Ancient Egypt is unusually rich in mystery, for a civilization this thoroughly documented. Partly that is because the documentation has gaps. Partly it is because the physical record — monuments, tombs, papyri — raises questions that the written record does not answer. And partly it is because popular culture has produced a cottage industry of manufactured mysteries that have accumulated around the genuine ones, making it harder to tell them apart.

This article addresses some of each kind.

The Curse of the Pharaohs: What Actually Happened

The curse story dates to November 1922, when Howard Carter and his team opened Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Lord Carnarvon, Carter’s wealthy patron, died in Cairo the following April. British newspapers, which had lost their exclusive deal with Carnarvon’s estate and were looking for an angle, ran with the curse story enthusiastically.

There was no curse inscription in the tomb. Some Egyptian tombs do contain threatening texts warning off thieves and desecrators — typically something along the lines of “as for anyone who does evil to this tomb, the crocodile will be against him in water, the snake against him on land” — but these are addressed to tomb robbers, not archaeologists, and KV62 had none. The curse narrative was invented by newspapers in 1922.

Carnarvon’s death was genuinely unlucky but medically unremarkable. He had suffered from damaged lungs since a car accident in 1901. He died of septicemia following an infected mosquito bite that he inadvertently opened while shaving. His general health had been frail for years before the excavation began.

Statistical analysis of the people present at the tomb’s opening shows no unusual mortality pattern. Howard Carter died in 1939 at sixty-four. Arthur Mace, one of the senior excavators, died in 1928 — but had been ill with pleurisy since before the excavation. The vast majority of those present lived to normal ages. The curse killed Lord Carnarvon in the same sense that opening the tomb on a rainy Tuesday would have made it rain on Tuesdays.

A Genuine Puzzle: Akhenaten and the Amarna Heresy

Akhenaten is one of the most controversial figures in Egyptian history, and many aspects of his reign remain genuinely mysterious. He ruled for approximately seventeen years in the mid-14th century BCE, during which he suppressed the traditional pantheon, closed temples, moved the capital to a new city called Akhetaten (modern Amarna), and declared that the Aten — the solar disk — was the sole divine power in the universe, with himself as its sole earthly interpreter.

What is mysterious is not what he did but why. Was this genuine religious conviction, a political move to break the power of the Amun priesthood, a psychological crisis, or some combination? The texts from Amarna are largely hymns and ritual texts that do not explain motivation. His physical depictions are extraordinary — elongated skull, wide hips, drooping belly — so unusual that early Egyptologists thought they must be symbolic rather than literal. Modern analysis suggests some may be stylistic exaggeration of real features, possibly related to a medical condition, but certainty is elusive.

His identity is also genuinely uncertain. He was probably the son of Amenhotep III, but the details of his family and whether he had a co-regent are still debated. His relationship to Tutankhamun — almost certainly his son or close relative — and to the mysterious figure Neferneferuaten, who may have ruled as pharaoh between them, are active areas of research.

The Lost Tomb of Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 BCE and was eventually buried in Alexandria, the city he had founded in Egypt. His tomb was a major tourist attraction in antiquity — Julius Caesar visited it, Augustus accidentally broke the nose off the mummy while paying his respects — but at some point in late antiquity it disappeared from the historical record. No one knows where it is.

Alexandria is a living city built on top of its ancient layers, and much of the ancient city is underwater following land subsidence and changes in the coastline over two millennia. Systematic archaeological exploration of the ancient center is extremely difficult. Dozens of claims to have found Alexander’s tomb have been made over the past century; none has been substantiated. This is a genuine unsolved mystery, though given the conditions in Alexandria, it may never be resolved.

The Sphinx: What It Originally Was

The Great Sphinx of Giza is one of the most recognizable monuments in the world and one of the most argued-over. Mainstream Egyptology dates it to the reign of Khafre, around 2500 BCE, based on its location adjacent to Khafre’s causeway and pyramid complex and what appear to be stylistic similarities between the Sphinx’s face and Khafre’s portrait statues.

There is a persistent fringe argument, associated primarily with the geologist Robert Schoch, that water erosion on the Sphinx enclosure dates the monument to at least 7000 BCE, implying a pre-dynastic or even pre-agricultural civilization capable of carving it. This view is rejected by mainstream Egyptologists and geologists, who argue the erosion patterns are consistent with wind-borne sand and rare heavy rainfall events within the dynastic period. The argument continues, but the scientific consensus strongly favors the conventional dating.

What is genuinely unknown is whether the Sphinx’s current lion body matches its original form, and whether chambers exist beneath it. Ground-penetrating radar surveys have produced ambiguous results that some researchers interpret as voids, others as geological features. The Egyptian authorities have been cautious about drilling, for reasons both practical and political.

Nefertiti’s Tomb

Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten and one of the most recognizable faces of the ancient world thanks to the famous limestone bust found at Amarna in 1912, disappears from the historical record around year twelve of Akhenaten’s reign. She may have died. She may have continued to rule under another name — the mysterious successor Neferneferuaten is sometimes identified as Nefertiti. Her burial place is unknown.

In 2015, British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves proposed, based on analysis of high-resolution scans of Tutankhamun’s tomb, that sealed chambers behind two of the tomb’s walls might contain Nefertiti’s burial. The Egyptian authorities conducted ground-penetrating radar surveys that produced contradictory results and remain disputed. A definitive non-invasive investigation using muon tomography is the most promising path forward but has not yet been completed. Whether Nefertiti lies behind KV62’s walls is, as of now, genuinely unknown.

What Is Not a Mystery

Some persistent “mysteries” are not actually mysterious when examined carefully. The pyramids were not built by aliens — the evidence for human construction, including workers’ graffiti, administrative records, tools, and the workers’ village, is comprehensive. The pyramids were not used as granaries, power plants, or water pumps — they are solidly built except for the small chambers specifically designed for the king’s burial. Cleopatra was not black, nor was she ethnically Egyptian — she was Macedonian Greek, as were all the Ptolemies.

The genuine mysteries of ancient Egypt are interesting enough without manufacturing additional ones. A lost city perhaps buried under Alexandria, the true fate of Nefertiti, the full extent of what lies unexcavated in the Valley of the Kings, the question of what texts were destroyed when the Library of Alexandria burned — these are real puzzles, and Egyptology is still young enough that significant discoveries remain possible. The last major royal tomb found in the Valley was in 2006. The next one may be waiting for a horse to stumble on it in the sand.