Pre-Modern Medical Examiners on Historically Accurate Procedurals

"Of course, we'll know more when we get the body back to the catacombs and have a chance to pray about the time of death."

"It looks like he bled out from the lacerations on his arms and chest. I can't tell just now if they were self-inflicted or not; we'll have to wait until Anubis has weighed his heart."

"If, as I suspect, she was killed during the day, then the sun-god Utu will have seen it, and he'll send Inanna to track and punish the murderer, wherever they are. So all we have to do is sit tight and wait for the sun to take care of things."

"I can't be sure, at least not with the tools I have here, whether he died from strangulation or the blow to the back of the head. But I believe that if we leave the body here, and bring all the suspects back in the room one at a time to stand in front of it, it should resume bleeding in front of the murderer, and then we'll know who did it."

"I don't think he can have died any later than noon, because it's just about noon now, if the sun is any indication."

"It's possible whoever did this will be plagued with boils, or some sort of small, localized flood – we ought to keep on lookout for anything like that going on."

"Whoever did this, if they weren't a criminal before – well, they certainly are now."

"If only we knew who did this...Of course, if one of you would be so good as to run me through on your sword, I could seek out the dead man's shade in the lower worlds and ask him who did it. But call for a necromancer first, otherwise you won't be able to conjure up my shade to tell you what I hear, and then you'll have to kill someone else to get the answer."

"It smells a little bit like almonds in here, so we may be looking for some sort of almond farmer, or someone who recently had a lot of almonds on their person."

"I'd like to give you an answer soon, but there's a real backlog of intercessory prayers back at the monastery. It's going to be at least a month before we can expect any sort of indicators from the divine one way or the other."

"Perhaps he was killed with a talking sword, who can tell us the name of its owner. I'm going to pull it out of his chest once we get the body back to the burial antechambers and ask it directly."

"I think we can safely say the killer did this on purpose – he wanted our man to die."

"It's possible our murderer hasn't left the scene at all, but has begged the gods to transform him into one of these nearby trees in order to escape retribution."

"Well, you know – woe to the man by whom offense cometh, so presumably whoever did this is going to be coming in for a lot of woe in the future."

"If you want to know more, it'll have to wait until I can get back to my chickens and examine some of their livers. Incidentally, I hope you like chicken."

[Image via Wikimedia Commons]