Agatha Christie published The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb in September 1923, almost a year after the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. Her Hercule Poirot short story drew inspiration from the sensationalised folklore of the “mummy’s curse”. Lord Carnarvon, sponsor of the excavation, had died on April 5 1923, less than two months after he had entered Tutankhamun’s burial chamber.
Yet, there was another inspiration for Christie’s story: Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). Christie draws on Conan Doyle’s novel in the design and unpacking of the alleged curse which, in both stories, actually turns out to be a sophisticated crime
