Jinxes & Curses

Some 34 years ago Peter Tandy, a young curator at the Natural History Museum, happened upon a jewel while working among the great lines of mineral cabinets. From a scientific perspective, the stone was nothing special, though its setting was rather bizarre, bound by a silver ring decorated with astrological symbols and mystical words with two scarab-carved gems attached. It was a typewritten note that accompanied the jewel, an amethyst known as the Delhi Purple Sapphire, that caught Tandy’s eye.“This stone is trebly accursed and is stained with the blood, and the dishonour of everyone who has ever owned it,” said the note, which had beenwritten by Edward Heron-Allen, a scientist, friend of Oscar Wilde and the amethyst’s last owner.

It carried a curse and had left a trail of bad luck and tragedy.Heron-Allen claimed to have been so disturbed that he had surrounded the amethyst with supposedly protective charms and sealed it inside seven boxes before leaving it to the museum in his will. His letter concluded: “Whoever shall then open it, shall first read out this warning, and then do as he pleases with the jewel. My advice to him or her is to cast it into the sea.” While they were sceptical, Tandy and his colleagues agreed to keep quiet about the curse. The jewel might have remained hidden if its remarkable story had not caught the imagination of staff working to relaunch the museum’s public mineral gallery, the Vault. On Wednesday, the Delhi PurpleSapphire will go on permanent display at the museum, complete with a label declaring its reputation as “trebly accursed”. A supernatural tale might seem to sit a little uneasily in one of the world’s great scientific institutions. But according to Alan Hart, head of collections in the mineralogy department, such narratives give the collection a cultural dimension that appeals to visitors. “People ascribe precious stones with all sorts of legends. All it needs is for one owner to declare it to be cursed or lucky and the story will remain with the stone as it is passed from person to person through history,” he says. But that the Delhi Purple Sapphire was cursed was never doubted by Heron-Allen’s family. Ivor Jones, his grandson, a 77-year-old former naval officer, refuses to handle thejewel.......

The startling sight the other day of a colossal gold statue of the Jackal-headed god Anubis sailing under Tower Bridge, heralding the return to London of Tut-Mania next month, sent shivers down my spine - but for all the wrong reasons. The boy king's glittering tomb treasures will soon arrive in London from America for a major exhibition.More than 300,000 tickets have already been sold - but I may have to excuse myself from coming face-to-face with him again, for reasons which I shall explain. The eight-metre high image of Anubis, the ancient Egyptian god ofthe dead, evoked extraordinary memories.

I was one of the 1.7 million who braved interminable queues at the British Museum to view Tutankhamun's 3,000-year-old tomb treasures back in 1972.But the statue also had my mind rolling back to another astonishing discovery made more recently, in 1999, which has had extraordinary ramifications in my own life. I am a rational person, but, believe me, it has led me to question my sanity more than once, and to wonder in earnest whether I, in the 21st century, have been the victim of the legendary "Pharaoh's Curse". Of course, in the cold light of day, it sounds somewhat fanciful. Yet the "Curse of Tut" is said to have claimed the lives, fortunes and happiness of scores of people who were involved in British archaeologist Howard Carter's discovery ofTutankhamun's tomb in 1922. But though I am no fan of paranormal claptrap, I have nevertheless quaked at times when I think back over the string of disasters which have befallen me since I first handled a collection of obscure objects which had once lain buried with Tutankhamun himself. After 40-odd years of marriage, my then parents-in-law were separating. While they were packing up the house, I happened upon two battered Cognac boxes in the back of a wardrobe, crammed with the last things on earth you'd expect to see. "Just the family jewels," my former father-in-law, Michael, joked. "I'd actually forgotten they were there." Inside the boxes was a collection of dusty glass petri dishes containing textile fragments, seeds, palm nuts, food and biological samples. When I asked what oneart......

One of the most gripping tales to have captured public imagination is the legend of Tutankhamen's curse, the superstition that the mummy of Egypt's boy-king took its revenge on the violators of its tomb, causing the death of the British excavators who discovered the grave in 1923.Though the tales petered out in the 80s, after the woman who was the last link to the expedition died, a similar myth has now sprung up in Nepal, still regarded as a mysterious land that opened up to the outside world only in 1950.According to Nepal's tabloid press, a secret room in a temple in western Nepal wields similar power, and could be responsible forthe massacre of Nepal's royal family in 2001 as well as the sudden death of a parliamentarian recently. More than two centuries ago, the forefather of the present King Gyanendra, swooped down on Kathmandu valley from the tiny kingdom of Gorkha in western Nepal and began annexing the neighbouring principalities. The old palace still stands in Gorkha, protected by the temple of Gorkhakali, the goddess of war and power. Like many old temples in Nepal, the Gorkhakali shrine has a 'vayu kotha' - a secret room said to contain dangerous powers and kept locked. Though worshippers are forbidden to enter the secret room, the late queen, Aishwarya, ordered the lock to be forced open and entered it in May 2001, the Jana Aastha tabloid reported. A week later, thequeen, while attending a dinner party with family members, was gunned down along with king Birendra, three of their children, and other relatives, reportedly by her eldest son crown prince Dipendra who also perished in the infamous midnight massacre. The scared temple authorities boarded up the room once again only to be commanded to re-open it last month, which was once again followed by death, the tabloid said. Last month, a team of parliamentarians went to Gorkha as part of its mandate to visit Nepalese prisons and advise the government how to improve them. The tabloid said that the head of the team, Dilli Raj Sharma, went to the temple where the priest told him about queen Aishwarya's visit. An intrigued Sharma then reportedly asked the priest to have the door of the secret room forced openonce agai.......

Legend has it that the royal tombs of ancient Egypt were sealed with monstrous curses against all those who trespassed into the domain of the afterlife. In the tomb of the boy pharaoh, Tutankhamun, hieroglyphs were said to have spelled out a dreadful end for all those who entered.Howard Carter, the lead archaeologist who opened the tomb in 1923, wrote that "all sane people should dismiss such inventions with contempt".But a German man has decided the curse of the mummies is definitely not a myth - and has therefore returned a plundered ancient Egyptian carving which he says has fatally cursed hisfamily. The relic was stolen three years ago from the Valley of Kings, near Luxor, home to the tombs of dozens of Pharaohs and Egyptian nobles who were buried there some three millennia ago. The unnamed man decided to take it home to Germany with him as a souvenir of his trip. It was on his return to Europe that the trouble began, according to an anonymous note that accompanied the carving when it was recently returned to the Egyptian embassy in Berlin. Instead of enjoying his stolen treasure, the thief was struck down with an inexplicable fatigue and fever, progressing to paralysis, and ultimately death. Following his demise, the stolen piece was returned to the Egyptians by his stepson, who believed that the thief's torment would not end merely withdeath. By returning the carving to its rightful home, Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities said this week, he hoped his stepfather's soul could rest in peace. The apparent curse is the latest in a long series of bedevilments that have menaced the explorers and plunderers of the Valley of the Kings over the years. King Tut's "curse" is by far the most famous of those attached to the ancient pharaohs. The team that excavated his tomb is rumoured to have suffered a bizarre series of unexplained deaths in the months and years after its treasures were uncovered. Its primary victim was said to be the expedition's main financial backer, George Herbert, Earl of Carnarvon, who was found dead soon after revealing the tomb's still unsurpassed bounty. Hisdea.......