It was a brutal crime. The murderer seized the ten-year-old child by the legs, and smashed its head against a stone pillar. The skull was shattered, the right eye was knocked out and there was a deep cut across the lower lip. Both legs were broken at the thigh and the left knee was dislocated. Then the murderer set out to prove that the crime was all an unfortunate accident.
No attempt was made to hide the child’s death. The body was beautifully embalmed after the expensive fashion of the upper classes. Wrapped in the best flaxen cloth and smeared with gum, its name inscribed on the breast bandages, it was given a noble burial near the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes. Some 1,700 years later, the murderer safe from any temporal justice, the body turned up as a well-preserved mummy in British Columbia’s Vancouver City Museum.
For nearly 30 years the little mummy lay in the museum on a bed of naphthalene crystals in a cheap, brown-stained wooden box. Its rusted cloth wrappings were worm-eaten and frayed with age. The exposed face and head were blackened by the embalming process. Because the name was translated as Diana, Vancouver’s schoolchildren were led to believe that their favorite exhibition was once a young girl.
But despite the name and what was left of the face, the museum’s experts were never quite convinced of the identification. Madame Erna von Engel-Baiersdorf, head of the museum’s anthropological society, agreed that they ought to investigate further. Last summer they lugged their mummy across the street to a chiropractor’s office and asked for a full set of X rays.
“Heavy” X rays showed what had happened to the bones. “Lighter” rays showed the condition of the skin that by now is like tanned hide. And the X rays also showed the typical narrow hips and pelvic girdle of a small boy in astonishing detail.
At the British Museum in London, Dr. T. C. Skeat studied the X-ray pictures and agreed that “Diana” had probably been murdered, had certainly been misnamed. Skeat retranslated the inked inscription on the mummy’s chest wrappings, announced that the boy’s name was Panechates, son of Hatres. Undoubtedly of noble birth, the unlucky child may have been liquidated by an ambitious rival. Burial took place some time in the 3rd century A.D.
Last week, when news of the crime became public, Panechates, his vicious murder unavenged, was back in his usual box in an archway outside an exhibition of Chinese art. All that could be done was to change the sign above his bier and restore to him his rightful name.
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