Laura Wright 
Titanic
The legend of the Egyptian priestess Amen-Rah became a global sensation during the Victorian and Edwardian periods, and stories surrounding her continued for decades afterward. Among the most famous is an extraordinary claim: a cursed Egyptian artifact associated with Amen-Rah was secretly aboard the Titanic and helped send the supposedly unsinkable ship to the bottom of the Atlantic.
But did this mysterious Egyptian noblewoman really have anything to do with the sinking?
The story behind Amen-Rah is long, complicated, and filled with contradictions. Depending upon which version you encounter, the curse stretches across approximately 3,000 years.
The Mysterious Mummy Board of Amen-Rah
Despite its reputation, the so-called Priestess Amen-Rah was not actually a mummy. Nor was the artifact a complete coffin or sarcophagus.
It was a decorative lid from an inner coffin, commonly known as a “mummy board.”
According to legend, however, owning the artifact was not necessary to fall victim to its curse. Eventually, stories claimed that merely looking upon the case could bring terrible misfortune or even death.
During the Victorian era, ancient Egyptian coffins and cases were highly sought-after collectibles, sometimes even more desirable than the mummies themselves. Many British explorers depleted their fortunes searching beneath the Egyptian sands for treasure, fame, and antiquities.
The mythology surrounding this particular artifact is considerably more colorful than its documented history.
There are three common versions of how the legend began.
Version One: Hetare and the Curse of Amun-Ra
Little is known about the case’s supposed origins.
According to one version of the legend, the woman was named Hetare and belonged to the Egyptian royal family. Her brother was Pharaoh Amunhotep IV.
Hetare supposedly followed her brother’s new monotheistic religion despite its being considered heresy. Amunhotep IV resented the power of the traditional religion of Amun-Ra and instead envisioned the worship of the god Aten. He destroyed old temples, defaced traditional religious imagery, changed his name to Akhetaten, and created a new city away from Thebes.
Today, that city is known as el-Amarna.
Amunhotep IV is also suspected of being the father of King Tutankhamen.
Hetare was said to be a daughter of Pharaoh Amunhotep III of the 18th Dynasty and a priestess in the Temple of Amun-Ra. Eventually, she deserted the temple as a demonstration of allegiance to her half-brother during his battle for the throne.
According to the legend, she paid dearly for that decision.
The Death and Curse of Hetare
All was not well in her brother’s kingdom.
Hetare was supposedly cursed for abandoning Amun-Ra, and the curse remained attached to her after death. She was murdered for her wanton sacrilege, regardless of the reasons behind her actions.
Her remains disappeared long before the inner coffin lid was purchased. One rumor claimed that her body had been lost while traveling up the Nile during the nineteenth century.
Accounts disagree about when the artifact itself was purchased, placing the acquisition anywhere between the 1850s and 1870s.
The misfortune supposedly began almost immediately.
Thomas Douglas Murray and the First Victims
Thomas Douglas Murray is often identified as the original purchaser and first victim of the curse.
Two members of his party supposedly lost their entire fortunes within hours. One man had to have his arm amputated while still in Egypt. Another was blinded by an explosion, while the final member died mysteriously from an unknown affliction.
The remaining owner brought the mummy board back to England but lost his fortune within six months.
Arthur Wheeler, the final member of the group, found himself financially ruined and eventually died from the strain.
The case then passed to his sister, Mrs. Warwick Hunt.
The Photograph of the Mummy Board
The family arranged to have the case photographed in September 1887.
According to the story, the photographer died, while the resulting image failed to show the expected face on the coffin lid. Instead, the photograph revealed a spectral male figure.
Another man was brought in to translate the hieroglyphs.
A few days later, he shot himself.
Mrs. Hunt had become frightened of the artifact, but she did not want to pass its supposed ill fortune to anyone she knew.
Instead, she donated it to the museum.
Unfortunately, according to the legend, this did not end the wrath of Amun-Ra.
Version Two: Five English Explorers
A second version places the discovery in 1859.
Five English explorers were traveling along the Nile on their way to Thebes when they stopped to visit Lady Duff Gordon. The men told her they wanted to purchase a rare and unusual antiquity to take back to England.
Several Arab treasure hunters brought them the mysterious lid.
The Englishmen drew lots to determine who would become its owner.
Mr. Wheeler won.
Tcheser Ka Ra, Priestess of the Sun God
In this version of the legend, the mysterious woman is also called Tcheser Ka Ra, Priestess of the Sun God.
By 1910, newspapers were claiming that she had already caused at least seven deaths and countless other misfortunes.
Here, she was supposedly the high priestess of the Temple of the Sun at Thebes and ranked second in importance only to the Pharaoh. The inscription on the coffin dated it to approximately 1600 BC.
This variation introduces an even darker element.
According to the story, one priestess from the Sun Temple was selected each year to become the “Divine Wife.”
She was then sacrificed.
Her body was never recovered, but her spirit was supposedly summoned and commanded to inhabit the coffin.
Version Three: The Discovery at Thebes
The third version places the discovery during the 1880s.
An obscure Egyptian figure named Mustapha Ali supposedly loaned one of his best treasure hunters to a team of English explorers. The group was working among the ruins of the Theban temple when they discovered the ill-fated lid.
Misfortune followed almost immediately.
Only 30 minutes after the discovery, someone’s gun inexplicably discharged. The leader of the English party was so badly wounded that his arm had to be amputated.
The following day, another member of the expedition died in a similar accidental shooting.
That night, mail arrived for the group. Two more men learned that they had been financially ruined.
The fifth explorer bought the other men’s interests in the coffin and took it home to England.
The Curse Returns to England
Eventually, the explorer’s sister came into possession of the case.
Some versions claim Wheeler died, while others say he merely suffered financial ruin. Whatever happened to her brother, his sister supposedly knew nothing about the artifact’s sinister reputation.
Then bad luck began pouring over the household like water.
At first, no one associated the mounting problems with the newly arrived Egyptian antiquity.
That changed after another attempt was made to photograph it.
A Face That Wasn’t There
A photographer attempted to capture an image of the case, but something unexpected appeared on the negative.
The face in the photograph was not the face depicted on the coffin lid.
The photographer destroyed the negative and requested another session with the artifact.
The same thing happened again.
He told the owner what he had seen, but according to the legend, doing so offended the spirit inhabiting the case.
Within hours, the photographer was dead.
The sister had seen enough. She was not entirely convinced that the artifact carried a genuine curse, but she was certain of one thing.
It was trouble.
Amen-Rah Arrives at the British Museum
Sending the mummy board to the British Museum supposedly did little to stop the misfortune.
The driver who delivered it died within a week.
One of the men who helped carry the case inside lost both legs in a railway accident a week later.
Four porters transported the artifact to its display room. According to the legend, two of them died and another broke both arms.
Then came the story of photographer Edgar Davies.
Edgar Davies Photographs the Case
Edgar Davies was a noted photographer during the 1910s and a Bloomsbury picture dealer who operated an art gallery on Museum Street in London.
He was asked to photograph the mummy board for the museum.
While adjusting his lights, Davies supposedly discovered the inscription of the curse beneath accumulated sediment. He joked about the mummy having a silly face while preparing his cameras.
The laughter did not last.
Within weeks, Davies was blind.
Some versions of the story attribute his misfortune to the fact that he physically touched the lid.
His recovery required 27 surgeries. Davies later claimed, however, that his true improvement began only after he disposed of the photographs and their negatives.
The Cursed Portrait
Davies also claimed that he sold a large portrait of the case to a customer.
Two months later, the client returned on the verge of death.
The man said he had experienced nothing but illness and bad luck since purchasing the photograph.
Finally, he buried the image three feet beneath the ground in his garden.
The Sunday School Visit
Another gruesome story concerns a clergyman who brought 80 Sunday school children to visit the museum.
He specifically warned the children to stay away from the Egyptian room.
One particularly impertinent girl ignored him.
Not only did she enter the forbidden room, she supposedly stuck out her tongue at the mummy.
The following day, she was involved in an accident and lost both arms.
A Growing Reputation for Evil
Hundreds of similar stories of misfortune and affliction supposedly accumulated around the case.
Attendants working in the Egyptian room eventually petitioned the museum trustees about the artifact. Two of the attendants also reportedly died.
Madame Helena Blavatsky, the noted psychic and spiritualist, believed the case radiated evil intent.
Eventually, according to the legend, the museum decided that something had to be done.
The Mummy Board Goes Into Hiding
The problems supposedly became so severe that the museum secretly commissioned a replica.
The curator placed the reproduction on public display while hiding the genuine artifact from visitors.
According to the story, the bad luck immediately stopped.
The deception might have continued indefinitely had an American Egyptologist not visited the museum and realized that the displayed object was not authentic.
He created a scene.
Museum curators eventually escorted him into the storage area and explained why they had substituted the replica.
The American was undeterred.
He announced that he would take the original mummy board and add it to his private collection.
Amen-Rah Boards the Titanic
The case was secretly packaged for shipment and accompanied by false documents intended to evade the attention of customs officials.
Its destination was America.
And according to the legend, its transportation had been arranged aboard the RMS Titanic.
The ship never reached New York.
On April 15, 1912, the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg.
More than 1,500 people died.
And so one of the most enduring legends surrounding the disaster was born: the cursed mummy of Amen-Rah had been secretly aboard the ship.
There was only one rather substantial problem with the story.
The mummy board had never left the British Museum.
The Curse Continues
The fact that the artifact remained safely in the museum rather than resting at the bottom of the Atlantic did little to discourage the rumor.
Headlines in 1921 announced that “The Lady of the College of Amun-Ra” was once again on display at the British Museum.
At the time, the Egyptian gallery was closed during the winter months.
By then, however, the legend had developed a life of its own.
Searching for the Origins of the Curse
The genuine origins of the mythology surrounding the coffin lid are not particularly easy to trace.
Thomas Douglas Murray died in 1911 at the age of 70. He enjoyed a lifetime of travel to and throughout Egypt.
He was not suddenly struck down by the curse.
Another important figure in the development of the story was journalist Bertram Fletcher Robinson.
Bertram Fletcher Robinson and the Legend
Bertram Fletcher Robinson was a popular and ambitious English journalist who became an editor at the age of 34.
He first heard the story of the Amun-Ra case in 1904 and decided to investigate the antiquity and the folklore surrounding it.
In 1907, Robinson contracted enteric fever and died suddenly.
His death generated another series of legends, despite Robinson’s own belief that the curse had ended when the case was donated to the museum.
Unfortunately, much of the mythology surrounding the coffin lid remains precisely that: mythology.
The Real Mummy Board
The mummy board was removed from display during both World Wars, but not because museum officials feared its curse. It was taken down for protection.
The artifact is believed to have originated during Egypt’s 21st Dynasty and to have belonged to a woman of rank, although her exact relationship to royalty remains unknown.
Most importantly, the mummy board survived the sinking of the Titanic for one very simple reason.
It was never aboard the ship.
Today, it remains at the British Museum rather than resting on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.
William T. Stead and the Titanic
One final figure may help explain how the cursed-mummy legend became so firmly connected with the Titanic.
William T. Stead was a pioneer in investigative journalism.
In 1893, he founded Borderland, one of England’s most notable magazines devoted to psychical research. Although the publication lasted only four years, it firmly established Stead’s reputation for interest in and belief in the supernatural.
Today, Stead is sometimes described as the father of “tabloid journalism.” Whether that reputation resulted from his actual work or was influenced by criticism of his paranormal beliefs is uncertain.
No examples of particularly “sleazy” or “depraved” work by Stead are readily apparent. As far as yellow journalism is concerned, countless reporters around the world engaged in precisely that kind of reporting during the era without being remembered with the same distaste.
Stead was also one of the people most interested in the strange case of Amen-Rah.
And there lies perhaps the greatest coincidence in the entire story.
William T. Stead died aboard the Titanic.
The cursed Egyptian artifact he had investigated did not.
So, Did Amen-Rah Sink the Titanic?
The legend has almost everything a great Victorian mystery requires: ancient Egypt, sacrilege, a supernatural curse, unexplained photographs, ruined fortunes, terrible accidents, sudden deaths, spiritualists, museum intrigue, and finally one of the greatest maritime disasters in history.
Different versions contradict one another. Names change. Dates shift. The supposed history of the priestess becomes increasingly elaborate with every retelling.
Eventually, even the Titanic was drawn into the story.
Yet the central problem remains remarkably simple.
The mummy board was still at the British Museum.
Whatever sent the Titanic to the bottom of the Atlantic, the cursed Priestess Amen-Rah was not hiding somewhere in its cargo hold.
But perhaps the most remarkable thing about the story is not whether the curse was real.
It is that the legend survived even after the supposed culprit was found safely back in London.
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