15. He Needed Help Walking
When Howard Carter and his team of investigators discovered King Tut’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings in 1922, one thing that they found was over 100 canes and walking sticks. They also found stools, which they presumed the king had used to shoot a bow and arrow. These finds were particularly surprising, given the vast amounts of treasure that they also unearthed there. What would a virile boy who reigned as one of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs possibly use these implements, usually reserved for the aged, for? Could they have maybe been placed in the wrong tomb or served as a memento of someone in his family?
It turns out that King Tut probably used the various handicap implements himself. His slender hips would have made his body largely incapable of supporting itself. Coupled with his scoliosis and severely damaged foot, he probably was unable to walk on his own. Only in recent years, when technology advanced to the point where scans performed on his mummy revealed the extent of his deformities, were these problems discovered. Carsten Putsch, a geneticist who helped work on King Tut’s mummy, said, “Picture instead a frail, weak boy who had a bit of a club foot and who needed a cane to walk.”