Matters really got out of hand with Howard Carter opening that Tomb in the Valley of the Kings however. But what rare joy King Tut slumbers beneath the sands of the desert for 30 centuries only to be yanked from his resting place in time for the cigarette card boom. Ground up Mummies were used as pigments for artists. It gets worse. Somewhat disappointingly the sands of the desert was a better preservative than the mummification method in most cases.
Death is like that sometimes.
If there is one thing we all know about the Tomb it is the curse. Dogs howling, canaries dying, lights going out, insect bites, suicides. It is all a pile of nonsense which does not bear up to any sort of examination of the facts. The canary was given away and didn't die. The lights still go out in Cairo with monotonous regularity and most of the people involved in the dig lived to a ripe old age before dying.