The mummy’s curse is more likely to be biological than supernatural. A growing trend of buying and selling mummified human remains exposes collectors and postal services to dormant microorganisms and toxic materials. Research into the covert trade of centuries-old embalmed human parts like hands, feet, and heads reports the issue in a peer-reviewed academic article published in the International Journal of Cultural Property.
Mummy Remains on Sale
The shady business has boomed in recent years through social media, personal websites, e-commerce ventures, and auction houses. An analysis of 128 posts on Meta platforms, web stores, and auction houses found a vast catalogue of mummified remains for sale, with clear evidence of biodeterioration.
The people involved in the deal, from sellers to transit services and buyers, have little to no awareness of how the living are being exposed to potentially biohazardous material. Sellers provided no safety guidance and often used postal services to deliver the parts to the buyers. The study authors explicitly report that the postal and courier services can leave a long trail of contamination. Warehouse workers, drivers, customs officials, and others involved are all at risk as they are unlikely to use personal protective equipment (PPE) during the initial contact.
Why are Mummified Remains Biohazards?
Mummification practices, both natural and artificial, use complex chemical and physical processes to delay decomposition. Various toxic materials and substances have been employed in the past, and even in recent history, to mummify and preserve tissues. Heavy metals like arsenic, mercury, and lead, which can lead to serious neurological impairments in humans if exposed, have been extensively used in the processes.
“Isolated body parts, such as hands and feet, were most frequently identified, followed by whole mummified heads,” the paper’s authors write. “Over half of the sample, 51.6%, consisted of heads in varying states of completeness and preservation, including whole or partial mummified heads, skulls or crania with soft tissue and/or hair, and tsantsas, so-called shrunken heads produced by the Shuar people of northern Peru/eastern Ecuador.”
Mummified remains also harbor a wide variety of dormant microorganisms, despite the best attempts to preserve and prevent microbial decay, often through desiccation. Dormant fungal spores anchored to the mummified remains can dislodge and become airborne, posing health risks to people. In fact, inhalation of fungal spores has been a cause of death for 10 of the 12 scientists who opened the tomb of King Casimir IV of Kraków, in modern-day Poland, in the 1970s, the paper notes. The spores are believed to be of Aspergillus, and inhaling the spores can cause aspergillosis, a severe respiratory infection.
Lord Carnarvon, who funded the exploration of Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, might have also succumbed to severe aspergillosis from inhaling spores. His death is widely cited as proof of the myth that bad luck, illness, or death befalls anyone who opens tombs— the mummy’s curse.
Kirsty Squires, a professor of human bioarchaeology at the University of Staffordshire, who worked with Dario Piombino-Mascali, Clara Urzì, and Damien Huffer on the research, said traders appeared to have little awareness of the dangers. While a few comments note that there can be a mummy smell, which can be attributed to the biodeterioration of the remains, the warnings rarely convert to proper bio-containment. Some of the images uploaded showed mummified remains exposed to the surrounding air instead of a protective case. Inside a room with people, there might be a chance that someone contracts a dormant pathogen. The appropriate storage protocols and temperature control for human remains were not followed either.
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