Curses as Crowd Control: Tourist Folklore at Pompeii
by Rowan Murry
In 1922, news of Howard Carter’s rediscovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb took the world by storm. In February 1923, excavators reburied and secured the tomb while archaeologists catalogued their findings and made plans for the next excavation season. It was around this time that the excavation’s financier, who had been present at the opening of the tomb, died mysteriously.1 In actuality, Lord George Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon (1866–1923), had contracted blood poisoning from an open wound caused by a mosquito bite.2 The press, seizing on the story of the Earl’s “mysterious” death, developed a sensationalized narrative of the so-called “mummy curse,” a legend that has pervaded the field of Egyptology ever since.3
The Egyptian mummy curse is an example of what I will refer to as “tourist folklore.” The term describes the perceived phenomenon of misfortune brought upon tourists who steal from or vandalize cultural heritage sites and the perpetuation of these myths by local inhabitants or stewards of these sites.4 Often, tourist folklore myths are bolstered, or sometimes even invented, by heritage site stewards to discourage theft or vandalism.5 This essay examines one example of how custodians of heritage sites manipulate public superstition to protect their sites from thievery and vandalism associated with tourism, especially in cases where funding and implementing physical security measures is impossible.
A valuable example of contemporary tourist folklore operates at the ruined city of Pompeii, an archaeological park near Naples, Italy (fig. 1). Pompeii is an important example not only because of its notoriety as a “dark tourist site”—a site associated with death and trauma—but also because it is one of the most visited UNESCO sites in the world, with approximately three million visitors per year.6 Using frameworks offered by Marcel Mauss and Michel Foucault, this essay utilizes the cultural heritage site of Pompeii as a means to explore the tourist folklore phenomenon. While the example of tourist folklore at Pompeii is not representative of all types of heritage sites and folklore, it provides an example through which to discuss themes of magic, dark tourism, and spectacle.
A discussion of the origins and function of tourist folklore requires an introduction to “contagion magic,” a dominant force fueling superstition and mysticism at Pompeii. The concept of magical contagion is best summarized by French sociologist Marcel Mauss in his book A General Theory of Magic:
The idea of magical continuity, realized through the relationship between parts and the whole or through accidental contact, involves the idea of contagion. Personal characteristics, illness, life, luck, every type of magical influx are all conceived as being transmitted along a sympathetic chain….However, magical contagion is not only an ideal which is limited to the invisible world. It may be concrete, material and in every way similar to physical contagion.7
In other words, once a person comes into physical or spiritual contact with an object, person, or entity, its essence, properties, or spiritual links are transmitted to the person. Contagion curses imply that the physical act of touching and subsequently removing an object from its home initiates spiritual contagion. The physical act of theft provokes bad luck caused by the object, the land, or a deity, which afflicts the offender and sometimes even their family and friends.
Pompeii shares similarities with the tourist folklore and mummy curses associated with the excavations of ancient Egyptian tombs. Anthropologist Anna Wieczorkiewicz dissects this societal fascination with ancient bodies and death, and concludes that “mummies, skulls, and skeletons become our fetishes in seeking meaning” about our own mortality.8 At Pompeii, visitors are immersed in a past world of paganism, debauchery, and destruction, where they play the roles of archaeologist, discoverer, adventurer, ancient Roman, and tourist.9 As a result, Pompeii becomes a dark tourist site where death and destruction are commodified and fetishized. This “quasi-religious mystique” of Pompeii is a crucial factor in a tourist’s decision to steal from the site.10 Visitors to dark tourist sites “seek tangible symbols of the place, the memory, meanings and experiences,” where material objects offer a medium through which they can reflect and channel complicated feelings or difficult memories.11 In addition to these motivations, I propose that the act of stealing artifacts from dark tourist sites like Pompeii is an act of defiance against mortality. It is a direct challenge to the destruction and death one must face at Pompeii—it gives the thief an illusion of control, both literal and metaphorical, over natural forces.
In October 2020, the media amplified the sensationalized story of a “cursed” Canadian woman who had visited Pompeii in 2005.12 She stole “two white mosaic tiles, two pieces of [amphorae], and a piece of ceramic wall” as souvenirs from her visit.13 In 2020, the woman returned the artifacts along with a letter, which stated that she “wanted to have a piece of history that couldn’t be bought,” and which she claims plagued her with bad luck and “negative energy” for 15 years.14 In the letter, she cites examples of her misfortune, including a breast cancer diagnosis and financial loss.15 She implies that the bad luck associated with the artifacts was the direct result of desecrating such a powerful site of trauma, loss, and destruction; it was a disrespectful act which activated Pompeii’s magical contagion.
Luana Toniolo, Archaeological Officer of Pompeii, has estimated about 200 returns of stolen material to Pompeii over the past ten years, both resulting from and in anticipation of the potential curse.16 Toniolo suggested that artifacts which have been removed from their findspot lose their “strength as historical objects,” a quality which is crucial for the park’s mission of preservation and education.17 The park’s desire to deter tourists stealing and displacing artifacts led to a fascinating exhibition on the site’s tourist folklore. In response to the 2020 letter regarding the curse, curators at the Antiquarium of Pompeii compiled a temporary exhibition of letters and returned “cursed” objects. According to CNN, the purpose of the exhibition was anthropological, as a documentation of tourist interactions at Pompeii, but the underlying message is clear: do not steal from the site or else.18 News and media coverage of the alleged curses and subsequent exhibition further sensationalized the tourist folklore narrative maintained by the park’s staff.
The curse of Pompeii further perpetuates this air of mystique offered by dark tourism, and the stewards of Pompeii are using it to their advantage. By displaying returned cursed objects in the Antiquarium and in the media, the custodians of Pompeii are simultaneously creating further interest in the site while protecting it from future damage. The curse brings more visitors to the park, but the threat of magical contagion keeps them in line. At a place like Pompeii, which spans 170 acres, it is impossible to always surveil guests. This is where the curse plays a crucial role. In Foucault’s panopticon, a prisoner surveillance system which functions as a metaphor for modern society’s structure, the threat of constant visibility provokes self-regulation.19 At Pompeii, the threat of the curse plays the singular authoritative role which influences the behavior and social norms of the masses. Fear of this authority creates a system of self-discipline and social control—it is a means of surveillance without a physical entity.
At Pompeii, tourists’ desires to steal from the site stem from uncomfortable encounters with death, destruction, and dark tourism. The curse relies on its mystical associations with paganism and death at the site to both enrapture visitors and the media and ensure the site’s future protection from vandalism and theft. The media spectacle created by the curse serves Pompeii in various ways by preventing destruction and theft, serving as cost-effective security measures, and bringing more attention, visitors, and money to the site. In the face of mass tourism, curses can help communities and custodians regain some semblance of authority over their own heritage and history. However, in some cases, tourist folklore further perpetuates stereotypes and misrepresentations of ancient culture and beliefs. This is true for Pompeii, which is often portrayed in the media as debaucherous and esoteric. It is vital to consider the ways tourist folklore operates in different contexts and how this can positively or negatively impact our collective understanding of history and cultures.
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Rowan Murry received her BA in Art History from the University of Mississippi and is currently pursuing an MA in Museum Studies at New York University. She is particularly interested in Ancient Roman art and archaeology, ethical collecting, and interactive technologies for physical and virtual exhibitions.
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Footnotes
1. Mark R. Nelson, “The Mummy’s Curse: Historical Cohort Study,” British Medical Journal 325, no. 7378 (December 21–28, 2002): 1482.
2. Roger Luckhurst, The Mummy’s Curse: The True History of Dark Fantasy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 8.
3. Luckhurst, The Mummy’s Curse, 9; “George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon,” The British Museum, accessed December 12, 2022, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG53843.
4. Joyce D. Hammond, “The Tourist Folklore of Pele: Encounters with the Other” in Out of the Ordinary: Folklore and the Supernatural (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1995), 159.
5. Other examples of sites that have a history of tourist folklore in order to discourage theft and vandalism include The Petrified Forest in Arizona and Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park.
6. The Palgrave Handbook of Dark Tourism Studies (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2018); “Visitor Data,” Pompeii Archaeological Park. This number does not account for any COVID-19 pandemic closures during 2020–2022. The most recent data comes from 2018.
7. Marcel Mauss, A General Theory of Magic (London: Routledge, 2001), 81–82.
8. Anna Wieczorkiewicz, “Unwrapping Mummies and Telling Their Stories” in Science, Magic, and Religion: The Ritual Processes of Museum Magic (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004), 68.
9. Wieczorkiewicz, “Unwrapping Mummies and Telling Their Stories,” 66.
10. Dorina Buda and Jenny Cave, “Souvenirs in Dark Tourism: Emotions and Symbols,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Dark Tourism Studies (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 719.
11. Buda and Cave, “Souvenirs in Dark Tourism: Emotions and Symbols,” 719–720.
12. Jack Guy and Nicola Ruotolo, “Tourist returns stolen artifacts to Pompeii after suffering ‘curse’ for 15 years,” CNN, October 13, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/pompeii-artifacts-returned-scli-intl/index.html.
13. Guy and Ruotolo, “Tourist returns stolen artifacts.”
14. Guy and Ruotolo, “Tourist returns stolen artifacts.”
15. Guy and Ruotolo, “Tourist returns stolen artifacts.”
16. James Gabriel Martin, “Curious tales of why tourists have been returning ‘cursed’ items to Pompeii,” Lonely Planet, October 26, 2020, https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/pompeii-cursed-objects-tourists.
17. “About Us,” Archeological Park of Pompeii, accessed December 12, 2022, http://pompeiisites.org/en/archaeological-park-of-pompeii/about-us/.
18. Guy and Ruotolo, “Tourist returns stolen artifacts.”
19. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).