Why can an ancient rope survive 32 centuries without damage?

The country of Egypt has always contained unsolved mysteries, things that have never been announced to the world.

A mysterious room was unlocked, revealing the tomb of the young king Tutankhamun. However, not only the main tomb, the two archaeologists Howard Carter and Harry Burton also discovered three smaller tomb areas inside.  

Surprisingly, the door to room number 2 was intricately carved, elaborate and eye-catching, and was only locked with a simple rope.

3200 year old rope in Tutankhamun’s tomb.

The rope was secured to a wooden handle bearing the symbol of the jackal-headed god Anubis, who guarded the sleep of mummies and their afterlife.

In the tomb, a statue of the god Anubis acts as a pallbearer beside the coffin.

Strangely, even though the tomb was dug up and overturned by grave robbers, the rope was still intact, almost brand new even though 3,200 years had passed.

People began to tell each other the story of the curse of the Pharaoh’s mummy.

Room 2 had been invaded by grave robbers several times, with some disturbance and damage to the artifacts inside, but the grave robbers were unable to advance any further.

Howard Carter entered the “Antechamber” area of ​​the tomb, the large room where King Tut’s mummy was placed, and found a relief made of clay with the inscription “Death will come to him who assists in violating the peace of the Pharaoh”.

Once the rope is released, a curse will be placed on anyone who disturbs the mummies’ sleep.

Ignoring warnings about the terrifying curse of the mummy of ancient Egypt’s youngest pharaoh, some archaeologists still committed what is considered a “blasphemous” act when disturbing Tutankhamun’s coffin.

Six weeks after the excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb, George Herbert, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon – the sponsor and promoter of the project to explore the tomb – died suddenly from a bite wound that later became infected. Some reports also said that when Herbert died, all the lights in his house mysteriously went out.

Carnarvon, the sponsor of the expedition, was reading on the porch of Carter’s house near the Valley of the Kings.

George Jay Gould I, an American financier, suddenly fell ill with a fever after a visit to Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1923. A few months later, he died of pneumonia.

George Jay Gould I (left) died of a mysterious illness with no known cause. Many theories suggest that he was poisoned by methane gas while visiting the tomb of Egypt’s youngest king.

Archibald Douglas-Reid, who took X-rays of the mummy of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, fell ill shortly after entering the tomb and died on January 15, 1924 from a mysterious illness.

More dramatic is the case of Hugh Evelyn-White, a British Egyptologist and one of the first to enter Tutankhamun’s tomb, who hanged himself in 1924 and left a note written in blood saying: “I succumb to the curse that forces me to disappear forever.”

Let’s not talk about spiritual things, back to the rope that seals the curse, there are many hypotheses about this strange rope.

The land we are referring to is a very deep valley area on the west bank of the Nile River, which is also the resting place of the Pharaohs from the 16th to the 11th century BC.  

This is a dry desert land that is difficult for humans to live in, and it is this dryness that helps preserve artifacts, in which even a rope can last for thousands of years.

This is in contrast to areas with high humidity, where things are more susceptible to natural destruction.

Since the time of our ancestors, ropes have been organic chemical substances, primitive tools of humans. Archaeologists believe that ropes appeared 28,000 years ago.  

Second, the space inside the tomb is extremely sealed, so sealed that it can be compared to a sterile sealed room. All passages in the tomb are sealed so that oxygen cannot enter.

The fact that there was almost no oxygen and water in the tomb unintentionally contributed to the durability of this rope because oxygen is the agent that causes corrosion and destruction of substances.

It can be seen that the desert climate and sealed space of King Tutankhamun’s tomb helped even a simple rope to be preserved for more than 3,200 years.

Completely different from the tombs of the Mayan civilization, most of the artifacts, structures, and mummies were completely deformed and decomposed by the climate and the forested Central American environment, which created favorable conditions for microorganisms to thrive.