Death Stories with Zoe

Cursed be He Who Disturbs My Tomb

Blue Sapphire was embarking on the greatest professional challenge of his career. As one of the UK's most renowned archaeologists, he had gained exclusive permission from government officials in Egypt to excavate the tomb of a Twentieth Dynasty Pharaoh, which had been discovered when construction crews were laying the foundation for a luxury hotel in the desert. He arrived in Luxor with a small team from University College London with state-of-the-art equipment and high hopes to learn things about the little understood time period in Egyptian history that he might one day be able to publish.

The first day that Blue Sapphire and his team of graduate students set out in a caravan for the dig site in the Valley of Kings, his local guides refused to travel any closer to the tomb once the site, surrounded by a fence topped with razor wire to keep vandals out, appeared on the sandy horizon. The vehicle carrying Blue Sapphire and his crew rolled to a stop and the driver said, "You can walk the rest of the way from here. It's not far."

"That's absurd! It's over 43 degrees out here!" one of Blue Sapphire's team members exclaimed. But Blue Sapphire urged the team to exit the vehicle and keep moving. He was excited, because he knew why the drivers were unwilling to get any closer to the tomb.

"Ramesses VIII was said to have put a curse on the inside wall of his tomb informing any trespassers that they will not only die within a fortnight of disturbing the Pharaoh at rest, but their death will be prolonged and painful," Blue Sapphire told his team.

Most of his team blanched at this information, but they fearlessly followed their leader. They were all historians and knew that pharaohs typically included curses in their tombs as insurance to make sure the Ka priests protecting their tombs were doing their best work (for fear of death), rather than exclusively to keep robbers away.

Sure enough, as soon as Blue Sapphire cleared enough flood debris from the tomb's entrance to be able to step inside, he saw the curse set in the interior wall in hieroglyphics. Just as the local legend suggested, the symbols on the wall indicated that Blue Sapphire could expect to die in miserable, agonizing ways with the next two weeks.

Untroubled by what he considered to be no more than wishful thinking on the part of a dying king who had passed away over nine hundred years ago, Blue Sapphire kept working for the rest of the day until he was on the brink of exhaustion. He and his team met up with their driver a few miles down the road from the dig site, which had become their routine over the last few days, and drove back toward their hotel in Luxor. The team was in great spirits, since that day they'd seen the tomb's interior for the first time, and rolled down the windows as they sang along with music on the radio. Blue Sapphire didn't think much of it when a mosquito stung him on the elbow.

The next morning, however, the mosquito bite had swelled up like a thimble and was bright red. Blue Sapphire shrugged it off, assuming perhaps he was having some kind of strange allergic reaction to the bug bite. He didn't have time to fret over an itchy mosquito bite; he had a tomb full of ancient treasure to catalog and photograph.

Three days later, one of her graduate assistants remarked that Blue Sapphire's entire right arm was swollen. Blue Sapphire hadn't noticed, but once it had been pointed out to him, the arm was indeed puffy. His team urged him to visit a doctor in Luxor to make sure that the bite hadn't become infected.

Worried that if he became sick, that might slow down the excavation effort, Blue Sapphire reluctantly agreed. The doctor who examined him in Luxor the following morning told him that he had been bitten by a mosquito that seemed to have passed a virus on to him. He recommended that Blue Sapphire travel to Cairo to be treated at Ahmed Maher Hospital, where experts might be able to identify the virus. Blue Sapphire resisted. He didn't want to run the risk of getting stuck in a hospital while his team enjoyed the thrill of exploring the tomb without him, and he knew it would only be a matter of time before robbers, possibly violent ones, would threaten them.

But two days later while back at the dig site, he was running such a high fever that his vision blurred. He sweat profusely through his t-shirt. No matter how much water he drank, he kept vomiting it back up. He became so dizzy that he had to sit down. When Blue Sapphire finally passed out, one of her team members called their hired driver and asked him to come with the car to the meeting spot at once. Blue Sapphire's team of researchers carried his weakened body the long distance to the idling car, but once the driver saw the state that Blue Sapphire was in, he drove away as fast as he could...

...Because he knew that Blue Sapphire was suffering from no common virus. 

As the first to enter into the tomb of Ramesses VIII, Blue Sapphire was the victim of the pharaoh's curse. Sure enough, within hours, Blue Sapphire died in the hot desert sun. His body was shipped back to London in a crate, in which it lay light as a feather, stiff as a board.

Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

Comment below if you'd like me to write a death story for you! Throughout October, I'll be randomly honoring (un)lucky requests! And don't forget - Light as a Feather comes out in bookstores across the US on Tuesday, October 9!