We in Canada complain a lot these days about the health-care system and how long it takes for us to get access to certain procedures and equipment. Take CT-scans, for example. Any NHL hockey player with a bum knee can get one done between periods in a game while you and I have to wait weeks, even months. This can be cause for much agonizing, even griping, but if we’re really honest, we have to admit that there is always someone worse off than we are.
Take this young guy over in Egypt, for example. Only 19 years old, he has had to wait 3,300 years before he could get his “cat scan”. Actually, in fact, it came about 3,281 years too late to do him any good. But at least he finally got a chance to get his shot at specialized examination. Yes, even Ancient Egypt’s “boy king”, with all his wealth, couldn’t squeeze his way in before today’s gods of hockey and football. He had to simply wait his turn.
In the meantime, King Tut’s condition has deteriorated immensely and the poor soul is pretty much a shadow of his former self. Still the cat scan did produce some interesting results. As it turns out, Tut has a badly broken leg, but doctors have not yet announced whether it can be repaired. Negative media commentators are guessing he’ll never walk on it again. But what do they know?
Doctors now think, in fact, that King Tut has suffered infection in his broken leg, but that too is problematic. Is it safe to give antibiotics to someone who is 3,300 years old? Will he be able to handle it?
OK, I’ll level with you. King Tut has actually been dead all this time and will not be seen waiting in line in your local emergency ward any time soon. But here is where things get murky. The CT scan was done on Tutankahmun to try to ascertain the cause of his death, making this, no doubt, the longest murder investigation in history. Which begs the question: Have all the unsolved murder cases in the world been settled to our satisfaction to allow us to now start investigating foul play that happened 33 centuries ago? If so, more power to investigators. And I don’t want to be the one to break it to them, but I have a hunch – admitting I am no criminologist – that even if it turned out Tut had been done in, the bad guys have gotten away by now. If modern technology could prove the King was done in by his enemies, how would we go about digging up some witnesses?
As it turns out, the cat scan results showed Tut was not murdered. He had no blows to the back of his head and his chest was not crushed, both theories that had been making the rounds of the gossip circles from 1,281 B.C. till now. It is now believed that it was Tut’s broken leg, and its infection, that did him in, although some scientists think his leg break probably came during the embalming process, which no doubt resulted in a huge lawsuit by the Tut family.
And speaking of lawsuits, it is now rumoured these results will cause descendants of those suspected of murdering Tut to bring claims against the Royal Family to try to recover the good names of their ancestors. However, if it is eventually found that Tut was murdered and the remains of his killers can be found, perhaps modern science can find a way to bring them back to life so the justice system can give them the death penalty. Blow to the back of head recommended.
After avoiding the paparrazi all this time, King Tut has now had 17,000 photos taken of him. These
will be used to help determine who, exactly, were his ma and pa, how old he really was when he got so wrapped up in his tomb, and why he ended up there in the first place.
What the tests and photos have shown is that he was of a slight build, well-fed and healthy and suffered no major childhood malnutrition or infectious diseases. He had large incisor teeth and the typical overbite characteristic of other kings from his family. His lower teeth were also slightly misaligned. Not a candidate, really, for The Bachelor show on TV.
“I believe these results will close the case of Tutankhamun, and the king will not need to be examined again,” a chief investigator said. “We should now leave him at rest.”
Yeh, right. Wasn’t that the reason his family built a massive mountain of stone over him in the first place? So nobody would haul him out in 3,300 years or so for a look see? My guess is, his trips to the doctors’ offices have just begun.
All this commotion could very well be the end of him.
©2005 Jim Hagarty
[the_ad_placement id=”top-of-page”]
