Zahi Hawass told Reuters a study would examine unexcavated tombs for dangerous substances, gases or germs, to explain the curse, whose fame spread in the 1920s following the death of a British aristocrat who entered King Tutankhamun's tomb.

"At one of my excavations... I found inscriptions telling us 'If anyone would touch my tomb he would be eaten by a crocodile, a hippo and a lion.' It doesn't mean that this will actually happen," Hawass said in an interview this week.

"Scientifically we want to... show when the Egyptians put a curse inscription on a tomb they did not mean they could hurt anyone today who opened the tomb," he said.

Part of the study would focus on dangerous germs that may have developed over the centuries in mummified human remains, said Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

British archaeologist Howard Carter and his sponsor, Lord Carnarvon, were among the first to enter the tomb of boy-king Tutankhamun, who ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago, in Luxor's Valley of the Kings in 1922.

Lord Carnarvon died shortly afterward from an infected mosquito bite. Newspapers at the time said a pharaonic curse had killed him and other people linked to the discovery.

Scientists have in the past suggested that a disease lying dormant in the tomb may have killed the British aristocrat.

"We will start the work soon, perhaps next month. But we don't know when we will end... we are going to study in unexcavated, intact tombs," Hawass said.

Hawass said he had once been accidentally knocked unconscious in an ancient Egyptian tomb.

"When I woke up I told people if anything had happened to me people would think this was the curse of the pharaohs. But it was just an accident."