The main types of deadly spores prevalent in Egyptian burials are:
Aspergillus flavus: This fungus is associated with aspergillosis of the lungs and/or disseminated aspergillosis. It is occasionally identified as the cause of corneal, otomycotic and nasoorbital infections.
Aspergillus ochraceus: This fungus produces a kidney toxin, Ochratoxin A, which may produce ocratoxicosis in humans. The ochratoxin may also be produced by other Aspergillus and Penicillium species. Other toxins which can be produced by this fungus include penicillic acid, xanthomegnin and viomellein. These are all reported to be kidney and liver toxins.
Penicillium species: These fungi may cause hypersensitivity pneumonitis and allergic alveolitis in susceptible individuals. Some species can produce mycotoxins. It is a common cause of extrinsic asthmas (immediate-type hypersensitivity: type I) Acute symptoms include oedema and brochiospasms. Chronic cases may develop pulmonary emphysema.
Aspergillus terreus: This fungus produces the toxins patulin and citrinin that maybe associated with disease in humans and animals. It is associated with aspergillosis of the lungs and/or disseminated aspergillosis. It is found as an isolate from otomycosis (ear infection) and enychomycosis (infection of the finger or toenails).
Aspergillus niger: This fungus is the third most common species associated with invasive pulmonary aspergillosis. It is also often a causative agent of aspergilloma and is the most frequently encountered agent of otomycosis.
Cephalosporium (Acremonium) species: Some of this species are recognized as opportunistic pathogens of humans and animals, causing mycetoma, onychomycosis, and hyalohyphomycosis. Clinical manifestations of hyalohyphomycosis caused by Acremonium include arthritis, osteomyelitis, peritonitis, endocarditis, pneumonia, cerebritis and subcutaneous infection.
As mould spores are protected by a tough, waterproof layer made of chitin, mould can survive for thousands of years. Prolonged exposure to toxic moulds, especially in an enclosed area such as a burial chamber or tomb, can potentially cause serious health problems. They can irritate, infect and ultimately damage the eyes, skin, lungs, mucous membranes, respiratory tract, stomach and intestines.
One inspector general of the Egyptian Antiquities administration was a man named Reginald Engelbach. While working near the Meidum pyramid, south of Cairo and on the edge of the western desert, Engelbach discovered an ancient tomb. Within the tomb’s antechamber he found a curse tablet bearing the inscription: ‘The spirit of the dead will wring the neck of a grave robber as if it were that of a goose.’ The curse tablet referred to the spirit of the dead person officially buried there, and no one else. However, on further inspection Engelbach found two corpses within the chamber. The first and original corpse was mummified; this was the corpse for whom the tomb had been built. The second corpse was that of an intruder. From the position of the body and examination of the area where it lay, Engelbach suspected that the man had been killed by a stone that been designed to plummet from the ceiling as he stretched out his hand in an attempt to steal jewellery from the mummy, yet no trap was obvious. It was a mystery that later caused Engelbach to wonder whether the tomb robber had died as a result of the falling stone striking him on the head, or whether he had become a victim of the curse. We shall never know.
Chapter 11
The Sad End of Walter Ingram
This swashbuckling and extraordinary tale of bravery and selflessness deserves to be told since it involves the mysterious curse-related death of one of England’s greatest heroes. Part of the incredible story of Walter Herbert Ingram was first reported in an issue of Strand magazine in 1896.
Walter Herbert Ingram was born in 1855, the youngest son of Herbert Ingram, Member of Parliament for Boston, Lincolnshire, and founder and proprietor of the Illustrated London News. Walter was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. At the age of 24 he visited South Africa, where he was involved in some of the violent events that led to the defeat of the Zulus, culminating in the Battle of Ulundi. Ingram, it is recorded, worked alongside John Dunn, the Chief of Intelligence on Lord Chelmsford’s staff. Dunn was regarded as an extraordinary character who, having lived among the Zulus for more than thirty years, had personal and intimate knowledge of their race. During these three decades Dunn set himself up as a Petty Chieftain in King Cetswayo’s confidence; he is also said to have sired over 160 children. At the end of the Zulu war, Ingram returned to England and purchased a lieutenancy in the 1st County of London Yeomanry, Middlesex Hussars.
Ingram assisted Lord Charles Beresford in the 1884–85 Soudan War. A short time later, in 1885, keen to support his compatriots, he returned to Africa having heard of the attempts to raise the siege of Khartoum. The ultimate goal was to rescue General Gordon. By the time Ingram got to Egypt the expedition was weeks ahead of him, but he was determined to follow and catch up. He purchased a steam launch and employed an engineer and an Arab boy as his crew. This tiny group passed through the Suez and Sweetwater canals to reach Cairo, then continued along the Nile. The Arab boy was of no assistance, and deserted early on in the journey. While ascending the cataract at Dal serious problems occurred, which might have deterred any normal person from continuing the journey. Walter Ingram, however, simply took the problems in his stride. At Dal the steam launch capsized in turbulent waters, throwing Ingram and the engineer into the rapids. The engineer, being unable to swim, had to be rescued by Ingram, who swam to his aide and pulled him ashore. Ingram then dived back into the water and incredibly was able to salvage the upturned vessel. The engine was full of water, so Ingram opted to discard it and instead he rigged a sail. The engineer was exhausted, so Ingram continued the journey to Korti alone, a distance of nearly 500 miles. He negotiated two further cataracts single-handed.
At Korti Ingram caught up with the expedition he was chasing, and quickly struck up a friendship with Lord Charles Beresford, who commanded the sixty-one strong Naval Brigade. The British force, 1,200 men in total, was suffering in the sweltering hot climate and in desperate need of fresh water as they marched towards conflict at Howeiyat, Jakdul Wells and Abu Klea. The first two of these offered no resistance and were occupied without opposition, allowing the men time to recover. However, the respite was to be short-lived, and at dawn on 17 January 1885 the British encampment came under fire from Dervishes situated on the nearby hills. The British troops were mustered to form a marching square, with the wounded and sick personnel protected in the centre of the square. Meanwhile the Naval Brigade, of which Ingram was now a member, was tasked with operating and supporting the Gardner quick-firing gun that was positioned within the rear element of the square. At around 10am, the square began to advance towards Abu Klea: three miles to be covered under the most difficult of circumstances as the square was attacked and shot at. Barely half an hour into this advance, an army of approximately 10,000 Arabs, some on foot and many on horseback, began to converge on the square. Orders were given to British troops to try to reach a small area of high ground nearby, but the square was no longer secure on all four sides. It was beginning to disintegrate, making it vulnerable. Lord Beresford had the Gardner gun run outside of the square and instructed it to open fire on the attacking maniacal Dervishes; the result was carnage as the bullets cut swathes through the charging Arabs. The Dervishes were clearly disheartened by the loss of so many men, but then the gun jammed and the assault on the British was reinvigorated. Frantic attempts were made to fix the weapon, but during these two of the gun party were speared and Beresford was knocked off his feet. Eight other sailors protecting the gun were killed by the oncoming hordes, and at least as many others were badly wounded.
Eventually the men reached the area of elevated ground and the gun was repaired, allowing volley fire that temporarily forced the Arabs back. The attacks, however, were relentless and eventually the Dervishes were able to break through the gaps. Dozens of camels were killed during the fighting; when alive they had formed part of a protective wall surrounding the rear of the marchin
g human square. Face-to-face armed combat ensued. Ordered discipline was restored among the British troops and soon a further volley of fire forced back the Arabs, who hastily retreated. Walter Ingram was part of the front rank of troops, and Lord Beresford recorded in his own papers that (Ingram) was a ‘keen soldier... at one time he was outside the square at Abu Klea, but always cool and collected, using his rifle with good effect. Many of us noticed his gallantry and his quiet determined manner.’
After Abu Klea, Lord Beresford obtained a temporary commission for Ingram, as a lieutenant in the Navy. Beresford had suffered huge losses to his fighting force during the battle, with many of his officers either been killed or wounded. Beresford had been wounded too, and while he underwent surgery Walter Ingram took on the role of officer commanding. Having secured the water wells, it was then decided that two steamers were to be sent on to Khartoum, but they arrived too late to rescue General Gordon. When the troops made the return voyage, one of the two steamers on which they travelled (the Talahawiyeh) struck a rock and had to be abandoned. Two days later the second steamer (the Bordein) also struck a rock, and was so badly damaged that it was forced to run ashore on a small island.
When information about the stranding of both vessels reached the main force, which had been stationed at Gubat, a rescue party consisting of nine officers (including Ingram) and twenty specially selected marksmen set off, in the steamer Safieh. The Safieh was well armed, having two Gardner guns and a four-pounder brass mountain gun on board. The rescue party set off on 1 February and made good progress; within two days they were in sight of the Bordein. There was just one major problem: to reach the Bordein they had to pass within yards of a heavily-armed fort at Wad Habeshi. Further fighting and loss of life was inevitable. The Safieh opened fire on the fort, and for a brief time it appeared she would escape without damage, but then she was hit by a stray shell that pierced a boiler, causing her to have to pull in for urgent repairs. The crew worked into the night, under gun fire from the nearby garrison. The steamer returned a steady stream of retaliatory fire, and Walter Ingram manned the Gardner gun. Eventually, the repairs were completed and the stranded men from the stricken Bordein were picked up from a prearranged rendezvous point and successfully returned to Gubat. Lord Beresford commended Ingram for his part in the rescue operation, during which many lives had been lost.
As a souvenir of his time in Egypt and his adventures there, Walter Ingram purchased a mummy for the princely sum of £50 from the English Consul at Luxor and had it shipped back to England, where it was unrolled and examined at the British Museum. Within the wrappings, papyri were found, including a blood-curdling curse, which appealed to the powers above to deny burial to the remains of the sacrilegious ghoul who disturbed the eternal sleep of the pharoah’s corpse. The curse said that ‘not one bone should remain with another, but that they should be swept to the sea’, so as to render the reconstitution of the offender’s body impossible.
Soon after sending the mummy back to England, Walter Ingram and Sir Henry Meux were on an elephant shoot in Somaliland. The natives brought them a large chunk of dried earth, claiming it to be the spoor of the biggest elephant in the world. The men interviewed the natives and were soon on the march, hunting down a herd of elephants just outside Berbera in Somaliland. Eventually, on 6 April 1888, they caught sight of the herd, only for Sir Henry to realise his elephant gun was still back at camp. Unselfishly, Ingram offered his own gun to his friend, leaving himself with only a small-bore rifle. The men used tried and tested tactics to kill their prey. Sir Henry took the lead and followed the bull of the herd, while Ingram focused on felling one of the lesser cows. It was a perilous situation but Ingram displayed ingenuity. He realised that by galloping his horse close to the elephant, he was able to get close enough to fire a shot and then wheel away. He believed that he could tire the creature, eventually forcing her to fall due to a large number of small shots rather than one cleverly-aimed shot from an elephant gun.
Focusing on the elephant instead of his course, Ingram was knocked from his saddle when his horse ran beneath the drooping bough of a tree. He was dazed and without any form of defence, having dropped his rifle. The wounded elephant saw his vulnerability and stopped in her tracks; slowly, she turned to face him. The roles of hunter and hunted were reversed. The elephant approached Ingram, who lay on the ground. The Somali servant assisting him claimed he heard a haunting chanting that seemed to fill the air around them. He said that Ingram looked terrified, as though he could see something beyond the elephant cow. The servant desperately tried to save Ingram, moving closer to the injured man and firing close-range shots into the angry elephant, which he said appeared to possessed by some malevolent spirit. Never before had he witnessed an elephant exhibit such manic and vicious behaviour. He fired several rounds into its ear with no response. Nothing, it seemed, would prevent the creature from exacting its revenge for the pain it had suffered. As the servant watched, the great elephant trampled Ingram into the ground. Once Ingram had died, the haunting sound of chanting disappeared.
For several days the elephant remained at the spot, refusing to allow anyone to approach. Eventually, she left Ingram’s crushed and rapidly decomposing remains where he had fallen, and they were gathered up and buried in what was thought to be a stony valley, but was later discovered to be a dried-up ravine. Several months later, an organised expedition was arranged by the dead man’s brother, Sir William Ingram, which travelled along the coast in an attempt to recover the body. For days the expedition searched the area where the body had been interred. They found only one sock, part of a human bone and a few buttons torn from his garments that had been scattered among stones nearby, but no skeleton and no further clothing. These few relics were subsequently interred at Aden with full military honours.
It wasn’t long before observers made the connection between the curse that had been found in the wrappings of Ingram’s mummy, and the circumstances of his death and burial. When the curse was discovered, Ingram had laughed and mocked the idea. Yet now his bones had been swept away by the force of a river and potentially carried out to sea, ‘never be reconstituted into their original skeletal form’. Had the curse struck again?
It was said that Ingram’s mummy later came into the possession of Lady Valerie Meux, who was an avid collector of Egyptian artifacts and a friend of eminent Egyptologist Ernest Wallis Budge. Her collection numbered over 1,700 pieces. She later claimed that her husband, Sir Henry Meux, had later come by the tusks of the elephant that killed Ingram. She was, it appears, a believer in the ‘unexplained’ or supernatural, and this also interested her friend, Ernest Wallis Budge. It is claimed she said that her husband believed the elephant tusks to be possessed by the spirit of some ancient Egyptian god, and that in certain moments they both saw ‘an Egyptian spirit’ standing before them. Because of his aristocratic background, Sir Henry would never discuss such matters with anyone other than his wife; though it is said that he feared being cursed. Apparently the writer Rudyard Kipling heard this tale while visiting a London club, and retold every grisly detail to fellow writer Rider Haggard, who in turn recounted it on many occasions, no doubt embellishing every detail for each audience he held. In another version, Walter Ingram returned home having located the mummy of Queen Nesmin. Opening the casket in the offices of the Illustrated London News, he discovered an inscription, ‘May the person who unwraps me die rapidly’. By quirk of fate, Walter Ingram’s nephew, Bruce Ingram, later take became editor of the Illustrated London News. During his tenure he reported every detail of Howard Carter’s discovery and excavation of King Tutankhamen’s tomb. Carter gave a small statue of Anubis to Bruce Ingram as a gift. He had in fact stolen it from the tomb during the find. In turn, Bruce bequeathed it to his nephew Michael, who passed it on to his grandson Matt.
Chapter 12
The Curious Tale of Isaiah Deck
Isaiah Deck was the son of a highly respected geologist, also called Isaiah Deck. Isaiah juni
or was born in England, but for many years lived in New York. Following in his father’s footsteps, he was a geologist by profession and also held a keen interest in archaeology. In 1847, Isaiah Deck junior made one of many visits to Egypt. He was originally in search of Cleopatra’s lost emerald mines, but was soon distracted by something altogether different, conceiving an incredible plan that nowadays would be viewed as an act of sacrilege. It was more through need than desire that he enacted his plan; he aimed to address America’s desperate shortage of rags for paper-making. Deck saw an abundance of mummies during his visits to tombs and burial grounds in Egypt, but rather than consider and respect them as human remains, he looked at the mummy wrappings as a potential source of rags for paper. He wrote:
The Curse of the Pharaohs' Tombs Page 16
