Background
The Seven Crystal Balls was written during World War II. With Belgium under German occupation, Hergé decided to avoid the overt political content that he had included in previous Tintin stories, such as The Blue Lotus, The Broken Ear and King Ottokar's Sceptre.
As the opening sequence of the book indicates, The Seven Crystal Balls and its theme of an ancient curse, was inspired by the "curse of the pharaohs", the speculation that members of the Howard Carter expedition, discoverers of the tomb of Tutankhamun, died in tragic and mysterious ways due to a curse.
Read more about this topic: The Seven Crystal Balls
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