"Cursed be those that disturb the rest of Pharaoh." These chilling words supposedly formed the inscription that greeted Howard Carter and his team in 1922 when they uncovered the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, around 3,000 years after the monarch's demise. And a multitude of misfortunes affecting those connected to the expedition have only furthered the legend.

One hundred years on from the expedition, and in the light of evidence that Carter "undoubtedly" stole treasure from the tomb, read on to uncover the explorers' unbelievable stories, and decide for yourself if the curse is real or not. All dollar values in US dollars.

On 4 November 1922, a young boy working for the British archaeologist Howard Carter (pictured) stumbled on a stone in the Egyptian Valley of the Kings.

Carter had been searching for King Tutankhamun’s tomb since 1907, and he and his team were close to giving up. His patron Lord Carnarvon had agreed to finance just one more season of excavation work.

However, their fortune was about to change. Upon closer inspection of what the boy had tripped on, Carter realised that the stone was more significant than it seemed... 

The stone turned out to be the top step in a flight of stairs, which subsequently led Carter and Carnarvon, who had flown out to Egypt after hearing of the discovery, to a doorway that had been plastered with mud and stamped with hieroglyphics. Incredibly, Carter and his team had become the first people in over 3,000 years to face the door of Tutankhamun’s tomb.

According to protocol, the tomb should have been opened by a member of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities. However, reports suggest that Carter, Carnarvon, and a couple of others couldn't resist taking a peek inside before the officials arrived – and now, new evidence suggests they even looted treasure from the tomb.

British Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner was given an amulet by Carter as thanks for translating some hieroglyphics and accepted it on the understanding that it hadn't been stolen from the treasure trove. However, a newly discovered letter shows Gardiner discovered this wasn't the case. After showing the amulet to an expert and learning that it matched examples belonging to Tutankhamun, the Egyptologist wrote to Carter, accusing him of "undoubtedly [stealing]" the artefact and saying he "deeply [regretted] having been placed in so awkward a position". 

Carter and his assistant Arthur Callender are pictured by the entrance to the tomb. 

Along with the amulets, more than 5,000 objects were recovered from Tutankhamun's tomb, with an estimated total value of £2 million. Today, that's the equivalent of almost £121 million ($158m).

Describing the moment he stepped inside the pharaoh's resting place for the first time, Carter later said: "At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold – everywhere the glint of gold". 

On the left is an original photograph taken by Carter's photographer Harry Burton. On the right is a photo from a 2014 exhibition in Bratislava, Slovakia, which shows the artefacts as Carter may have seen them. 

Although it bore evidence of previous break-ins, King Tutankhamun's tomb had largely been untouched since his death at the age of 18 or 19 in 1323 BC – and some people believed that Carter was wrong to disturb the pharaoh's final resting place.

As the archaeologist started cataloguing the tomb’s jaw-dropping contents, rumours of a "mummy's curse" began to circulate, fuelled by global newspapers that were following the story. Had Carter and his team really risked their lives for the sake of fame, fortune, and buried treasure? 

George Herbert, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, is often described as the first victim of Tutankhamun's supposed curse.

The aristocrat was fabulously wealthy thanks to his marriage to Almina Wombwell, who was believed to be an illegitimate member of the Rothschild family. Alfred de Rothschild, who was widely considered to be Almina's father, had given the couple £500,000 – the equivalent of almost £70 million ($91.5m) in today's money. 

Lord and Lady Carnarvon lived in Highclere Castle in Hampshire, England, which is now best known as the filming location for the TV series Downton Abbey.

For years, Lord Carnarvon's main interest was horse racing. However, a serious motoring accident in 1903 changed the course of his life – and arguably the course of history – forever. Faced with a long, slow recovery, Carnarvon was advised by his doctor to spend the cold winter months in Egypt.

While there, he became a keen Egyptologist and started sponsoring Howard Carter to carry out archaeological digs. The pair even co-wrote a book together. Five Years' Exploration at Thebes was published in 1912. 

Ten years later, Carter, Carnarvon, and Carnarvon's daughter Lady Evelyn (all pictured) were among the first people to enter King Tutankhamun's tomb in over three millennia.

But just five months later, Lord Carnarvon was dead: a mosquito bite on his face had become infected when he cut himself while shaving, which led to blood poisoning and pneumonia.

Sceptics have repeatedly pointed out that Carnarvon's death can be explained by his weak immune system, but others – including Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle – insisted that more sinister forces were at work.

These rumours only intensified when it was later revealed that the remains of Tutankhamun showed the pharaoh had a scar in exactly the same place as Carnarvon's mosquito bite... 

Little is known about Archibald Douglas Reid. An eminent radiologist, he was the first person to X-ray Tutankhamun's body after it had been recovered from the tomb.

Reid might not have been a member of Carter's archaeological team, but for those who believe in the supposed "mummy's curse" his role in the disturbance was clearly enough to make his death suspicious.

Just 24 hours after X-raying the Pharaoh's remains in January 1924, Reid was struck down by a mysterious illness. He died three days later.

Some people have argued that Reid succumbed to radiation sickness, a lethal condition that wasn't understood at the time.

But rumours that he was another victim of King Tut's curse quickly began to swirl and persist to this day. Pictured is the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, where Reid worked. 

Yet more tragedy struck in 1924 when Hugh Evelyn-White, an archaeologist on Carter's team, took his own life.

Evelyn-White was the son of renowned antiquarian Charles Harold Evelyn-White and followed in his father's footsteps, graduating with a degree in Classics before moving to Egypt to work on the digs with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, pictured here in 1930. 

During his time in Egypt, which was briefly interrupted by World War I, Evelyn-White wrote several books about his work, including research on the Temple of Hibis at the Kharga Oasis (pictured).

He remained with the Met's expedition until 1921, before joining Carter's mission the following year to excavate King Tut's tomb. Just two years later, however, he became the third member of the team to fall victim to the supposed curse. 

After leaving Egypt, Evelyn-White started working as a lecturer at the University of Leeds. He died in 1924 and was the first and only member of Carter's team to acknowledge the possibility of an ancient curse, reportedly writing in his final note: "I knew there was a curse on me. Though I had leave to take those manuscripts to Cairo, the monks told me that the curse would work all the same. Not that it has done so".

At the time of his passing, an inquest ruled that Evelyn-White took his own life after feeling responsible for the death of a woman who claimed to be in love with him. His final note suggests the so-called curse could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the fear surrounding it just as dangerous as the potential curse itself, if not more so. 

On the day he learned of Lord Carnarvon's death, Arthur Mace, another archaeologist working on Carter's team, simply wrote in his diary: "News came of Carnarvon's death. Started working on big white trunk. Puzzle why some linen perishes while other actually touching it does not. Must be a question of original quality of the thread work."

He might not have been overly troubled by the death of his colleague, but within five years people would be claiming that both men had died as a result of King Tutankhamun's curse. 

Mace was born in 1874 in Tasmania, Australia, and had studied at the University of Oxford in England. He started working as an archaeologist in the late 1890s, and began restoring Egyptian artefacts for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York after World War I.

In 1922, the museum loaned Mace's services to Carter to help him classify the treasures found in King Tutankhamun's tomb, and the men quickly became close. Mace reportedly helped Carter unshroud Tutankhamun's body and they co-wrote a book about their discoveries called The Tomb of Tut Ankh Amen. 

Mace's fate is a bit of a mystery. By March 1924, his health had deteriorated to such an extent that he had to leave Egypt. However, the nature of his illness remains unclear. Some records suggest that it may have been arsenic poisoning that was slowly killing him, while others claim that Mace himself (pictured far left) believed he'd swallowed too much sand and dust during his excavations.

On 6 April 1928, five years and one day after the death of Lord Carnarvon, Mace passed away in a nursing home. His wife Winifred was apparently so distraught over his death that she refused to discuss Mace's archaeology work, relegating his notes to a box in the attic where they lay untouched for years.

Unlike the other people on this list, newspaper editor Sir Bruce Ingram never actually entered the tomb of Tutankhamun. However, his friendship alone with Howard Carter was apparently enough for some to say he had incurred the wrath of the legendary Egyptian king.

In the late 1920s, Carter reportedly presented Ingram with a mummified hand that doubled up as a paperweight. As if that wasn't grisly enough, the hand wore a bracelet that warned: "Cursed be he who moves my body. To him shall come fire, water and pestilence".

There are several versions of this story, with some sources suggesting the bangle resembled the scarab bracelet (pictured) that Carter took from Tutankhamun's tomb. But most agree on what happened next. Shortly after receiving the bracelet, Ingram's home was destroyed in a mysterious house fire.

After he tried to repair the damage, the property was then hit by a flood. Thankfully, Ingram managed to avoid the pestilence and eventually passed away peacefully at the age of 85. 

The Honourable Captain Richard Bethell worked as Howard Carter's private secretary. Born on 26 April 1883, he became a member of the Committee of the Egypt Exploration Society in 1920 and assisted with the excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb.

According to some sources, he was the second person to enter the tomb after Carter – although this doesn't factor in Carter and Carnarvon's rumoured break-in the night before the door was officially opened. 

Bethell may well have been one of the first people to enter the pharaoh's final resting place, but he was one of the last members of Carter's team to die under suspicious circumstances.

On 15 November 1929, around seven years after the tomb was discovered, he was found dead in his bedroom at the gentlemen's Bath Club in Mayfair, London. There was no known medical explanation, with most sources agreeing that he had been smothered in his sleep. 

The tragedy didn't end there. Three months later, Bethell's father, the 3rd Baron Westbury, took his own life by jumping out of a window in London. His final note reportedly said: "I really cannot stand any more horrors and hardly see what good I am going to do here, so I am making my exit".

Newspapers at the time attributed both deaths to the ancient curse. According to the Nottingham Evening Post, "the possibility that the Hon. Richard Bethell had come under the 'curse' was raised [in 1928], when there was a series of mysterious fires at [his] mansion, where some of the priceless items from Tutankhamen's tomb were held". 

More recently, however, another theory has surfaced, with one historian suggesting that infamous Satanist Aleister Crowley (pictured) could have murdered Bethell at the London club. 

By 1930, five members of Howard Carter's archaeological team were dead. Over the years, newspaper reports have identified around 15 other potential victims of Tutankhamun's curse, from fellow Egyptologists to the friends and family of those who discovered the tomb. But one man who seemed to escape unscathed was Howard Carter himself. This is especially surprising if, as Alan Gardiner suspected, he had indeed stolen treasure before the official discovery.

After spending a decade classifying the tomb's treasure, Carter retired in 1932. Seven years later, he died of natural causes at the age of 64 and was buried in Putney Vale Cemetery in London (pictured).

Reports suggest that he left behind an estate worth around £2,000 – the equivalent of almost £140,000 ($182k) in 2022. However, the ending to his story isn't completely happy. According to his obituary in The Guardian, the name "Howard Carter" had become a "household word" thanks to his discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. But, despite this fame, just nine people came to his funeral.

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