The Pharaohs Curse Curse Of Ra

2021video / catchphraseclassic

The Pharaoh's Curse and Curse of Ra are a pair of 2023 meme trends where users post videos of people spitting sand or cursing others with fake Egyptian hieroglyphics. The format grew out of a viral Tumblr GIF of L.A. Beast failing the Cinnamon Challenge and later turned into a hieroglyphic copypasta most often paired with the phrase Don't Care. Curse of Ra.

Overview

The Pharaoh's Curse and Curse of Ra are twin meme formats built around a fake ancient Egyptian hex that makes the target spit or drown in sand3. In practice the joke is a video or GIF of someone coughing out a mouthful of powder, most often a clip of competitive eater L.A. Beast botching the Cinnamon Challenge, framed as biblical divine punishment3.

The text version is a block of scrambled hieroglyphics posted as a quote retweet, usually captioned Don't Care. Curse of Ra3. The hieroglyphs are not real Egyptian, they are keyboard jibberish styled to look mystical, and the format works as a jokey way to dismiss someone's opinion by cursing them instead of arguing3. A spin-off called Poseidon's Curse swaps the sand for water and invokes the Greek sea god, keeping the same setup3.

How It Spread

The Tumblr thread kept getting reblogged into early 2023, and on March 10th, 2023, user naamahdarling reversed the L.A. Beast GIF and pulled around 140,000 notes in four months3. A Twitter copy by @westernunion2k in December 2021 grabbed roughly 39,200 likes before being deleted, and the same media crossed to r/196 in January 2023 for about 4,300 upvotes3.

The Curse of Ra branch kicked off on January 3rd, 2023, when @your_welcone paired the L.A. Beast GIF with a hieroglyphic caption reading CURSE OF RA3. On May 28th, 2023, @slime_machine used the same jibberish glyphs in a quote retweet for roughly 5,500 likes, and on June 21st, 2023, @cybercanid remixed it with the addition Don't Care, hitting around 74,500 likes in a month and locking in the copypasta wording3. The text was archived on r/copypasta by LunaTheLesbianFurry on June 29th, 20233.

The TikTok wave landed a month later. On July 26th, 2023, TikToker @space_fruitcals4 posted a Return the slab clip that pulled roughly 1.5 million plays and 357,400 likes in eight days, coining the imagined stolen tomb slab angle3. On August 1st, 2023, @mr_friendsh1p reworked the original L.A. Beast bit for TikTok and went viral again3. Two days later @phill_nye rebranded a Tom Holland near-splash clip as Poseidon's Curse, spawning the water-god variant with tags like Return the trident3.

How to Use This Meme

The video version typically pairs footage of someone gagging on powder, water or any messy substance with a caption naming the relevant deity, most often the pharaoh, Ra or Poseidon. The text version is a common quote-tweet reply: paste a block of hieroglyphic characters, usually prefaced with Don't Care. Curse of Ra, when you want to dismiss the original poster without engaging. Add Return the slab or Return the trident if you want to lean into the stolen-artefact bit3.

Frequently Asked Questions