A short but entertaining article that suggests that although the newspapers leaped on the idea of a curse, not only does all evidence point to the fact that no such curse existed, but that the boot was somewhat on the other foot:
In fact, the discoverer of the tomb, Egyptologist Howard Carter who should have been numero uno on the hit list, lived till 65. However, the irony is, when the young pharaoh was put on display for the public this week, all evidence appeared to point to the curse being on the king himself.
To begin with, Tut's parentage and race was in doubt. When he was born he had an elongated head, a cleft palate, bent spine and buck teeth which resulted in overbite. His death at the age of 19 was the result of a horrific bone-shattering accident which caused fatal gangrene to set in — or, again, he may have been murdered by his own advisors with a crushing blow to the base of the skull.
In any case, he was interred in a tomb that was never intended for a king. Three thousand years later, in 1922, Carter managed to rip out a good part of the royal youth's face while trying to pull off the ornate 11 kilogramme golden mask pressed on it.
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