Child Pharaoh Tutankhamen Decrees ‘Fewer Pyramids, More Candy Corn’
Inscribed curse on Tut’s tomb declares “By The Thousand eyes of Amun-Ra, Lord of damned souls: Don’t lay a finger on my Butterfinger™!” - photo by Dan Zembrosky
Michael Swaim and Dan Zembrosky
Six-year-old Tutankhamen, the son of the late Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, assumed power immediately following his father’s death. The new pharaoh’s first royal decree was to return the God Amun to imperial favor, though some surmise that this decree may have been suggested by the new king’s advisors. His second decree, issued to the people through a mouth sticky with melted chocolate, was “Fewer pyramids, more candy corn.”
The pharaoh’s decree immediately halted construction on Amenhotep’s pyramid, pleasing the slave population greatly. Amenhotep’s body, rather than being interred in an eternal living monument, as is traditional, has been “carefully hidden under the new pharaoh’s bed.”
“He’s good at fighting monsters,” explained Tutankhamen. The young pharaoh also ordered the killing of several of Amenhotep’s slaves so that they might follow their master into the afterlife. He then placed their bodies in “strategic monster defense points” around his room; they have been stowed in the closet and “stuffed inside the larger drawers.”
Sekhrephesh, a local slave, said he was initially pleased with the king’s decree. “I was very excited at first to hear that the pyramid was to be abandoned,” he commented, “having seen both my father and grandfather die of exhaustion in its construction. But,” he added “I now realize, too late, what a fool I was.” Sekhrephesh, like all of the slaves, has been assigned to work in the infamous candy corn mines deep beneath the desert sands in order to sate the young pharaoh’s deep and abiding desire for it.
Advisors and imperial traders have tried to explain to the young pharaoh that candy corn is not a naturally occurring mineral and “can neither be found beneath the sands of our desert nor in any deposit on this earth.”
The candy corn mines have been called “more hazardous than the hooks of Anubis” by the workers and foremen alike. Head whip-master Amunhoten called it “a living hell.”
“We’re lucky if half of the workforce makes it through their shift alive,” continued Amunhoten. When informed of the inevitable loss of slaves due to falling stalactites, tunnel cave-ins and rickets, Tutankhamen reportedly cried, “Candy corn! Candy corn!” while rolling around on the palace floor. Egyptian generals have taken this as a cue to invade Syria and capture more slaves.
In a move to respond to his detractors, the boy king has planned to issue another decree next week, and there is much speculation as to what he will demand. Many top analysts believe he will announce his desire for “ice-cream,” a mythic dessert surrounded by rumor and spoken of only in papyrus scrolls from travelers from the far north.
“We know not how dangerous this journey for ‘ice-cream’ will be,” confided top General Ashahsun M’hotep. “The scrolls indicate our path will be a rocky road sprinkled with obstacles along the way.”
A smaller number of critics, however, speculate that Tutankhamen’s forthcoming decree will consist of the Pharaoh “making an unintelligible noise by blowing into his arm.”