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  • 5/7/2025
Cursed Histories S01E05
Transcript
00:00.
00:23Cries of joy ring across the Nile River in Egypt.
00:27British archaeologist Howard Carter and his team
00:30have just uncovered what may be one of the greatest finds of all time,
00:35the tomb of a forgotten pharaoh.
00:38It was the find of the century, maybe of the millennia.
00:41It became a global sensation.
00:44They consider it one of the first global media stories.
00:47Unlike so many other tombs,
00:49this hadn't been smashed up and robbed in antiquity.
00:53It was almost intact.
00:55The tomb is incredible.
00:57There's thousands of objects inside this one space
01:00and it offers a glimpse into ancient Egyptian life,
01:03or in this case, the afterlife.
01:06But amidst the celebrations,
01:08a messenger is sent to retrieve something from Carter's lodge
01:12and what he finds might just be the precursor to pure tragedy.
01:16On his excavations, Howard Carter kept a pet canary
01:22and many locals viewed this as a good luck omen.
01:26But when the messenger enters the room,
01:29Carter's bird is no more, swallowed by a dangerous intruder.
01:33In the place of the canary was a live cobra.
01:37The cobra is one of those very important figures
01:42that operates on the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead.
01:46And the cobra is also a protective spirit.
01:49Was this an omen?
01:51Was this a warning to signal to the team not to pursue the expedition?
01:57And the cobra, as they will soon find out,
02:00is the very figure emblazoned across their precious find.
02:04Could this snake have been a threat from the underworld,
02:07fending off the raiders of a royal grave?
02:12What follows this encounter is a decade of death and destruction
02:16to anyone associated with the archaeological discovery,
02:19magnified by a media frenzy.
02:22What is causing all these deaths and could it have been the mummy?
02:27Yeah, it was encouraged by news media, by the general conversation.
02:35It was fascinating to people.
02:37To whom did this forgotten place of rest belong?
02:40And could bringing its existence to light
02:42truly have released a vehement force in the Valley of the Kings?
02:47The Valley of Kings is the name of the enormous burial site
02:50for the rulers of Egypt.
02:52It dates from as early as the 16th century up through the 11th century BC
02:56and was the subject of constant grave robbery.
02:59People knew that these were full of precious objects.
03:03By the 1920s, the once opulent burial chambers of this royal necropolis
03:08are nearly barren from centuries of looting and excavations.
03:13Many explorers turn their sights to other pursuits,
03:16but a lingering clue keeps Howard Carter put.
03:20Over the years, pieces of bandage and pottery are found,
03:23inscribed with the name of an unknown noble, Tutankhamen.
03:28Nobody knew who Tutankhamen was.
03:31Did he have a tomb? And if so, did it still exist?
03:34Ancient Egypt had fascinated the English nobility for decades,
03:39and George Herbert, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, was no exception.
03:45George Herbert was known to be a bit of a bad boy
03:49and a wealthy one at that.
03:51He liked to party, he liked to gamble on the horses,
03:55and he liked to drive the relatively new motor car.
04:00But unfortunately, he had a crash.
04:02He injured himself actually quite badly.
04:05And his doctor suggested that given the weakened state of his body,
04:10he should spend the winters outside of England,
04:14somewhere warm, somewhere sunny.
04:16And of course, Egypt came to mind.
04:19Egypt was under British rule until 1922.
04:22During the 1920s, Egypt became a hub for many European explorers and adventurers
04:29who wanted to seek out ancient Egyptian artifacts for themselves.
04:33Lord Carnarvon quickly becomes enraptured by the nation's ancient history
04:37and soon fancies himself an armchair Egyptologist.
04:41He commissions Carter, a renowned archaeologist,
04:44to be his boots on the ground,
04:46sifting through the desert sands in search of the elusive Tutankhamen.
04:50But for years, the search proved fruitless.
04:53Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter worked together for seven years,
04:57but pretty much nothing had turned up.
04:59Carter was getting worried that the money was going to be pulled
05:03and Carnarvon was getting well and truly fed up.
05:06Carnarvon gives Carter an ultimatum.
05:09I'll fund one more dig and you better come up with something.
05:14So Carter decides to scout a plot of land
05:18that he'd already recognized near to the Valley of the Kings.
05:22Just a few days in, during this new exploration,
05:25a young Egyptian waterboy working on Carter's site trips over a stone in the sand.
05:31He moves the dislodged rock and unearths the top of a staircase leading deep into the ground.
05:37Carter and his men dig out these steps until they come to what can be seen as a door,
05:43and that that door is intact.
05:46Could this be the tomb of the long-lost king?
05:49It's not just any old door.
05:51They find the royal cartouche.
05:53Only the pharaoh is allowed to have a cartouche,
05:56so there is no question that this is a royal tomb.
05:59A cartouche is an oval or oblong shape used in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs
06:04to frame and emphasize the names of important individuals such as pharaohs or gods.
06:11Carter immediately sends a telegram to Lord Carnarvon,
06:15who insists that he's present at the opening of the tomb.
06:19Two weeks later, in November 1922,
06:23Carter and Lord Carnarvon descend into the passageway with torches in hand.
06:29Carter gently picks a small opening in the upper corner of the door,
06:34releasing a gust of warm centuries-old air and eagerly peers into the dusty chamber.
06:40Carnarvon asks,
06:42Can you see anything?
06:44Carter excitedly responds,
06:46Yes, I see wonderful things.
06:49His flame illuminates a room adorned with the treasure of the gods.
06:54Gold glitters from wall to wall.
06:57As they break through the door and step into the tomb of Tutankhamun,
07:01have they inadvertently awakened the long-slumbering host?
07:05Could they now be unwittingly unleashing a deadly curse
07:08that has remained dormant for over 3,000 years?
07:13Tutankhamun's tomb was massive.
07:16We have a series of chambers,
07:18all filled with their own individual objects from pottery to gold.
07:23It would take archaeologists months, even years, to fully excavate it.
07:28People's minds are absolutely captivated,
07:31and they want to know more.
07:33And so what we get is more.
07:37King Tut, Carter and his team become overnight superstars,
07:42and Tutmania infiltrated Western fashion, film and architecture.
07:46But as Carter's team pulls treasures marked with a watchful cobra from the crypt,
07:51some begin to raise caution of the dangers ahead.
07:56When ancient Egyptian royals died,
07:58their mummified bodies were held alongside gifts and riches,
08:02with this idea that they might actually be able to take this with them into the afterlife.
08:08And so to safeguard anyone disturbing those, they inscribed a pharaoh's curse.
08:13There isn't a warning in Tutankhamun's tomb, but the presence of warnings in other tombs would have set people up for the expectation that magical safeguards were in place,
08:28especially in a tomb that was unopened.
08:32One threat reads,
08:34Cursed be to those who disturb the rest of a pharaoh.
08:38They that shall break the seal of this tomb shall meet death by disease that no doctor can diagnose.
08:45Carter and Lord Carnarvon dismiss these tales of doom.
08:49They are sitting on a gold mine of over 5,000 Egyptian artifacts.
08:54But are they prepared to risk their lives for fortune and fame?
08:59During the excavation, Lord Carnarvon gets bitten on the cheek by a mosquito.
09:05Now, usually this is harmless.
09:08But a few weeks later, while he's shaving one morning, he nicks the bite.
09:15And it gets infected.
09:20And within three days, Lord Carnarvon is dead.
09:25Legend has it that at the very moment of the Earl's demise, all the lights of Cairo simultaneously go dark.
09:33And back in England, his family dog lets out an agonizing howl before falling over and dying too.
09:40Could it be the rumored pharaoh's curse retaliating against the raiders of Tut's tomb?
09:47Carnarvon's brother, Aubrey Herbert, visits Carnarvon during the excavations
09:53and says something very spooky to his brother.
09:57That he felt something terrible was going to happen to their family.
10:02And sure enough, it did.
10:04A few months after, Aubrey follows his brother to the grave just the same way with blood poisoning.
10:10Lord Carnarvon had tragically died, Carter's benefactor.
10:16But Carter was now a man of means.
10:19He had an amazing reputation.
10:21He was a global celebrity.
10:23People were rushing to go into that amazing space and see those treasures
10:29and meet Carter, the man who had discovered it all.
10:34Without heeding any ominous forewarnings hidden beneath the sandy surface,
10:38visitors willingly descend underground with Carter to marvel at the ancient treasures,
10:43unknowingly falling into the clutches of a supernatural trap.
10:48One of the many important people who come to see firsthand the tomb
10:53is the British Governor General of Sudan, Sir Lee Stack.
10:56When he went back to Sudan, however, he was shot dead.
11:00George J. Gould, an American railroad executive,
11:03falls ill almost immediately after and dies of pneumonia.
11:07A rich Egyptian called Ali Fahmy Bey visited the tomb
11:12and shortly afterwards was murdered by his wife.
11:16And this to many people showed that the curse of Tutankhamun was all too real.
11:22Reporters are quick to connect the dots
11:25and the story of Tutankhamun descends into a panicked frenzy.
11:29What malevolence lies beneath the Valley of the Kings?
11:32And could entering a royal tomb truly tempt such a wicked spell?
11:37Tutmania transforms into something far more sinister
11:41where people are dropping dead.
11:43But it's not just the media, it's Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
11:46who of course wrote Sherlock Holmes, who's a friend of Carnarvon's.
11:50And he tells reporters that there is an evil elemental at work here.
11:55Laying witness to the death and hysteria in the aftermath of their discovery,
11:59a young archaeologist, Hugh Evelyn White, is overwhelmed with despair.
12:05Evelyn White is working on this excavation.
12:08He's been there longer than most other people.
12:11He's done more.
12:12And so if the curse is really retaliation for desecrating the tomb,
12:18he should be near the top of the list.
12:20Constantly being fed stories about people dying didn't do his nerves any good.
12:26I mean, they were shredded.
12:28He became increasingly anxious, depressed at the thought he might be next.
12:35In 1924, Evelyn White takes his own life.
12:39He leaves behind a cryptic message and allegedly spells out the blame with his own blood.
12:45I have succumbed to a curse which forces me to disappear.
12:50But this grim forewarning does nothing to stop Howard Carter.
12:54He pushes deeper into the burial chamber, slowly unraveling the life of Tutankhamen
13:00and clinging to the hope of finally gracing his royal presence.
13:04You would think that Howard Carter himself would be the main target of the curse.
13:10But Carter is trying to dismiss the curse as it's just circumstance and coincidence and nothing else.
13:17But some of his companions may feel otherwise.
13:20A friend of Howard Carter's and the editor for the Illustrated London News, Bruce Ingram,
13:26had never personally entered Tut's tomb.
13:29But he is unexpectedly swept up by its dark energy when he receives an unsuspecting souvenir
13:35that carries the potential for danger.
13:38Carter gifts his friend Bruce Ingram a bracelet which is allegedly from Tutankhamen's tomb.
13:44He soon realises that this bracelet is inscribed with a warning.
13:48Cursed be he who moves my body. To him shall come fire, water and pestilence.
13:55Shortly after Sir Ingram receives the bracelet, his house is hit by a fire.
14:03Shortly thereafter there's a flood. Now before he allows for pestilence to come in,
14:09he decides to get rid of the bracelet.
14:12The wise Sir Ingram discards his antique souvenir.
14:15Other friends, however, aren't as fortunate when it comes to escaping the hazards of this mystical hex.
14:22The Egyptologist Aaron Ember is brought in to consult on some of the items that come out of the tomb.
14:29He will be killed by a tragic fire which goes through and wipes out his house and with it many of these Egyptian items.
14:37The reason Aaron Ember dies during the house fire is that he returns to retrieve a manuscript weirdly called the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
14:50Newspapers fly from the shelves as yet another tragedy is linked to the cursed crypt of a king.
14:56Unbothered, Carter has finally reached the innermost enclosure of the chamber.
15:01After years of patience, he comes face to face with the mighty Tutankhamen.
15:06He's resting in three layers of sarcophagi.
15:10There's the outer one made of wood with gold leafing.
15:13Inside, another slightly more elaborate wooden and gold and painted coffin.
15:20And then the very famous solid gold sarcophagus with the incredible golden mask.
15:28The cobra that we find at the top of the mask is a symbol of protection and is there to strike at any enemies or anyone who will disturb the body of the pharaoh who is on his way to the underworld.
15:44So who was this somewhat obscure pharaoh?
15:47And might the act of exhuming his preserved remains bring about even more calamity for those who disturb his eternal rest?
15:55It turns out that Tutankhamen's life was pretty uneventful.
15:59He becomes king around the year 1332 BCE at the tender age of eight to nine years old.
16:07Tut was a relatively minor royal figure.
16:10His reign was very short only until he was 19 when he died and was entombed.
16:16They discovered that he suffered from a number of deformities that may have been the result of his birth by siblings.
16:22Egyptian royalty often maintained their lineage through the practice of intermarriage among close family members, such as brothers, sisters and cousins.
16:31And in his case, this may have caused, for example, signs of scoliosis and even a clubfoot.
16:37Ordinary in life, perhaps.
16:39But in death, King Tut is a power to be reckoned with.
16:42As Carter unwraps his linen shrouds, he finds an eerie detail cut into the mummy's face.
16:49They're unwrapping Tutankhamun's bandages and they see this lesion on his face.
16:55This was where Carnarvon was bitten.
16:58Is this the curse of King Tut?
17:02The team resurrects the boy king's body from its crypt for further analysis, which some would say was a daring move that could provoke the forces of the underworld even further.
17:14Down in the cramped vaults, choking on the desert dust, is one of Carter's closest colleagues, one that will meet a familiar fate.
17:23There was an Australian archaeologist called A.C. Mace who worked with Howard Carter in taking items from the tomb, cleaning them, preparing them for exhibitions.
17:35He's spending hours every single day breathing in this ancient dust.
17:40And over time, he starts to get a little bit ill.
17:44He has some difficulty breathing and he becomes more and more weak so that by 1928, he dies.
17:51Suffering closes in on Carter as the curse greets his inner circle of comrades.
17:57In 1928, his personal secretary, Richard Bethel Jr., experiences a bout of bizarre fires in his London apartment, where many of the famous pharaoh's belongings are stored.
18:09Richard Bethel Jr. was one of the first to enter the tomb behind his boss, Howard Carter.
18:16These accidents in his home make him a target for the tabloids, who once again point to the curse of Tutankhamun.
18:26Perhaps confirming these conspiracies, just one year goes by before Bethel is found dead under suspicious circumstances at an elite gentleman's club in London, believed to have been smothered by an unknown assailant.
18:40The artifacts found in Richard Bethel Jr.'s home were brought to his father, who lives nearby.
18:48This murder sends his father into a tailspin. One can only imagine the kind of grief he is feeling, and he's surrounding himself with these objects that might have been cursed.
19:00All the while, the tabloid papers are pointing to the curse of Tutankhamun as being the cause for his son's death.
19:10The problem here is that Lord Carnarvon gives only one newspaper access to the entire filing of information that's coming from this excavation, and there's a curse.
19:23So now these other newspapers are running with this story, and it really blows up.
19:29Relentless journalists and their voracious readers only fuel the barren sorrows.
19:35Inundated by the highly publicized news of his son's death, he begins to be tormented by the thoughts of this curse.
19:42I really cannot stand any more horrors, and hardly see what good I am going to do here, so I am making my exit.
19:50Finding no other escape from his suffering, Richard Bethel Sr. jumps to his death from a seventh-floor window, just months after his son's alleged murder.
20:01We might want to ask, is the media frenzy a part of the curse as well?
20:06These negative stories keep coming out. People are becoming frightened.
20:10They keep hearing these stories over and over and over again, which, whether the curse existed in the first place or not,
20:17actually seems to be becoming a real thing, at least in the minds of the people who feel that they are in danger.
20:24If there is a curse, how is it the person who was the first to enter it, the one who worked most closely in excavating and unearthing as many treasures,
20:34was not seemingly impacted by it?
20:37Howard Carter, the very man responsible for rousing the curse of Tutankhamen, oddly defies his alleged wrath.
20:45In 1939, a full 16 years after the initial dig, he dies of cancer at age 64.
20:52Yet his obituary is riddled with mentions of a curse.
20:57So are these fatalities the fallout of a mummy's hex? Or is it all just the spin of media sensation?
21:04Around 13 deaths are usually attributed to the mummy's curse, and that's over eight and ten years.
21:12When you think about the number of people who would have been involved in some ways, 13 people over that period of time is really not a significant number.
21:23Back in 1972, I saw the mask of Tutankhamen when it was brought to London and exhibited in the British Museum.
21:32Now, I'm still sitting here. I've survived. The curse hasn't got to me yet. Maybe I shouldn't speak too soon.
21:38But nevertheless, the whole idea of a curse still endures and still terrifies many people.
21:45It's 1936 in rural Mississippi. The smooth sound of the Delta blues pours beyond the walls of a juke joint and fills the warm air.
22:00Just as he'd done many times before, Robert Johnson approaches the stage with his guitar, wading through the hostile glances of a crowd that's dreading to hear him play.
22:11But tonight, he has something special in store.
22:15Robert Johnson was notoriously not very good on the guitar.
22:22He was habitually booed off stage, laughed at, and thrown out of clubs just because he was so bad at the guitar.
22:31As the bar's patrons mock his every move, Johnson takes a seat in the middle of the dimly lit room.
22:37He readies his hands and begins to pluck a song so extraordinary that, like a spell, makes the room fall still.
22:45Suddenly, he can play like a dream. Suddenly, he's incredibly good. Everyone's wondering.
22:51Where is this coming from? How did this boy suddenly get talent? Does Johnson give any hints? Maybe.
22:59Maybe it's people just talking amongst each other trying to figure out what happened. We can't really know.
23:05From the local laughing stock to the king of the Delta blues, how did Robert Johnson suddenly acquire such phenomenal talent?
23:13It's a story shrouded in mystery, as he could now play the guitar with such skill and dexterity seemingly impossible for a human to achieve.
23:23Some of his contemporaries claim that Johnson had made a deal with the devil, a pact that would bring him impeccable skill, but perhaps at the cost of something much more valuable.
23:35Robert Johnson was born in 1911 in Hazlehurst, Mississippi.
23:41He was born out of wedlock. He lived an itinerant life with his mother wandering around the Delta.
23:47And in fact, when he's born, of course, it's several decades after the end of slavery.
23:51But nonetheless, Mississippi was still a place where blacks could feel like targets.
23:56This was a racist, white supremacist society.
24:00Robert Johnson's own stepfather, a black businessman, was ran out of town by a lynch mob.
24:08For Johnson, the hardships of living in America's segregated South is what leads him to the blues.
24:15The blues was an outgrowth of what we might relate to as country and Western music.
24:20It was the black person's way of dealing with sadness and loss.
24:25And this was a way of people putting into words and music their feelings and their emotions as a release.
24:32Well, at the time when Robert Johnson embarked on a career in singing the blues, he was living the blues himself.
24:38He lived in a small shanty in Mississippi, had a wife who was pregnant, barely able to provide for his own.
24:45And so he left and went on the road to try and create an existence as a musician for himself.
24:51Although not the most lucrative path against the backdrop of the Great Depression,
24:55the severe economic crisis that gripped the United States during the 1930s,
25:00playing music ignites a fire within Johnson's soul that he refuses to smother.
25:06Lacking in skill but abundant in courage, he hits the road with plans to return just in time for the birth of his child.
25:14His welcome home, however, is marred by tragedy.
25:19Johnson returns home to find his wife and child have passed away in childbirth.
25:24And worse still, her family blames him for their death.
25:27They argue that it's his love of the blues, of the devil's music, that cursed his wife and cursed his child and led to their death.
25:38Blues especially was considered the devil's music, chiefly because it would take away otherwise God-fearing people into dens of iniquity where this music would occur.
25:51Further immersing himself in the musical underbelly of the South, Johnson croons his sorrows into song.
25:58Left with nothing but his guitar, he drifts around the Mississippi Delta, hoping for a shot at fame, or at the very least, respect.
26:08Johnson has followed two of his idols, Sunhouse and Willie Brown, to a juke joint where they're playing.
26:15Now they're having a little bit of a break, a little intermission between their set, and he decides, this is my chance.
26:23He pushes his way through the crowd to a small stage. He boldly settles into the spotlight.
26:29But what he begins to play is far from the music of a star.
26:33He's taking a shot, but his shot isn't going too well. All he's really producing is noise.
26:40There's booing, there's people throwing stuff, they're calling him names, and he gets pulled off the stage and even chucked out altogether.
26:49This treatment of Johnson wasn't particularly unusual, unfortunately, but on this night there was something different.
26:56And that is that Johnson simply vanishes.
27:01Johnson disappears from the Delta for over a year.
27:04Some say he ventured off to find his father, or that he went north to explore the music scene.
27:10But others tell a far more sinister story, one that begins at a crossroads.
27:15Robert Johnson wanders to the Mississippi crossroads just before midnight, and in despair he falls to his knees and begins to pray.
27:28He pleads to the skies, promising to sacrifice whatever it takes to achieve greatness.
27:34But who exactly is listening to his prayers?
27:37There is something peculiar in the air, the kind of energy that raises the hairs on one's neck and sends a shiver down the spine.
27:45Suddenly, at the stroke of midnight, a shadowy figure appears on the road.
27:50He looks up and he sees a man walking towards him in the shadow.
27:57He can't really make out the face or quite who it is at this point.
28:02Johnson's not particularly scared of the figure that he sees, because he appears to be an older, feeble man.
28:09But there is something dark, maybe devilish about him, that definitely gives him some pause.
28:18The figure says, hey, I play the blues too. Let me have a look at your guitar.
28:24And plays a little bit and says, well, I see the problem. It's out of tune. Let me tune it for you.
28:32The figure hands back Johnson his guitar, freshly tuned.
28:37But it's more than that. It's not just tuned now.
28:41Johnson has been gifted.
28:43He's probably the greatest blues guitarist in the world now.
28:48He just doesn't know it yet.
28:52But for this good favour of tuning Johnson's guitar, the stranger demands something in return.
28:58Not money, nor a deed, but the poor blues man's soul.
29:03Could this drifter be the answer to Johnson's desperate prayers?
29:07And what would it mean to barter his very being for musical prowess?
29:11There are different renditions of this story.
29:15Some people think that it actually was the devil.
29:19Others believe that what Johnson met that night was a Haitian voodoo spirit called Papa Legba.
29:28Robert Johnson returns to the juke joint he was kicked out of with guitar in hand.
29:33As he opens the doors and walks in, the crowd snickers and laughs and makes fun of him.
29:39But then, the blues musician Sun House notices something odd.
29:45Affixed to Johnson's acoustic guitar is an extra string.
29:49He could barely play with six, so how is he possibly going to incorporate a seventh?
29:55A shock ripples through the room as Johnson begins to caress his chords, producing a sound unlike anything they'd heard before.
30:04This man, who was completely disregarded as a musician, came back, took the stage, and commanded it.
30:11And he produced music that they describe as almost otherworldly.
30:16His fingers tickle the strings of that guitar and come out with the bass, the melody, and the rhythm in a very soulful way that most would not expect.
30:28It's a new music, perhaps, the devil's music. The devil, Robert Johnson, and himself.
30:35That same year, Johnson's newfound ability finally lands him a session with a record producer.
30:43When he enters the room, he strangely sits down to play, facing the wall rather than his peers.
30:50Is he shy? Or could he be shielding the proof of supernatural support?
30:56Then his raspy voice bellows a cryptic tale.
30:59Hellhound on my trail, up jump the devil, me and the devil blues.
31:05I think Robert Johnson is telegraphing to everyone that cares to listen exactly how he's become this master guitarist in such a short time.
31:15He produces a mere handful of songs, so emotive and remarkable that they eventually earned Johnson the title of King of the Delta Blues.
31:26Even though Johnson was hitting his stride, journeying across the nation, indulging in the delights of whiskey and women, things were not going all his way.
31:37He is struggling to find anyone that's going to be a champion for him. He can't find an agent or a manager.
31:44When he does, he's cheated out of royalties. Then he's a victim of vagrancy law.
31:49So while he's got this incredible gift now, things aren't that easy for Robert Johnson.
31:55A music company executive called John Hammond takes something of a liking to Johnson's music.
32:02And he's determined to get Johnson to play at the famous Carnegie Hall in New York.
32:09So he goes to track Johnson down in the Delta. But by the time he finds him, it's too late.
32:17One night, Johnson is at a bar in Greenwood, Mississippi, smooth-talking one of his many women.
32:23Little does he know that the bartender is the jilted lover of his lady friend.
32:29Johnson orders another round, and this one is laced with vengeance.
32:34Not long after that night, Johnson's dead.
32:38One historian writes that Johnson's mother finds him on his deathbed with his guitar laid across his chest, struggling to move.
32:47Johnson shakily hands it over and whispers his last words.
32:52That's what got me messed up, Mama. It's the devil's instrument, just like you said. And I don't want it no more.
33:01Johnson dies at the age of 27 in the year 1938.
33:07And he becomes, in effect, the inaugural member of something we call the 27 Club, that group of super talented musicians who all died at the age of 27.
33:21He dies in more or less obscurity. It's not really until the early 1960s, when everyone from Cream to the Rolling Stones is mimicking Robert Johnson's style, that Johnson really becomes the king of the Delta blues.
33:39The blues is music that's about more than just drinking and having a good time.
33:44It is dealing with the issues that musicians are dealing with at the time.
33:49So the tracks that Johnson makes famous could be actually talking about what's a real hellhound to a young black man at this time.
33:57It's the racism. It's the white supremacy. It's the inability to get ahead in life, no matter what you try to do, because your society, the entire systems around you, are keeping you down.
34:09From a hopeless guitarist to a Delta legend, Robert Johnson helps establish the template for the blues.
34:16He has gripped the world with a haunting capsule of music and a mysterious tale that imparts one very important lesson.
34:24If you ever find yourself at a crossroads in the dead of night and a curious stranger offers you a deal, be sure to think twice and always read the fine print.
34:44The warm waters of a sacred thermal spring pour from the earth and fill these stone baths.
34:50Here in the ancient Roman Britain town of Aquaisoulis, pilgrims from near and far were once invited to soak in these relaxing pools.
34:59For many, this wasn't merely a spa, but also a courthouse of the gods, where individuals could seek divine retribution against those who had wronged them.
35:09In ancient Greece or Rome, we're dealing with very powerful deities, each who are associated with different kinds of powers in many cases, and who you would have a different relationship with.
35:20It's a world filled with many different spirits.
35:23This site in the west of England was presided over by Sulis Minerva, an ancient goddess of healing and justice, and drew visitors who sought to bathe in her presence and appeal to her powers.
35:36The strength of Sulis Minerva was believed to reside in the hot springs, accessed by the offerings that were made to her.
35:43It was believed that she had the power to heal diseases and grant blessings and protection to her devotees.
35:50Romans would come to this place determined to exact revenge on somebody who would cause them great misfortune.
35:59And the best way to do that was to write their grievance on a lead tablet and to beg the goddess Sulis Minerva to act against that person, to damn that person, to hurt that person.
36:14Itching their pleas into dark tablets of lead, devotees tossed their ill intents into the divine depths of the spring.
36:23The location of this place, of this goddess, is the modern city of Bath.
36:29And it's now just one of many places where Romans went to beg the gods to curse somebody.
36:36And something like 1,500 cursed tablets have been discovered across the whole of the Roman Empire.
36:45Most of these tablets target thieves in particular.
36:49The human who stole Vario's cloak or his things, who deprived him of his property, may he be bereft of his mind in memory.
36:57May worms, cancer and maggots penetrate his hands, head and feet, as well as his limbs and marrows.
37:05These were not punishments that would be delivered in a court of law.
37:09These were gruesome, dark forms of retribution.
37:14Send me the three-headed dog, so that he rips out Plotius' heart.
37:19I give you his intimate parts, so that he may be unable to urinate.
37:24There are some tablets that have little dolls, little objects that seemed as if they were representations of the offending party intended to increase the idea of sympathetic magic.
37:40This is the person I want you to hurt.
37:43You might see some that have the writing backwards.
37:46And why would we write something backwards?
37:49Well, it's really mysterious and not everybody can read it.
37:53Perhaps spoken backwards made the revenge spell stronger.
37:59However, some individuals use these tablets maliciously to gain an unfair advantage over others.
38:06They were frequently used to help increase your odds when you are gambling in various sporting events such as watching the chariots.
38:15I command you to torment and kill the horses of the green and white teams, and to kill Clarus, Felix, Primulus and Romanus, the charioteers.
38:25From love quarrels to legal feuds, sporting bets to scandals, any dilemma could be cause for a curse.
38:32And who better to enforce one's spite than the most supreme powers of all?
38:38But who were these revered deities, and how were they selected to preside over mortal affairs?
38:44In the beliefs of the ancient Greeks and Romans, an assembly of deities existed.
38:50But it was primarily the darkest and most underworld associated figures, including gods and entities, who were invoked to mete out vengeance.
39:01As the empire expanded, they adopted local culture.
39:05Sulis Minerva is a fine example of this.
39:08Sulis was a Celt god, and Minerva was a Roman god.
39:12So what better way than to combine Sulis Minerva?
39:15Formerly known as Sulis to the Celtic druids of Britain, this goddess was believed to hold the power of healing.
39:22When the Romans conquered the isle around 43 AD, they conflate her with their own religious figure, Minerva, a goddess of justice and victory.
39:31And from this, Sulis Minerva materializes, dweller of the hot springs and executor of revenge.
39:38Little was known about Sulis Minerva until archaeologists did some investigations on a bathhouse in the 1970s.
39:45During the archaeological dig at the Roman baths in Bath, researchers revealed the relics of this Roman sacred spring and with it, the loaded threats of an ancient society.
39:57Pilgrims who were looking for the intercession of Sulis Minerva would pray in her temple and would drop the tablets into the baths.
40:05These Roman baths are a notorious epicenter for petty theft. While waiting in the warm waters, visitors' coins, cups and clothing are snatched up by bandits.
40:16But luckily here, under the watchful eye of Sulis Minerva, revenge is a dish best served hot.
40:24It might seem petty to you and I to summon the gods to effect punishment on someone that stole a cloak.
40:32But the people writing these curses had no real access to a court system and couldn't afford a lawyer, so the curse was the next best thing.
40:42What suffering could result from the words stamped into a piece of God-bound lead?
40:47And what would it take to protect oneself from the punishments of an otherworldly realm?
40:53Some citizens were so terrified by these curses that they would turn around and create their own counter-curses.
41:01One such counter-curse is uncovered in 1785, when a farmer's field in England yields a stolen surprise.
41:09While ploughing his crop, a farmer finds a golden ring decorated with a prayer.
41:14Centianus, may you live in God. For over a hundred years, no one knew what this meant and who Centianus was.
41:23About a century after the ring was discovered, a cursed tablet is found.
41:30And on that cursed tablet, it mentions the ring.
41:34The tablet evokes a god that demands the punishment of a man named Centianus.
41:43This has led researchers to believe that Centianus might have stolen the ring and marked it with his own form of protection.
41:55So what happened to Centianus and all the other jinxed felons of the ancient world?
42:00Did these powerful deities carry out those demands for justice, inscribed on those tablets, and bring misfortune to the damned?
42:08This we will never know. As Christianity gains prominence, the practice of using these harmful cursed tablets gradually faded away.
42:18People in the declining Roman Empire began to place their trust and seek solace in the Heavenly Father instead.
42:25But the end of the tablet is a blessing in disguise, because these tablets held a hidden danger.
42:33Although meant to be tools of the law, they also carried their own deadly curse.
42:38The tablets ultimately may have brought harm not only to their intended targets, but also to those who created them.
42:45Unbeknown to the users of ancient Rome, lead was highly toxic. Exposure to lead can lead to memory loss, nerve damage, and even death.
43:01These malevolent spells, intricately carved in lead, vanished into the depths of time, only to resurface centuries later as a collection of unsolved mysteries.
43:12You can still visit the restored temple of Sulis Minerva today.
43:16For those who have been wronged, think your ill wishes and leave it to the goddess.
43:21Whether or not it's worthy of revenge, well, that's for a higher authority to decide.
43:28To be continued...
43:58You