Sticks and pyramids

摘要

With reference to the controversy over Tutankhamun's club foot (8 October, p 10), Zahi Hawass, while Egypt's antiquities minister, gave an apparently convincing argument in support of the boy king having had such a condition. An extraordinary number of ceremonially anointed walking stick-shaped "batons" were found in the treasure chamber, annex and antechamber of his tomb. If King Tut had a club foot, perhaps he was given these to assist him in his journey to the afterworld.