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The Curse of the Mummy |
The next day, one of the remaining 3 men was shot by an Egyptian servant accidentally. His arm was so severely wounded it had to be amputated.
The 3rd man in the foursome found on his
return home that the bank holding his entire savings had failed. The 4th guy
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 3 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. 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 2 workmen,
1 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 hulred
about at night. One watchman died on duty causing the other watchmen 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.
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 was said to have gone home then, locked
his bedroom door and shot himself. Soon afterwards, the museum sold the mummy
to a private collector.
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.
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 1912, the new owner escorted his 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.
Sometime after the sinking, several New York newspapers revealed the truth behind the Titanic's demise. The real reason for the disaster, they claimed, lay within Titanic's hold. There, inside a sarcophagus, was a mummified body of an Egyptian princess being shipped to America for a private collector. The mummy was cursed, and when the unthinkable happened, the collector bribed the crew to put the mummy in a lifeboat. In 1934, Wallis Budge, Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities, wrote: "... no mummy which ever did things of this kind was ever in the British Museum. .... Only well behaved mummies are allowed inside the British Museum."
Safely in America, the mummy brought such bad luck to the collector that he shipped it back to Europe on the ship Empress of Ireland--which sank with the loss of hundreds of lives. Somehow, the mummy was saved again.
The owner now decided to return it to Egypt on a third ship, the Lusitania, which was torpedoed by a German submarine.
Presumably, the princess is now sleeping undisturbed at the bottom of the Irish Channel.
