claimed, everything breakable in the room was destroyed. The mummy was moved from room to room within the house, but each move resulted in the same destruction of all the breakable objects at hand. Wherever the mummy went, it brought sickness, death, and destruction to its owner. "

"This ghost story made the leap from London to the Titanic after William Stead went down with the ill-fated ship on 15 April 1912. Stead was travelling to American at President Taft's request to address a peace conference, and he took delight in relating his "cursed mummy" tale to Titanic passengers. He reportedly defied superstition by starting his narrative at a dinner party on Friday, the 12th of April, and drew it out so that he concluded the tale just after midnight on the 13th. A few days after the Titanic's sinking, one of the survivors recounted Stead's "cursed mummy" tale in an interview with the New York World, and eventually the ghost story Stead and Murray invented, Stead's presence aboard the Titanic, and reports of Stead's having related the mummy tale to Titanic passengers became jumbled together, producing a new legend about an actual mummy aboard the Titanic."

"In case you're curious (and have some vacation time to spare), the coffin lid of the Priestess of Amun is still on display at the British Museum, just as it was when Stead and Murray created their infamous "cursed mummy" tale a century ago. Look for exhibit BM No. 22542, in the Second Egyptian Room."

the tale of a mummy on the titanic is bogus, everyone knows it was a giant ice berg that sunk the ship

I'm pretty sure there was no mummy in the Titanic, are there records?

lol nice one
hehehe

wow i remember reading taht in the weekly world news!

actually i thought the reason the ship sunk was because the lookout on the mast started shouting" iceberg ahead" to the bridge instead of picking up the telephone next to him and having a quiet word with the captain like he was supposed to
at least in the movie it happened like that

Oh come on ...lets not be mean to the Mummy ..., thats not fair !!!!... PRYDE cursed the Titanic.... the pryde of BEEING FASTER than anyone .... you go to fast you'll end up missing something ...like a glaciar... and I have to say its pretty ironic thata boat with the saying
" NOT EVEN GOD CAN SINK IT " sank in its frist trip....

Can’t say I’ve heard this story before. And is there any documentation to prove that this mummy was on the Titanic when it sunk?

you know kryso there's one thing that really ticks me off
that's posters who just read the last post and then offer an opinion or an already answered question
know what i mean

With all the commotion and stress of the sinking and possibly losing friends or family members, how do they know that the person who recounted the story hadn’t got it jumbled up?



I did read the whole thread. And there seems to be mixed views? So I was simply asking if the matter had been put to rest. Sometimes an object isn’t registered under its given name: Like – 1 mummy. It could have been registered under a different description.

i have a book of 812 questions and answers of the titanic, one was about a mummy and the answer is false there was no mummy on board, only reason the titanic sunk is cuz they were going to fast in a ice berg hazard zone, the look out must have been drunk or something lol and they didnt really notice it till the last minute when it was to late.

So.... If the Princess Mummy was not on the Titanic, where is she now?? During that time, depending on the influence and prestige, i.e. power of the person, sometimes "cargo" like that was not registered. I hope I have made a valid point.

Marduk and hamellr did a great job addressing this issue in earlier posts. There was never a mummy--the story crafted around the artifact is complete myth, from start to finish. It was never on the RMS Titanic, period. The cargo manifests of the Titanic show no mummy of any kind (and it's not like some cargo foreman would've forgotten to jot down such a thing). The story was crafted by a couple of men named T.W. Stead. and Douglas Murray around 1900. Stead was a notorious journalist who thrived on scandals and gratuitous tabloid flop, and together the two men weaved this fantastical tale after visiting the British Museum and deciding that the face of this particular coffin looked tormented (I think it's a rather beautiful artifact). Many English folks at this time craved the sort of wild stretches of truth found in the tabloids (well, like too many people do today, for that matter), and the public gobbled up their story.

It so happened that Stead was among the unfortunate to have been on the Titanic that chilly April night in 1912. Because of the fable he and his cohort Murray had spun about the artifact, its legend found its way to the sinking of the great ship. That's all there is to it.

The fact is, there was never a mummy or even a complete coffin. It's a coffin lid dating to the Third Intermediate Period, and a beautiful one at that. It is British Museum Item #EA22542, and here it is:



This artifact has never left the British Museum. It had nothing to do with the Titanic. I know marduk and hamellr have already addressed much of this and I apologize for repeating their useful contributions, but posters still seem to be asking questions that have already been definitively answered. Don't feel bad because we all do this time to time. I've been guilty of it, myself. We all just need to be more attentive to what posters have written earlier in a discussion.

Modern people seem overly concerned with ancient Egyptian curses. This is not to say such a thing was unknown in the ancient Near East because magic and sorcery were part of daily life. Some Egyptian tombs did have curses inscribed on them, usually on the jam or lintel of the main entrance, but tomb curses are relatively rare.

As a docent who works with the Egyptian exhibits in two different Chicago museums, I am often asked, "Isn't it true that Tut's tomb is cursed?" I am upfront and answer: no, of course not. There is no curse inscribed on or in Tut's tomb or even on any of the objects that were put in there for his comforts 3,300 years ago. I was obviously quite surprised while the latest Tut exhibit was in Chicago and a local news affiliate mentioned how a particular object was inscribed with a curse. I could only shake my head. The modern media are much responsible for perpetuating these silly myths.

In one of his posts marduk aptly wrote: "There was no plaque above the door of tuts tomb saying that death on swift wings will visit those who disturb his sleep." He is absolutely correct. The exact phrase is: Death comes on wings to him who enters the tomb of a Pharaoh. The funny thing is, there is no proof whatsoever that these words were ever written in ancient Egypt. In fact, this phrase that is so popular in Hollywood movies today was invented in the 1920s by a Gothic horror novelist named Marie Corelli.

As I said, some tomb curses did exist and are recorded. They weren't meant to keep people out of the tombs, period, because it was essential that people visit with prayers and food offerings to sustain the soul of the deceased. Rather, curses existed to warn the ritually impure or the foolish individual contemplating tomb robbery. These are almost always found on private tombs (i.e., non-royal tombs), and mostly from the Old Kingdom. Here's one example:

A crocodile be against him in the water; a snake be against him on land, he who would do anything against this tomb. Never did I do a thing against him. It is the god who will judge.

There's also the infamous "donkey curse" which sounds quite hilarious to us today because it threatens the raider or impure one with being, um, molested by a donkey. This was pretty shocking back then, however, because the donkey was not a beloved animal (religiously speaking)--it was an animal sacred to Set, the god of chaos and disorder.

One of the most famous curses comes from the Dynasty 18 tomb of Amunhotep son of Hapu. He warns transgressors that they will "lose their earthly positions and honors, be incinerated in a furnace in execration rites, capsize and drown at sea, have no successors, receive no tomb or funerary offerings of their own, and their bodies would decay because they will stave without sustenance and their bones will perish."

I see that I've droned on long enough but it's a fun topic to discuss. I'll turn it over to someone else now.

As much as mysteries and such fascinate me, the post before mine held much more interest to me. Thank you, kmt_sesh, it was a great read! From now on I'll never look at donkeys the same way as before. *shudder*

I'm glad I've given you a new...er...appreciation for donkeys, Isensee. And thanks much for your kind words. Marduk and hamellr had already done a nice job explaining the truth behind the myth in earlier posts they wrote; I was just trying to flesh it out somewhat.

Ancient Egyptian curses are fun to discuss. People just need to have a more realistic understanding of them (by which I mean, one shouldn't get his or her information from Hollywood or tabloids ).

<333



Like someone already mentioned, it was more than likely a priestess. In that case, there could be more than one, and they could be in various places -- y'know?



Thanks for that view, as well. I'm scarred for life. It was a very interesting post, by the way.

On a side note: Of course they're going to look for more 'better' ways to explain the Titanic's sinking. They don't want to truly admit it was their fault it happened. She was supposed to be unsinkable after all. That, and there were famous people on board. Like Margarete Brown and the founder of Macy's Department store. A curse just sounds so much more intriguing then a big block of ice.

I got interested in the RMS Titanic years ago and used to do a considerable amount of reading about that ship and its sinking. I don't know why I was drawn into it because my preferred field of study is the ancient Near East, but something about the Titanic is mesmerizing--and not just to me, I know. I attended both of the Titanic exhibits some years ago at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, and was delighted both times.

The ship belonged to the White Star Line, which merged in 1933 with the Cunard Line, so it no longer even exists (although the Cunard Line still operates). The Titanic was built in a shipyard in Ireland, and I'm sure that shipyard has changed owners many times over and may even no longer be in operation. I don't know if there's anyone left who would want to avoid or shift blame. The White Star never claimed the ship was unsinkable; that was a charge made by the media of the time.

Still, whenever there's a museum exhibit or a special about the Titanic on the Discovery Channel, I'm just one of many, many people who view it. The Titanic lives on, drawing us in. There was no curse on the ship, but you're right about the appeal such a tale has to people.

Hey, maybe the iceberg was cursed!

Newer research and samples taken from the original steel show that the sinking was not unavoidable after hitting the iceberg, but mainly caused due to faulty rivets that popped under the strain. Having one of the bulkheads deformed by a coal fire did not help either. The failure was what precipitated the sinking.

It was, as usual in these cases, a combination of many factors that caused the sinking and most were avoidable.

1. There is no such thing as a "Princess" of Amen-Ra. Then as now royal titles were based on countries, NOT gods. (It would be the same thing as saying that the official title of Elizabeth II is the "Queen of Christ.")

2. There was no "Mummy"! All that was ever brought to England in the first place was a mummy cover or lid. (There's a photograph of it on the first page of this thread.)

3. That mummy cover is STILL on display in the Egyptian Section of the British Museum, London.

Strange. When researching the Titanic for a project, I could've sworn that the claim was made somewhere. I can believe that it wasn't the White Star Line. *shrugs* That was a few years ago, and I've slept since then.

It was not above the door, but on the door itself

there have been plenty of other mummys that have been excavated and put in museums but they dont react like that
for a famous example what about tutankhamun [sorry if i spelt it wrong]
so im gonna go ahad and call it a large series of coincidences or a fake

The only decorated and inscribed architectural part of the tomb is the burial chamber. Neither the outer door nor inner door, nor their lintels and jams, contained any inscriptions aside from the standard stamp of the necropolis seal (from Howard Carter's notes).

Tut's tomb contained no curse. KV62 is one of the least decorated royal tombs in all of the New Kingdom.

I've heard about the rivets, but I believe there was also some evidence that the shipyard in Ireland that built the Titanic may have been using defective steel for the hull and bulkheads. The builders and engineers probably had no idea the steel was structurally weak. I don't know if that argument is still valid, however.

The point is, once again actual science prevails.

As long as you are not talking to Bible or The 12th Planet thumpers, if not you are talking against the wall.

After long investigation it was revealed that the steel rivets which held most of the hull together were weak and brittle.... Titanic was cursed by it's design flaws not a dried up corpse.

And yet I go on doing so. Will I ever learn? I guess I've grown to crave the headaches I get from banging my head against the wall.

Call me a masochist.

Okay! You're a masochist! Happy now?

Sometimes I think people just want to believe that the past is so dark and mysterious, because things today are by and large dull and predictable.

cormac

As the famous Egyptologist Sir E. A. Wallis-Budge wrote 80 years ago, the British Museum is not engaged in the business of selling antiquities!

Not to private collectors. Not to other museums.

Any curator who took it upon himself (herself) to sell a Museum exhibit would go to prison for a very long time.

Hasn't this been disproved several times?

yep, but see, there are even topics that have been disproved within the thread on this board, which does not bother any believer, they just ignore it and keep on spinning the myth.

Is that why I am so obsessed with ancient history? Someone once tried to tell me it must be because I had a past life in Egypt. I wouldn't go so far as to say that.

So, it must be because I'm merely bored with the present. Sitting here at work and typing this instead of working right now, I'd say that's true!

Just to clarify, I meant that as it relates to people who believe in a mummies curse and the like.

cormac

A wise and noble thing Budge wrote--except for the fact that he was one of the most gifted tomb robbers ever employed by the British Museum.

Heck, I didn't say that Budge didn't steal mummies. I merely said that he didn't sell 'em once stolen. <g>

Wait just a minute. To say that the existence of an Egyptian mummy aboard the TITANIC, which presence caused the ship to sink, is arrant nonsense, and that reams of garbage have been written about the so-called "curse of Tut-Ankh-Amen" is one thing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all stories of "cursed" mummies are unworthy of belief.

Sir Arthur Weigall, Inspector-General of Antiquities for the Egyptian Government and the famous Egyptologist Joseph Lindon Smith were both firm believers in cursed and malignant archaeological relics and give several stunning, frightening and quite evidential examples in their books.

Being a firm believer doesn't make it a fact. Besides, ever heard the term "self-fulfilling prophesy". Same basic thing. If a person or persons believe strongly enough that something bad will happen, it usually does. Consciously or sub-consciously they will see that it does.

cormac

Of course. But I've also heard of reading the books of these two well-known and respected Egyptologists before criticizing the claims they make therein. <g>

One of the personal accounts related by both men concerns Howard Carter, the discoverer of Tut-Ankh-Amen's tomb, and one the prime debunker of the Tut "curse," burning an item which he himself believed to be cursed. (This was on the Theban Plain in 1907, 15 years before Carter's great discovery.)

You are the one who brought up specific names, not me. Personally, they had every right to have been superstitious if that's what they believed. Doesn't make any of it true.

cormac

Weigall was the real deal but Smith was a painter, not an Egyptologist. However, he was a highly talented illustrator and documented the reliefs in tombs for some of the leaders in the Egyptological field, most notably George Reisner. LOL This is assuming you and I are talking about the same person, the American artist who died around 1950. He painted many beautiful scenes in the Nile Valley. He wrote the book Tombs, Temples, and Ancient Art. Even though he wasn't an historian, he was present at the opening of many tombs and helped to record the decoration plans found within them.

That's neither here nor there. Weigall and Smith were hardly the only people working in Egypt who suffered from a certain strain of superstition. I'd have to side with cormac mac airt and his declaration of "self-fulfilling prophesy," which sums it up aptly in those sparse words. Are we to believe there is truth in the "mummy's curse" because of the charming superstitious nature of the minority?

For instance, there are many stories spun around the discovery of KV62, Tut's tomb. Aside from the non-existent curse of that tomb, one old yarn has it that Carter was too nervous to enter the tomb first, so he enlarged the hole in the inner door through which he had inserted the candle and thrust through a young Arab boy--just in case. It's rubbish, of course. Carter was about as taciturn and no-nonsense as any man could possibly be. He would not have been a pleasant man to know, probably, but there could not have been a better man for the job. This old yarn probably comes from the true practice in the early days of archaeology to use young Arab boys to squeeze into small niches and spaces where adults could not fit. A legend stemming from fact.

Earlier I recounted how a Gothic horror novelist had much to do with starting the tale of the cursed tomb of the boy-king. She wasn't wholly at fault, of course. A mangled translation of one of the magic bricks found in the burial chamber also contributed to the myth, but the media were chiefly at fault--and most particularly the London press.

Of course there is no such thing as the curse of a tomb, any tomb. This is what the ancients believed. I should hope we moderns know better. The ancient Egyptians held faith that the mere recording of something in hieroglyphs would cause an action to occur, which is why we do find the occasional curse on the entrance to a tomb (although not on any in the Valley of the Kings). Magic and sorcery were part of every-day life in the ancient world. Today we have science, which is a hell of a lot more enlightening.

Out of the twenty-plus years that I have studied ancient Egypt, and putting aside superstitions even among modern people, I have not once encountered any record or tale that would make me think, Hmm, could there in fact be a curse there? The closest I've come is a subterranean gallery of ibis mummies that was being excavated around 1900 in which all of the workers and excavators got very ill all of a sudden soon after first opening the tomb complex. They quickly recovered and returned several days later, and there were no problems after that. Obviously that's not a curse, it's an airborne pathogen of some sort. This is why Zahi Hawass has said he believes the curse is nothing more than molds and such, and science has verified this. Many tombs do contain toxic molds, but never in concentrations that could prove fatal.

Ancient people believed in superstitions because that's how they explained their world. We can turn to science and logic.