CONFIDENTIAL

HH-26004

The Unlucky Mummy and the Titanic Legend

Incident
1912-05-12
Location
British Museum, Great Russell Street, London, United Kingdom
Coords
51.5194, -0.127
Status
CONFIDENTIAL

Brief

The "Unlucky Mummy" is not a mummy and was never aboard the Titanic. It is a painted wooden mummy-board, British Museum EA22542, made at Thebes around 950 BC and held in London since 1889; the shipwreck story was fused to it by American newspapers after the sinking, most prominently by the Washington Post of the twelfth of May 1912.

Filed 2026-08-17 · Last updated 17 August 2026

Briefing

The object at the centre of this file is a painted wooden mummy-board — a coffin lid, not a mummy — made at Thebes around 950 BC for an unidentified woman, and held by the British Museum since 1889 under registration number 1889,0731.1, catalogue number EA22542 [1]. From the 1900s it accumulated a reputation as a cursed object. After the RMS Titanic was lost on the fifteenth of April 1912 with the spiritualist journalist W. T. Stead aboard, American newspapers fused the two stories [2].

The board never left London [1][4]. What follows is a record of how a museum accession became a shipwreck legend, and of which parts of that legend survive contact with the documentary record.

Sequence of events

The acquisition, 1889 — two conflicting accounts

  • The British Museum’s own record dates the object to c. 950 BC, 21st Dynasty, provenance Thebes, and places it in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan [1].
  • One account holds that the mummy-board was donated in July 1889 by Mrs Warwick Hunt of Holland Park, London, on behalf of Mr Arthur F. Wheeler; the source given is a report in The Times of the twenty-eighth of March 1921, p. 11 [5]. That report was not retrievable in full during this research and is cited here at second hand.
  • Roger Luckhurst writes instead that Thomas Douglas Murray acquired the case at Luxor while travelling down the Nile after leaving Oxford in 1865, and donated it to the museum in 1889; Luckhurst also describes the case as 18th Dynasty, which conflicts with the museum’s own 21st Dynasty dating [3][1].
  • Both accounts are recorded here without adjudication.

The chain of misfortune, from 1865

  • Luckhurst states that Murray, after acquiring the case, suffered a shooting accident near the pyramids in which he lost an arm — the first link in the chain of misfortunes later attributed to the object [3]. No contemporary record for the incident is cited.
  • Murray moved in a circle of diplomats, colonial officials, painters and writers, and belonged to the Ghost Club, a spiritualist society; Luckhurst treats this social position as the reason the story travelled as far as it did [3].
  • Bertram Fletcher Robinson researched the object’s history for the Daily Express during 1904, is reported to have become convinced it had malevolent powers, and died three years later aged 36 [5].

The sinking and the story, 1912

  • RMS Titanic sailed from Southampton for New York on the tenth of April 1912 and was lost. The resulting US Senate investigation ran seventeen days, heard eighty-two witnesses, and produced a 1,042-page report now held by the US National Archives, alongside Carpathia survivor manifests, White Star limitation-of-liability filings, and hundreds of damage claims filed between October 1912 and April 1913 [6][7].
  • The Washington Post of the twelfth of May 1912 published “Ghost of the Titanic: Vengeance of Hoodoo Mummy Followed Man Who Wrote Its History,” proposing that W. T. Stead was the latest victim of “the avenging spirit of an Egyptian priestess” [2].
  • That article stated that Stead told fellow passenger Frederick K. Seward the mummy story at the saloon table, that Stead said “I know the story, but I shall never write it,” and that he died a few hours afterwards [2]. The account rests on the newspaper’s own unsourced narration.

Afterlife in print

  • The phrase “hoodoo mummy” was still circulating in the American press two years later: the Georgia Historic Newspapers index returns it in the Atlanta Georgian of the seventh of June 1914, in two editions of the same issue [8].
  • Half a century on, the story was still being retold as fact in mass-market print: Reader’s Digest published Edgar Wallace’s article “The Curse of Amen-Ra” in the 1966 collection Great True Stories of Crime, Mystery & Detection [9].

Documentary record

The British Museum Images record for EA22542 is the load-bearing document. It gives object number EA22542 (1889,0731.1), date c. 950 BC, 21st Dynasty, provenance Thebes, and the description “Wooden mummy-board; painted detail on plaster; protruding hands,” materials wood and plaster, Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan [1]. It establishes two things the legend requires to be false: that the object is a coffin board rather than a mummy, and that it is a museum holding.

Against it stands no shipping document at all. The US National Archives inventory of its Titanic holdings — the Senate hearings report, the Carpathia manifests for 706 survivors, the limitation-of-liability court records in which cargo appears only as an assessed liability figure of $2,073, and the correspondence to President Taft — describes no itemised cargo list [6]. The 1998 NARA press release covering the Carpathia passenger and crew manifests (microfilm T715, roll 1883, naming some 400 of the 700-plus rescued) is explicitly a survivor record, not a cargo record [7].

Roger Luckhurst’s account, drawing on British Museum files, is the source for the institution’s long-running position: curators “were (and continue to be) constantly asked to confirm or deny stories of the curse attached to catalogue number 22542” [3]. The Egyptologist Carol Andrews is quoted stating that No. 22542 “hasn’t left the British Museum since it was delivered there about 1889” and has never caused harm [4]. Bob Brier, in The Encyclopedia of Mummies, goes further, holding that the story “was initiated early in this century by Douglas Murray and T. W. Stead,” who attached it to No. 22542 after visiting the Egyptian Room [4]. Brier’s account is a theory of origin, not a documented one.

This archive files the case alongside its other records of contested material heritage from lost civilisations, where an object’s paper trail rather than its aura is the evidence.

Open questions

  1. Neither the museum’s own online catalogue record nor any British Museum statement page could be retrieved directly during this research (britishmuseum.org returned HTTP 403). The museum’s formal denial is documented here only through Luckhurst and through Andrews’s quoted remarks [3][4].
  2. No itemised Titanic cargo manifest was located in NARA’s published descriptions. The absence of the mummy-board from the cargo is therefore established by the object’s continuous museum provenance rather than by a negative manifest search [1][6][7].
  3. The 1904 Daily Express articles by Bertram Fletcher Robinson were not located in any accessible digitised archive, and his cause of death is not established by any primary record retrieved here.
  4. The exact date and wording of the first Stead–mummy story in print, and whether Stead ever published it himself, are not established by any source consulted.
  5. Trove indexes an item headed “CURSE OF THE MEUX MUMMY — FEARS FOR THE BRITISH MUSEUM,” Port Fairy Gazette, the twenty-sixth of May 1911 — which would place a British Museum mummy scare in print before the Titanic sailed — but the page was inaccessible behind bot protection and its text is unverified.
  6. The identity of the woman for whom the board was made is unrecoverable: the museum’s record names no owner [1].

Status

This file is CONFIDENTIAL — admitted on the strength of the museum’s own object record and the federal archival inventory of the Titanic disaster [1][6][7]. The documented core is narrow and firm: the object exists, it is a coffin lid, it has been in London since 1889, and no record places it at sea. Everything attached to it is reported rather than documented.

Three claims commonly told as fact are recorded here as unfindable. The identification of the board as belonging to a “Priestess of Amen-Ra” has no primary source; the museum’s record names no owner, and the inscriptions are described elsewhere as short religious formulae omitting the deceased’s name [1]. The sequence of photographers, porters, dealers and museum staff said to have been struck down after handling the object has no traceable contemporary record, inquest, or museum document for any individual death. The claim that the board was sold to an American, shipped on the Titanic, and later placed aboard the Empress of Ireland or Lusitania is supported by no shipping document, sale record or manifest at any leg, and is contradicted by the object’s continuous British Museum provenance [1][4]. No 1912 statement by the Trustees denying the story was retrievable.

Readers tracing how a shipwreck acquires a supernatural afterlife may find the archive’s file on maritime disappearances a useful companion, though the two subjects share no evidential connection. Updates pending direct retrieval of the British Museum catalogue record and of The Times report of the twenty-eighth of March 1921.

References

  1. The Unlucky Mummy, mummy-board, 21st Dynasty, Thebes — British Museum Images record 00702983001 / 00142955001 (EA22542; registration 1889,0731.1). © The Trustees of the British Museum. Accessed 17th August 2026.
  2. Did a mummy’s curse sink the Titanic? The Washington Post once suggested it did. Slate, October 2018 — quoting the Washington Post, 12th May 1912, “Ghost of the Titanic: Vengeance of Hoodoo Mummy Followed Man Who Wrote Its History.”
  3. Luckhurst, Roger (2012). “Unwrapping the Mummy’s Curse”. New Humanist, 10th September 2012. Draws on British Museum files.
  4. Deem, James M. “The Titanic Mummy: Fact or Fiction?” — citing Bob Brier, The Encyclopedia of Mummies, and the quoted remarks of British Museum Egyptologist Carol Andrews.
  5. “Unlucky Mummy”. Wikipedia (tertiary source; used here only for its citations to The Times, 28th March 1921, p. 11, and The Atlanta Constitution, 19th June 1904).
  6. US National Archives and Records Administration (2012). “They Said It Couldn’t Sink”. Prologue, Spring 2012. Inventory of NARA’s Titanic holdings, including the 1,042-page Senate hearings report and limitation-of-liability records.
  7. US National Archives and Records Administration (1998). Press release NR98-94, “National Archives Makes Available Additional Records Relating to R.M.S. Titanic Disaster”. Carpathia passenger and crew manifests, microfilm T715, roll 1883.
  8. Georgia Historic Newspapers full-text search: “hoodoo mummy”, 1910–1925 (Atlanta Georgian, 7th June 1914). Digital Library of Georgia, University of Georgia.
  9. Internet Archive item record: Edgar Wallace, “The Curse of Amen-Ra”, Great True Stories of Crime, Mystery & Detection. Reader’s Digest, 1966.

Evidence

Painted wooden Egyptian mummy-board of an unidentified woman, with protruding hands and painted plaster detail, displayed in a glass case at the British Museum
The object at the centre of the legend: British Museum EA22542 (registration 1889,0731.1), a painted wooden mummy-board from Thebes, c. 950 BC, photographed on display in 2022. It is a coffin board, not a mummy, and museum records place it in London continuously since 1889. amanderson2, 2022. CC BY 2.0. Via Wikimedia Commons. · source
Cover of Pearson's Magazine from 1909 advertising Sax Rohmer's story of the Mysterious Mummy, illustrated with the British Museum mummy-board
Contemporary print evidence of the legend forming before the Titanic sank: the 1909 cover of Pearson's Magazine fronting Sax Rohmer's 'The Mysterious Mummy', illustrated with the same British Museum object. Pearson's Magazine, 1909. Public domain (expired copyright). Via Wikimedia Commons. · source
Studio portrait photograph of the Victorian journalist William Thomas Stead, bearded, in dark formal dress
Illustrative portrait: W. T. Stead (1849–1912), campaigning editor and spiritualist, who died in the Titanic sinking and whose name the Washington Post of 12 May 1912 attached to the mummy story. Undated portrait, not connected to the object itself. Unknown photographer, before 1912. Public domain (expired copyright). Via Wikimedia Commons. · source

Frequently asked

Was the Unlucky Mummy on the Titanic?
No. The object is British Museum EA22542, registered 1889,0731.1, and the museum's own record places it in its collection from 1889. The Egyptologist Carol Andrews has stated that No. 22542 has not left the British Museum since it was delivered there about 1889. No sale record, shipping document or manifest supporting the Titanic story has been located.
Is the Unlucky Mummy actually a mummy?
No. The British Museum record describes EA22542 as a wooden mummy-board — a painted coffin lid with detail on plaster and protruding hands — made at Thebes and dated to about 950 BC, 21st Dynasty. There is no body, and the museum's record names no owner, so the widely repeated identification of the object as a "Priestess of Amen-Ra" has no primary source.
Where did the Titanic mummy story come from?
The connection was made in the American press after the sinking. The Washington Post of the twelfth of May 1912 ran "Ghost of the Titanic: Vengeance of Hoodoo Mummy Followed Man Who Wrote Its History," proposing that the spiritualist journalist W. T. Stead, who died in the sinking, was the latest victim of an Egyptian priestess's vengeance. The Egyptologist Bob Brier attributes the underlying legend to Thomas Douglas Murray and Stead, who he says attached an existing tale to No. 22542.
Does the British Museum deny the curse?
Museum staff have fielded and denied the story for over a century. Roger Luckhurst, drawing on British Museum files, records that curators "were (and continue to be) constantly asked to confirm or deny stories of the curse attached to catalogue number 22542". No 1912 statement by the Trustees was retrievable during this research, so the denial is documented here through Luckhurst and through Carol Andrews's quoted remarks.