Spectator Competition: Out of the tomb

Comp. 3392 invited you to write ‘The Curse of King Thut’ (in poetry or prose) in response to the discovery of the tomb of the pharaoh Thutmose II, the first such since Tutankhamun’s. There were many imaginative curses, from the archaeologist Artemis Spendlove Jr’s tinnitus (Mark Ambrose) to the contents of the tomb turning out quite meh (Frank Upton):

No treasure beyond measure

No ‘wonderful things’ in the Valley of Kings

No chaps in white suit and Panama

No mummy or daddy or granama

Mark Brown foretold of the influencers descending: ‘The mummy fumes beneath his wraps,/ As tourists pose for selfie snaps’ while Bill Greenwell promised a litany of afflictions (‘From your head down to your hallux, you’ll be impotent in Alex,/ While your nose will burst asunder up in Thebes’). In Janine Beacham’s poem, Thut’s curse is that he is doomed to be in the shadow of his more famous descendent: ‘But of the ancient kings I’ll never be the main celebrity,/ For Tutankhamun’s treasures put the asp in my asperity.’ Praise also to Jasmine Jones, Sylvia Fairley, Basil Ransome-Davies and Frank McDonald. The winners are below.

I’m Pharaoh Thutmose, and this is my tomb,

So you’d better push off or I’ll spell out your doom,

In which I shall call on our Egyptian gods

To come and sort out you inquisitive sods.

First I’ll send Bastet, who’s shaped like a cat,

She’ll rip up your curtains and pee on your mat,

And after her, dog-head Anubis will come,

Wait till you bend over, and then bite your bum.

Hathor will be the next part of your doom –

Do you want a huge cow in your living room?

Horus is hawk-headed – that isn’t a fable –

You don’t want to let him too near your bird-table!

I’ll also send Sobek, direct from the Nile,

Whose head, by the way, is a fierce crocodile.

And if you even think of unwrapping my mummy,

I’ll personally give you ten years’ gyppy tummy.