I go hog wild for a good archaeology story (2000-year-old Roman dildo and an ancient Incan corpse in a food delivery bag, anyone?) but the tale I’m about to share has filled me with despair and dread. You see, an Egyptologist has revealed he started hallucinating and coughing up blood after entering a tomb that hadn’t been opened for about 600 years.
Screaming, crying and googling magic amulets to protect me from whatever curse this man has unleashed unto the world.
I say “curse” because that’s dead-ass what Egyptologist, author and director Ramy Romany reckons he came face-to-face with when he was filming an episode of Mummies Unwrapped back in 2019.
Romany had been exploring the Egyptian archaeological site of Amarna, which contains the remains of a capital city built in 1346 AD under the reign of the Pharoah Akhetaten, when he waltzed into a tomb that hadn’t been opened for hundreds of years.
Recounting the ooky-spooky experience on The Jordan Harbinger Show podcast, Romany said: “No one goes there. I went there because I was trying to know more about Akhenaten. I went inside that tomb and that tomb literally has not been opened for 600 years or so, they know all the guards that have been there never opened it.”
He said the crew had to break the lock to get inside the tomb ‘cos no one knew where the key was, which, dare I say it, might have been a good indication that it shouldn’t have been entered in the first place. But that’s just me!
Romany said a guard knocked on the door, and he could hear snakes rattling around inside. After deciding the coast was clear (enough), the gang entered the tomb.
“We go inside and start filming and I go under that tomb and I find things, and I’m breathing really heavy and everything. There’s bats inside, the smell is so horrible and I left that tomb and I did not feel well,” he said.
“There’s that ammonia bat urine smell, there’s been snakes in there, along with just these very strange smells all going in and your body is telling you ‘stop breathing this is not good’.”
Romany claimed he woke up the next day sick as a bloody dog, with a fever that was going up to 107°F, blood spurting out of a hole that it shouldn’t come out of and trippy hallucinations.
“None of the doctors really knew what I had. They put me on a bunch of antibiotics and I explained to them all where I was and they said: ‘Well bats, snakes, dust is not a very good combination for whatever it is, it could be anything we have not seen this combination of symptoms but hopefully these antibiotics work,’ and they worked, I’m alive, I’m here today,” he said.
I’m just gonna say it: Romany opened the tomb in 2019 and a few months later, a little thing called COVID-19 caused a fucking ruckus on Earth. I do not trust that timing and there’s nothing anyone can say to make me change my mind. Thanks a lot, brother.
In all seriousness, the Egyptologist actually claimed he awakened some sort of curse.
“The reason that I’m telling you this story is because it is true … the scientific curse of the mummies is very true,” he said.
“I just opened a tomb that was closed for only 600 years, let alone a 6000 years one, and I was in a horrible shape the next day. So the curse of the mummies [does] exist scientifically.”
Look, I know I just made a big song and dance about how this bloke singlehandedly caused the coronavirus pandemic and my mind was made up, but I also can’t imagine that inhaling noxious fumes and a shit heap of bacteria did his body a load of good.
Still, I’m a gullible gal who loves the fantasy of a curse that’s meant to bring archaeologists and thieves a great deal of pain, suffering and even death. The drama!
