After 80 years, the curse of Tutankhamen's tomb - credited with a host of untimely deaths since its discovery - has finally been disproven by an Australian epidemiologist.

By comparing the survival of those exposed to the 'Mummy's Curse' to family members who were not, Dr Mark Nelson of Monash University shows there is no epidemiological basis for claims that desecrating the ancient tomb brought about untimely deaths.

His analsys is published today in latest issue of the British Medical Journal.

"It was just a bit of a fun thing to do," said Nelson, who has recently completed a doctorate in clinical epidemiology and has an interest in egyptology and archaeology. "A lot of these urban-type myths could be investigated or dispelled if you applied proper scientific methods to them."

The Mummy's Curse came to public notice after Tutankhamen's tomb was uncovered in November 1922 by British archaeologist Howard Carter. The man who financed his expedition, Lord Carnarvon, died months later from septicaemia and pneumonia.

When his dog died soon after, breathless articles ran in British newspapers suggesting an ancient curse against those involved in desecrating the tomb had been awakened. The story regularly reappeared whenever another person involved in the expedition died - even at the death of Lord Carnarvon's daughter in the 1980s.

Nelson relied on the writings of Howard Carter for a list of 25 people who were involved with the expedition and present at key events, and another 19 family members who were not.

He defined exposure to the curse as being present at the breaking of the seals and the opening of the third door of the tomb in 1922; or, in 1926, at the opening of the sarcophagus, the opening of the coffins or the examination of the mummy. Each person would have therefore had between one and four exposures.

The control group of 19 people who were not exposed to the curse consisted largely of spouses, mostly wives.

Nelson tracked most of the people involved by searching through dusty old newspapers and books, and said he often had difficulty tracing the women. "Women didn't exist in print in the 1920s" he said.

Those not exposed to the curse lived about nine years longer than those who were 'cursed'. However, the people who were exposed were already older than those who were not. "Five years of the difference was explained by that," he told ABC Science Online. "You would expect an older group to die earlier."

The fact that there were more women in the unexposed group - and the fact that women generally live longer - accounted for the other four years, he said.

The result - the first time epidemiology has been applied to such a question - shows that there is no evidence for the famed Mummy's Curse, Nelson concluded.

Although widely thought to have been based on Egyptian folklore, the story of the Mummy's Curse is more likely to have arisen in literature. One widely accepted source is Louisa May Alcott's short story, "Lost in a Pyramid: the Mummy's Curse", published in 1869.

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