| Date/Place | Origin Story | Attributed Afflictions | Testaments | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Pharaohs | c. 1323 bc: Valley of the Kings | Inscription reading, “They who enter this sacred tomb shall swiftly be visited by wings of death” etched on wall of tomb of King Tutankhamun, who had died young. | Lord Carnarvon, patron of the 1922 excavation, died of an infected mosquito bite within a year; power outage in Cairo at the moment of Carnarvon’s death; dig leader Howard Carter’s personal assistant went into a coma and died in 1928; over 20 others associated with excavation supposed to have died. | The Daily Express newspaper, which most likely fabricated the tomb inscription cited in response to Carnarvon’s death; older existent lore in Jane C. Loudon’s The Mummy! (1828), Louisa May Alcott’s “Lost in a Pyramid: The Mummy’s Curse” (1869). |
| The House of Atreus | c. 1200 bc: Greece | The drowning charioteer Myrtilus pronounces a curse upon King Pelops and his descendants after Pelops pushes him into the sea. | Pelops’ sons Atreus and Thyestes kill their half-brother Chrysippus; Thyestes seduces Atreus’ wife; Atreus kills brother’s children; Atreus’ son Agamemnon marries Clytemnestra and sacrifices their daughter for good luck in Trojan War; Clytemnestra kills husband upon return. | Various Greek tragedies, including Aeschylus’ The Oresteia; Euripides’ Orestes, Electra, and Iphigenia plays; Sophocles’ Electra. |
| Macbeth | c. 1605: London | William Shakespeare was believed to have used a real witch’s curse—“Fillet of a fenny snake, / In the cauldron boil and bake”—in act IV, scene 1. | Hal Berridge, the young actor playing Lady Macbeth, died offstage in premiere; riot in New York in 1849 between supporters of rival Macbeth portrayers, American Edwin Forrest and Englishman Charles William Macready; falling weight almost killed Laurence Olivier in 1937. | Actors and directors refer to work as “the unmentionable” or “the Scottish Play”; if the name is said or lines from the play are spoken, the offending party is expected to leave the theater, spin around three times, then spit or swear. |
| The Hope Diamond | c. 1668: India | Trader Jean-Baptiste Tavernier obtained the 112-karat diamond from a thief who had taken it from the eye of a Hindu statue in India; Tavernier later died when attacked by dogs. | Louis XIV bought the diamond, had it cut, and gave it to his mistress, who was accused of sorcery; took it back and died of gangrene; Louis XVI inherited it, wore it at special occasions, was executed; resurfaced c. 1812 with a Dutch jeweler whose son stole it and killed himself; came into possession of Hope family. | Actress May Yohé, wife of Francis Hope, wrote the movie serial The Hope Diamond Mystery; Pierre Cartier told the gem’s sordid story in 1910 to Evalyn Walsh McLean, who bought the stone from him. |
| The Bambino | 1920: Boston | After helping the Red Sox win two World Series in 1916 and 1918, Babe Ruth was sold to the New York Yankees; the Red Sox didn’t win a series again for 86 years. | The Red Sox lost the World Series in 1946, 1948, 1967, 1972, 1975 (9th inning of game 7), 1978, and 1986 (up 3 games to 2, Bill Buckner bumbles grounder to lose game 6); in 2003 the team loses to the Yankees in the 11th inning of game 7 of the American League Championship Series. | Phrase popularized in Dan Shaughnessy’s 1990 book The Curse of the Bambino; after the Sox won the World Series in a 4–0 sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals in 2004, headlines read curse reversed. |
