George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, DL (26 June 1866 – 5 April 1923), styled Lord Porchester until 1890, was an English peer and aristocrat best known as the financial backer of the search for and excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

[2] He inherited the Bretby Hall estate in Derbyshire from his maternal grandmother, Anne Elizabeth, Dowager Countess of Chesterfield in 1885, and succeeded his father in the earldom in 1890.

Carter again led the work, undertaking a systematic search of the Valley for any tombs missed by previous expeditions, in particular that of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

[20] However on 4 November 1922 Carter was able to send a telegram to Lord Carnarvon in England, saying: "At last we have made wonderful discovery in Valley; a magnificent tomb with seals intact; re-covered same for your arrival; congratulations.

[22] Carnarvon was also present when on 26 November Carter made a tiny breach in the top left-hand corner of this doorway, enabling him to peer in by the light of a candle.

[23] However that night Carter, his assistant Arthur Callender, Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn apparently made an unauthorised visit, becoming the first people in modern times to enter the tomb.

Callender rigged up electric lighting, illuminating a vast haul of items, including gilded couches, chests, thrones and shrines.

[30] Lord Carnarvon travelled to England in December 1922, returning in January 1923 to be present at the official opening of the inner burial chamber on 16 February.

[38] On 3rd April 1923, just six weeks after Howard Carter had unsealed the burial chamber in the tomb of Tutankhamun, Conan Doyle arrived in New York to begin a four-month lecture tour on Spiritualism.

Conan Doyle responded to this question by drawing parallels between the death of Carnarvon and his late friend Bertram Fletcher Robinson,[40] and his comments were reported in an article, which appeared in the Daily Express newspaper on 7th April 1923, as follows:[41][42] It is impossible to say with absolute certainty if this is true…If we had proper occult powers we could determine it, but I warned Mr Robinson against concerning himself with the mummy at the British Museum.

They could have guided Mr Robinson into a series of such circumstances as would lead him to contract the disease, and thus cause his death - just as in Lord Carnarvon's case, human illness was the primary cause of death.In 1998 it was argued in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that Conan Doyle may well have been right, owing to research (published in Proceedings of the Royal Society) by Sylvain Gandon,[43] then of the Laboratoire d’Écologie in Paris, on the longevity and potency of toxic spores, as well as comments by archaeologist Nicholas Reeves on "reports of a black fungus inside the tomb".

[46] But modern testing of Egyptian mummies has found the presence of the toxic fungus Aspergillus flavus, whose spores also reportedly killed scientists after the opening of a 15th century royal tomb in Poland in 1973, and Carnarvon (and other alleged victims such as George Jay Gould and Arthur Mace) showed symptoms that were at least arguably consistent with poisoning by its spores.

The cause of Carnarvon's death was reported as ‘pneumonia supervening on [facial] erysipelas' (a streptococcal infection of the skin and underlying soft tissue).