From Pharaoh Tutankhamun's curse to hate speech

It is a discovery that captivated the world, and it remains one of the most important archaeological finds of all time: In 1922, the British Egyptologist Howard Carter and his team unearthed a stone staircase leading down to a sealed tomb in the Valley of the Kings, a royal burial ground for pharaohs in Egypt. In the tomb, they found Tutankhamun's sarcophagus, as well as a wide variety of funerary objects, basically still intact.

The find triggered a media frenzy, and public fascination only grew when Carter's patron, the Earl of Carnavon, died in the midst of the excavation process. His death fueled the legend that the tomb was cursed. The lord was believed to have been punished by the pharaoh for disturbing the peace of the dead. And then, more deaths in the excavation team strengthened the myth.

"There was the widespread impression that the Egyptians had secret knowledge that went well beyond ours, and that it was magical," historian Rolf-Bernhard Essig said.

Therefore, a curse didn't feel unlikely amid the Egyptomania wave. Books and theater plays had already started spreading horror stories about walking mummies as early as the 19th century.

A curse invented by the media

"The press appealed to the lowest instincts of the readers and invented stories that were really well-received," Essig said. "The curse of the pharaoh is one of the best-known phenomena internationally, although it is nearly 100% fictional."

Yet the myth remains popular today through novels, children's books, films and radio plays. The curse of the pharaoh is also still humorously refered to when tourists to Egypt fall ill with typical travel gastrointestinal infections.

That inspired Essig to curate an exhibition on cursing and swearing, titled "Potz! Lightning! From the Pharaoh's Curse to Hate Speech," which is now on show at the Berlin Museum for Communication.

Cursing is probably as old as language itself and part of basic human behavior. A kind of magical power is attributed to using coarse or blasphemous words.

"Of course, there were also curses and swear words in the Egyptian language. But that doesn't mean grave robbers were actually cursed," Essig said, adding that nothing on the topic was ever found by Egyptologists.

So how did Egyptians actually swear? There is no historical documentation of this, as scribes did not chisel in stone the everyday curses used by, for example, pyramid builders.

But there is evidence of royal curses on enemies. For example, the exhibition features a pair of modern flip-flops modeled on the gilded leather sandals from Tutankhamun's tomb. The soles feature depictions of tied-up enemies, which were "trampled" with every step — a way to "magically" curse rivals.

Breaking taboos

Swear words share common characteristics across cultures. "It's always about taboos," Essig said. Taboos transcending cultures and eras include bodily excretions and sex. "Shit, for example, is a word used in many languages," says Essig, who, as a literary scholar, has long been fascinated by the function of language.

Curses involving relatives are also very common in different languages, such as Arabic or Russian.

Terms referring to animals are also often used as insults. In the exhibition, we learn that a donkey in Turkish stands for a cheeky brat, a fool or a bastard, depending on the context. In Russia, the billy goat is used to insult someone seen as an idiot. In Japan, "gorilla" is used to ridicule a man having a burst of anger. And to denigrate someone as coming from an unworthy family, the Chinese use the insult "turtle's egg."

Activating the emotional part of the brain

It has been found that swearing activates a particular part of the brain. Rational discussions are processed in the left hemisphere, whereas swear words also activate the right hemisphere, which is responsible for emotions. "It's something we can't suppress because it's an involuntary expression. The brain does something without us being able to change anything," explains Essig.

For example, if someone hits their thumb with a hammer, they may yell out a curse word or two. Of course, there are also those who swear very rarely or not at all, because they have a high level of self-control.

Self-control appears to be lacking on social media, where insults in posts and comments are commonplace.

Is hate speech a new dimension of insulting? Essig said the content had remained the same over the centuries: "If you look at the insults from the 16th century, for example, the curses used were really disgusting."

But the main difference is that today's insults are being spread quickly around the world through the internet. Even if the fierceness of the terms hasn't changed, the technology allows a whole different of level of insults to emerge, Essig said: "This fast and intense effect is indeed incredible."

This article was originally written in German.