While the rest of Soviet Russia stood to its guns last week awaiting a conqueror from the west, scientists far east in Samarkand pried into the tomb of the mightiest conqueror of them all, Tamerlane the Great.
Under a three-ton marble slab were five rough slabs of limestone. Under them, the ebony coffin in which the conqueror lay in robes " of gold brocade. Except for the head, the skeleton was well-preserved in musk and rose water, and the scientists discovered that philology was right (Tamerlane comes from Timur Leuk, meaning Timur the Lame) : his right leg was shorter than...
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