December 27, 2006
Next week will mark the 31st anniversary of StevensÂ’ taking his oath as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Stevens has turned out to be one of the stalwart members of the court's liberal wing.Thirty years after Ford left office, Americans are living under legal rules created by the Supreme Court, in many cases by 5-to-4 decisions with Stevens in the majority.
Among them:
* Stevens wrote the majority opinion in Kelo v. New London, the 2005 decision that held that local and state governments could condemn and acquire private property even when it was not to be used for a public purpose.
* He helped form the five-justice majority in another 2005 case, Roper v. Simmons, which held that convicted murderers whoÂ’d been under age 18 when they committed their crime could not get the death penalty.
* He joined a 2000 decision called Stenberg v. Carhart in which the court struck down a Nebraska law banning so-called “partial-birth” abortions.
None of these decisions meet with my approval, and I believe each of them have been destructive of the proper Constitutional order. Indeed, Stevens' liberalism is proof positive that no president can ever be sure what sort of justice he will get when he makes an appointment.
The other argues that Ford's greatest legacy was that he set the stage for the election of Ronald Reagan four years after his own defeat, for any other outcome in 1976 would have likely ended Reagan's chance to be president and certainly sent the country down a very different path.
The true Ford effect was, once again, an unwitting one. By beating Reagan in the battle for his party’s nomination he saved Reagan from himself. It is very doubtful whether Reagan could have stopped Carter in 1976 — Ford as the incumbent President was the only Republican with any chance of winning — and if Reagan had lost against the Democrat peanut farmer that would have been the end of him.What if, as he nearly did, Ford had defeated Carter? He would have faced a heavily Democratic Congress, a severe economic recession in 1979-80 and an ageing cabal in Moscow intent on sending troops into Afghanistan. He would have been ineligible for re-election in 1980 but, in these conditions, the Republican candidate would surely have been doomed at the polling stations. The odds are that the White House would have been captured by the most prominent Democrat in the land — Edward Kennedy.
The world we live in today might have been very different if that Kennedy, not Reagan, had occupied the Oval Office in the 1980s. He would not have followed policies that led to almost constant economic growth over the past 25 years nor taken on the Kremlin to the point where the Soviet Union imploded.
“What if” is an ultimately unanswerable question in history. Yet it is the real story of the Ford years.
Indeed -- that "what if" would have resulted in a world unrecognizable today -- and one that I believe would be significantly worse-off had Gerald Ford not fallen short in 1976.
I can forgive Ford his making the same mistake as so many other presidents when selecting a Supreme Court justice -- and thank God for his having run the 1976 presidential race just as he did.
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“My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age,” Mrs. Ford said in a statement issued from her husband’s office in Rancho Mirage, also the location of the Betty Ford Center. “His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country.”
Gerald Ford, the only man to serve as President and Vice President without being elected to either office, has died at age 93. He had been in ill-health for some time.
Ford, a senior member of the GOP leadership in the House of Representatives, was selected as Vice president by President Richard Nixon following the resignation of Spiro Agnew in the wake of corruption charges. Less than a year later, Ford succeeded Nixon when the latter resigned from office in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
Ford had many accomplishments during his brief time in the White House.
Ford was the only occupant of the White House never elected either to the presidency or the vice presidency. A former Republican congressman from Grand Rapids, Mich., he always claimed that his highest ambition was to be speaker of the House of Representatives. He had declined opportunities to run for the Senate and for governor of Michigan.He was sworn in as president Aug. 9, 1974, when Richard M. Nixon resigned as a result of the Watergate scandal.
"My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over," Ford said in his inaugural address.
"I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our government, but civilization itself. That bond, though strained, is unbroken at home and abroad."
Ford had become vice president Dec. 6, 1973, two months after Spiro T. Agnew pleaded no contest to a tax evasion charge and resigned from the nation's second-highest office. The former Maryland governor was under investigation for accepting bribes and kickbacks.
In the 2 1/2 years of his presidency, Ford ended the U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, helped mediate a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Egypt, signed the Helsinki human rights convention with the Soviet Union and traveled to Vladivostok in the Soviet Far East to sign an arms limitation agreement with Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet president.
Ford also sent the Marines to free the crew of the Mayaguez, a U.S. merchant vessel that was captured by Cambodian communists.
On the domestic front, he faced some of the most difficult economic conditions since the Great Depression, with the inflation rate approaching 12 percent. Chronic energy shortages and price increases produced long lines and angry citizens at gas pumps. In the field of civil rights, the sense of optimism that had characterized the 1960s had been replaced by an increasing sense of alienation, particularly in inner cities. The new president also faced a political landscape in which Democrats held large majorities in both the House and the Senate.
But Ford is perhaps best remembered for his pardon of Richard Nixon -- an act which I believe will be remembered as one of the most selfless acts in American history, for many historians consider it to be the overriding fact that led to his loss to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential election.
As Ford explained in his memoirs, his goal was the healing of the nation. Presuming, of course, that Nixon would have been indicted for crimes related to Watergate, it was likely that the trial would have occurred against the backdrop of the 1976 national elections, poisoning the political process. Appeals would have meant that the case would likely have continued to be in the national eye during the 1978 and 1980 elections as well -- if not beyond, should there be any sort of retrial -- meaning that the wrong-doing of Nixon and his associates would have been a major factor in American politics for nearly a decade. The stresses this would have caused would have inflicted even greater damage upon the nation, and therefore Ford decided to issue the pardon a month after taking office.
Indeed, history is already beginning to see the wisdom of Ford's decision. In 2001, the former president received a "Profile in Courage" award from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in recognition of his decision -- and was praised by none other than Senator Ted Kennedy, who opposed the pardon at the time.
In the days to come, there will be many words said about Gerald Ford, as the media is saturated with coverage of his life and career, as well as the funeral rites associated with a presidential death. But let me sum it all up with a few words that I believe are fitting.
He placed the good of his country above his own political ambitions.
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December 22, 2006
We know what happens when the right of Jews to exist is denied, but Carter has forgotten. The "Historical Chronology" at the beginning of his book starts with Abraham and grows more detailed in modern times. But between 1939 and 1947 there is . . . nothing!In the text, the history of Jewish suffering is accorded five lines, and the Holocaust is barely mentioned in passing. But as both Hanukkah and Christmas remind us, Jews are history's most persecuted people, and Israel, where we started, is our last, best refuge. Carter's bizarre book is a poisoned holiday gift for Jews and Christians, and a danger to Jews throughout the world.
You read that right -- Carter leaves the Holocaust out of the history of the Jewish People in his book, and only briefly alludes to it. I guess he has joined Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and David Duke (as well as my recently-banned Troll, KKKen Hoop) in viewing the Holocaust as a hoax. After all, how else does one explain the omission of the greatest evil of Carter's lifetime from a book in which he indicts the victims for the offense of genocide?
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December 21, 2006
Local Muslim leaders lit candles yesterday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to commemorate Jewish suffering under the Nazis, in a ceremony held just days after Iran had a conference denying the genocide.American Muslims "believe we have to learn the lessons of history and commit ourselves: Never again," said Imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, standing before the eternal flame flickering from a black marble base that holds dirt from Nazi concentration camps.
Around the hexagonal room, candles glimmered under the engraved names of the death camps: Chelmno. Auschwitz-Birkenau. Majdanek.
"We stand here with three survivors of the Holocaust and my great Muslim friends to condemn this outrage in Iran," said Sara J. Bloomfield, the museum's director, addressing a bank of TV cameras in the room, known as the Hall of Remembrance.
The museum, she noted, holds "millions of pieces of evidence of this crime."
This is a moving and inspiring article. I encourage you to take a look.
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December 20, 2006
I sure didn't -- until I came across this article today. The designer's name is Robert G. Heft, and the story of how he came to design the flag is sort of amusing to this teacher.
As a junior at Ohio's Lancaster High School in 1958, Heft needed a project for his American history class.He found his calling when he came across the story of Betsy Ross, creator of the country's original flag. Armed with an idea, Heft took his family's 48-star flag and removed the blue portion of the banner.
It took him nine hours to cut out the 100 fabric stars needed to cover each side of the flag's top corner, he said. Heft went the 50-star route because of speculation that Alaska and Hawaii would become states.
Heft asked his grandmother to sew the blue section onto the flag, but she refused after realizing he'd dismantled the family's banner.
"She didn't want anything to do with it," Heft recalled.
Out of options, Heft took matters into his own hands, sewing his version of "Old Glory."
After working on the flag for 12 1/2 hours, Heft said he expected his grade to match his effort, but his teacher gave him a B-minus. Normally a quiet student, Heft said he had to confront the teacher.
"I approached him (thinking), 'Are you kidding me?' " Heft said.
After the discussion, the teacher told Heft that if he got the flag accepted nationally, he would give him an A.
Heft then sent the flag to a state representative and in 1960, his design became the country's official symbol. His teacher promptly bumped up his grade.
That sort of goes to show that a teacher never know what influence his or her words will have on a student -- and that it is important to be prepared to follow through on promises you make to students.
Heft still owns that original flag -- and speaks about his experience and patriotism to over 200 groups a year. He is working on a book about the flag and his experiences over the year.
Oh, and this July his design becomes the longest-serving flag in American history.
Not bad for a high school history project.
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December 16, 2006
The treasure, from a Bactrian tomb that dates from roughly the time of Christ, was secreted away by Afghans and hidden until the American liberation of their country following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
It was a mystery of legendary proportions. When a 2,000-year-old treasure trove went missing from Afghanistan's National Museum in the 1980s, the rumors abounded: Did the Soviets take it? Was it looted and sold on the black market? Were 22,000 pieces of gold, jewel-encrusted crowns and magnificent daggers melted down and traded for weapons?As it turns out, none of these plausible scenarios ever happened. Instead, a mysterious group of Afghans had stowed the so-called Bactrian gold underground and guarded its secret for over two decades of war and chaos. This month, some of the artifacts are on display at the Guimet Museum in Paris.
The group, the so-called "key holders," held the keys to the underground vault where the treasure was kept underneath the presidential palace grounds. They are believed to have hidden the treasure sometime after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. They diligently kept their secret throughout the civil war of the 1990s and the period of Taliban rule all the way up through the 2001 American-led invasion.
"Over the last 20 to 25 years, during food shortages and money crises, this handful of people ... could have sold these collections instead of going hungry, but they never once sacrificed their own cultural heritage," Fredrik Hiebert, an archaeologist with the National Geographic Society, told the Associated Press.
There has to be a book in this story somewhere -- one that is filled with love of country, love of history, and a great deal of intrigue and courage.
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December 13, 2006
I just got an e-mail from Bhuvan who tried to post a comment at the BBC. The comment, on a story about the Holocaust denial conference in Iran was apparently too controversial.Now wait, I would like to see a conference that questions whether Prophet Muhammad existed or not. Sounds controversial? Why not? Free speech. There is more historical proof to the occurrence of the Holocaust than for the existence of Prophet Muhammad.
Indeed. So, in the spirit of 'free speech', we at The Jawa Report are organizing the first ever Was Mohammed Real? conference. Panels include:
Mohammed: Was he real or just another Zionist plot?
The Crusades: Ultra-Orthodox Muslims speak out against using the Crusades as justification for a Palestinian state.
Did Mohammed Conquer Mecca? New evidence suggests otherwise.
72 White Grapes vs. 72 Virgins: The etymology of patriarchy in Islamic societies.
'Angelic visit' or 'Pedophelic Visions': The fiction of Mohammed and his 9 year old lover Aisha.
The Illuminati: Why the Great Seal of The United States offers definitive proof that Mohammed was really a 32nd degree Mason.
You get the picture. Any other suggestions?
And might I add another topic for the conference:
Mental Illness or Demonic Possession: An Analysis of Mohammad’s Qu’ranic Visions
Other topics of discussion can be found at IMAO.
After all, if all we are doing is engaging in free speech asking questions and exploring issues that will get you imprisoned (or worse) in some parts of the world…
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I just got an e-mail from Bhuvan who tried to post a comment at the BBC. The comment, on a story about the Holocaust denial conference in Iran was apparently too controversial.Now wait, I would like to see a conference that questions whether Prophet Muhammad existed or not. Sounds controversial? Why not? Free speech. There is more historical proof to the occurrence of the Holocaust than for the existence of Prophet Muhammad.
Indeed. So, in the spirit of 'free speech', we at The Jawa Report are organizing the first ever Was Mohammed Real? conference. Panels include:
Mohammed: Was he real or just another Zionist plot?
The Crusades: Ultra-Orthodox Muslims speak out against using the Crusades as justification for a Palestinian state.
Did Mohammed Conquer Mecca? New evidence suggests otherwise.
72 White Grapes vs. 72 Virgins: The etymology of patriarchy in Islamic societies.
'Angelic visit' or 'Pedophelic Visions': The fiction of Mohammed and his 9 year old lover Aisha.
The Illuminati: Why the Great Seal of The United States offers definitive proof that Mohammed was really a 32nd degree Mason.
You get the picture. Any other suggestions?
And might I add another topic for the conference:
Mental Illness or Demonic Possession: An Analysis of MohammadÂ’s QuÂ’ranic Visions
Other topics of discussion can be found at IMAO.
After all, if all we are doing is engaging in free speech asking questions and exploring issues that will get you imprisoned (or worse) in some parts of the worldÂ…
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December 10, 2006
The island of Antikythera lies 18 miles north of Crete, where the Aegean Sea meets the Mediterranean. Currents there can make shipping treacherous -- and one ship bound for ancient Rome never made it.The ship that sank there was a giant cargo vessel measuring nearly 500 feet long. It came to rest about 200 feet below the surface, where it stayed for more than 2,000 years until divers looking for sponges discovered the wreck a little more than a century ago.
Inside the hull were a number of bronze and marble statues. From the look of things, the ship seemed to be carrying luxury items, probably made in various Greek islands and bound for wealthy patrons in the growing Roman Empire. The statues were retrieved, along with a lot of other unimportant stuff, and stored.
Nine months later, an enterprising archaeologist cleared off a layer of organic material from one of the pieces of junk and found that it looked like a gearwheel. It had inscriptions in Greek characters and seemed to have something to do with astronomy.
That piece of "junk" went on to become the most celebrated find from the shipwreck; it is displayed at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Research has shown that the wheel was part of a device so sophisticated that its complexity would not be matched for a thousand years -- it was also the world's first known analog computer.
The device is so famous that an international conference organized in Athens a couple of weeks ago had only one subject: the Antikythera Mechanism.
Every discovery about the device has raised new questions. Who built the device, and for what purpose? Why did the technology behind it disappear for the next thousand years? What does the device tell us about ancient Greek culture? And does the marvelous construction, and the precise knowledge of the movement of the sun and moon and Earth that it implies, tell us how the ancients grappled with ideas about determinism and human destiny?
Just one more bit of evidence that the past is not always as cut and dried as we thin it is -- and that there is always something more to learn.
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December 07, 2006
In the months after Dec. 7, a sleepy shipyard went into hyperdrive, pulling off unprecedented feats of engineering that The Times’s Robert Trumbull described in a series that is excerpted on today’s Op-Ed page. The Japanese had crippled the fleet but left the Navy base’s immense oil storage tanks untouched, making it possible to ramp up the shipyard for 24-hour duty. The Navy and the civilians made it up as they went along: The U.S.S. Oklahoma, flipped with its belly exposed, was righted by a fantastical arrangement of cables and winches out of “Gulliver’s Travels.”On May 27, 1942, the carrier Yorktown, severely damaged in the Battle of the Coral Sea, pulled into port and was immediately swarmed upon by more than 1,400 workers. She sailed out again on the 30th, fit to fight in the Battle of Midway.
The local labor force was supplemented by a flood of thousands of workers, mostly bachelor men, shipped in from the states. Their lives centered around the shipyard and Civilian Housing Area III, population 12,000 at its peak and suddenly Hawaii’s third-largest city after Honolulu and Hilo. It had its own train station, bus fleet, police department, baseball fields, boxing arenas, theater, post office, stadium and football tournament, the Poi Bowl. And it had a newspaper, The Pearl Harbor Banner, filled with small-town news items (“Five Hundred Pairs of Shoes Salvaged Here,” “Fresh Vegetables Now Assured”), photos, sports scores and updates from the front.
One of those civilians was Fred Bagley, My maternal grandfather, who was recruited in Providence, Rhode Island, to help bring the Pacific Fleet back to fighting strength. This special section therefore has a special meaning to me, thirty-seven years after a heart attack took him away from me. I never got to hear the stories that I know he had to share, so I will count this as a chance to learn a little more about him and what he did during the war.
I encourage readers to take the time to read about the work of thousands of men whose efforts were so important to the war, but whose work is often overlooked as we rightly honor those who fought and died.
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A definite great read....December 06, 2006
Archaeologists have discovered the mummified remains of a doctor they believe lived more than 4,000 years ago and was buried along with metal surgical tools.The mummy was discovered in Saqqara, 12 miles south of Cairo, while archaeologists were cleaning a nearby site, Egypt's official Middle East News Agency quoted Zahi Hawass, chief of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, as saying.
Hawass said the doctor, named Qar, lived under the 6th dynasty from about 2350 B.C. to 2180 B.C., and that the upper part of the tomb was discovered in 2000 while the sarcophagus was found during more recent cleaning work.
"The lid of the wooden casket had excellent and well-preserved decorations ... and the mummy's linen wrappings and the funerary drawings are still in their original condition," Hawass said.
He said the mask covering the face of the mummy was very well preserved despite slight damage to the mouth area.
Bronze surgical instruments, earthenware containers bearing the doctor's name, a round limestone table, and 22 bronze statues of gods were also discovered, Hawass said.
I never cease to be amazed what emerges from the sands of that "antique land".
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Vatican archaeologists have unearthed a sarcophagus believed to contain the remains of the Apostle Paul that had been buried beneath Rome's second largest basilica.The sarcophagus, which dates back to at least A.D. 390, has been the subject of an extended excavation that began in 2002 and was completed last month, the project's head said this week.
"Our objective was to bring the remains of the tomb back to light for devotional reasons, so that it could be venerated and be visible,'' said Giorgio Filippi, the Vatican archaeologist who headed the project at St. Paul Outside the Walls basilica.
The interior of the sarcophagus has not yet been explored, but Filippi didn't rule out the possibility of doing so in the future.
Two ancient churches that once stood at the site of the current basilica were successively built over the spot where tradition said the saint had been buried. The second church, built by the Roman emperor Theodosius in the fourth century, left the tomb visible, first above ground and later in a crypt.
When a fire destroyed the church in 1823, the current basilica was built and the ancient crypt was filled with earth and covered by a new altar.
Neat stuff -- and a remarkable discovery for Christians around the world.
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The empty niches that once held Bamiyan’s colossal Buddhas now gape in the rock face — a silent cry at the terrible destruction wrought on this fabled valley and its 1,500-year-old treasures, once the largest standing Buddha statues in the world.It was in March 2001, when the Taliban and their sponsors in Al Qaeda were at the zenith of their power in Afghanistan, that militiamen, acting on an edict to take down the “gods of the infidels,” laid explosives at the base and the shoulders of the two Buddhas and blew them to pieces. To the outraged outside world, the act encapsulated the horrors of the Islamic fundamentalist government. Even Genghis Khan, who laid waste to this valley’s towns and population in the 13th century, had left the Buddhas standing.
Five years after the Taliban were ousted from power, BamiyanÂ’s Buddhist relics are once again the focus of debate: Is it possible to restore the great Buddhas? And, if so, can the extraordinary investment that would be required be justified in a country crippled by poverty and a continued Taliban insurgency in the south and that is, after all, overwhelmingly Muslim?
The whole world should be contributing to this project -- led by the Muslim world, to make up for the great CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY that was committed in the name of their faith by the Taliban when they destroyed these great works.
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December 04, 2006
1) In Israel, a fourth-century church has been discovered at Shiloh, the ancient spot that the Bible tells us was home for the Ark of the Covenant at one time.
The site, emerging from the soil in the hills of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, is richly decorated with brightly colored mosaics and inscriptions referring to Jesus Christ.The church dates to the late 4th century, making it one of Christianity's first formal places of worship, said the team, led by Yitzhak Magen and Yevgeny Aharonovitch.
"I can't say for sure at the moment that it's the very first church, but it's certainly one of the first," Mr. Aharonovitch said yesterday as he supervised a team carrying out the final excavations before winter. He said the site contained an extremely unusual inscription that referred to itself, Shiloh, by name.
"That is very rare and shows early Christians treated this as an ancient, holy place," said Mr. Aharonovitch, 38. According to the Old Testament, the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the two tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, was kept by the Israelites at Shiloh for several hundred years.
Discussions are underway regarding how o conserve the site – and about whether further digging might result in the discovery of the ancient site of the Jewish Tabernacle.
2) In an unprecedented discovery, the standard of the Emperor Maxentius was found with other imperial items on the Palatine Hill in Rome
Archaeologists have unearthed what they say are the only existing imperial insignia belonging to Emperor Maxentius _ precious objects that were buried to preserve them and keep them from enemies when he was defeated by his rival Constantine.Excavation under Rome's Palatine Hill near the Colosseum turned up items including three lances and four javelins that experts said are striking for their completeness _ digs usually turn up only fragments _ and the fact that they are the only known artifacts of their kind.
Clementina Panella, the archaeologist who made the discovery, said the insignia were likely hidden by Maxentius' people in an attempt to preserve the emperor's memory after he was defeated by Constantine I in the 321 A.D. battle of the Milvian Bridge _ a turning point for the history of the Roman empire which saw Constantine become the unchallenged ruler of the West.
"Once he's lost, his objects could not continue to exist and, at the same time, could not fall in the hands of the enemy," she said Friday.
Some of the objects, which accompanied the emperor during his public appearances, are believed to be the base for the emperor's standards _ rectangular or triangular flags, officials said.
An imperial scepter with a carved flower and a globe, and a number of glass spheres, believed to be a symbolic representation of the earth, also were discovered.
The discovery was announced Wednesday by Italy's Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli during a visit to New York.
The items, inside wooden boxes and wrapped in linen and silk, were found buried at a sanctuary last year and have since been restored and analyzed. The depth of the burial allows experts to date them to the early 4th century A.D., ministry officials said.
I canÂ’t wait to see pictures.
3) Egypt is relocating 3200 families from a village near the Valley of the Kings to allow archaeological work on an ancient necropolis that lies beneath it.
ulldozers moved Saturday into an Egyptian village near the Valley of the Kings in pursuit of a long-delayed effort to allow archaeologists to begin studying a wealth of tombs in the area.Gurna is the village closest to the Valley of the Kings, where Tutankhamen and other pharaohs were buried.
It lies on top of a vast necropolis where wealthy and powerful commoners built their painted tombs in the second millennium B.C.
The Egyptian government, with advice from architect and intellectual Hassan Fathi, tried to move them in 1948 by building the model village of New Gurna on the banks of the Nile, but most trickled back to their old homes.
On Saturday, the bulldozers picked away at four uninhabited mud- brick houses, apparently in an attempt to show that the government was serious this time.
Samir Farag, the governor of nearby Luxor, the center of the tourist trade in the area, said 120 houses had been demolished in the last week and that all but five or six people in the village had signed up for the new resettlement program, which involves 3,200 households.
Unfortunately, many of the residents do not wish to move, because of distrust of the government, the belief their new homes are too small, and the fear they will lose their ability to exploit the tourist trade.
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December 01, 2006
A CT scan of King Tutankhamun's mummy has disproved a popular theory that the Egyptian pharaoh was murdered by a blow to the head more than 3,300 years ago.Instead the most likely explanation for the boy king's death at 19 is a thigh fracture that became infected and ultimately fatal, according to an international team of scientists.
The team presented its results this week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago, Illinois.
"I think it is the end of the investigation. … We can now close this file," said team leader Ashraf Selim, a radiologist at Kasr Eleini Teaching Hospital at Cairo University in Egypt.
The murder theory can pretty well be discounted by discoveries about the two bone chips found loose in Tut’s skull in a 1968 x-ray. In all likelihood, rough handling of Tut’s mummy by Egyptologist Howard Carter and his associates did that damage, along with much of the other damage to the skeleton.
But the break in the left thigh was coated with the resin, indicating that it happened shortly before the body was embalmed and that there was an associated wound through which the resin leaked. Given the probability of an infection, it should not be surprising that Tut died quickly, before there was a chance for significant healing of the injury.
But there is information about “King Tut’s Curse†in the article – it is an interesting read.
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A CT scan of King Tutankhamun's mummy has disproved a popular theory that the Egyptian pharaoh was murdered by a blow to the head more than 3,300 years ago.Instead the most likely explanation for the boy king's death at 19 is a thigh fracture that became infected and ultimately fatal, according to an international team of scientists.
The team presented its results this week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago, Illinois.
"I think it is the end of the investigation. Â… We can now close this file," said team leader Ashraf Selim, a radiologist at Kasr Eleini Teaching Hospital at Cairo University in Egypt.
The murder theory can pretty well be discounted by discoveries about the two bone chips found loose in TutÂ’s skull in a 1968 x-ray. In all likelihood, rough handling of TutÂ’s mummy by Egyptologist Howard Carter and his associates did that damage, along with much of the other damage to the skeleton.
But the break in the left thigh was coated with the resin, indicating that it happened shortly before the body was embalmed and that there was an associated wound through which the resin leaked. Given the probability of an infection, it should not be surprising that Tut died quickly, before there was a chance for significant healing of the injury.
But there is information about “King Tut’s Curse” in the article – it is an interesting read.
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