From Timur wiki--
Exhumation and alleged curse
A forensic facial reconstruction of Timur by
M. Gerasimov (1941)
Timur's body was
exhumed from his tomb on 19 June 1941 and his remains examined by the
Soviet anthropologist Mikhail M. Gerasimov,
Lev V. Oshanin
and V. Ia. Zezenkova. It was determined that Timur was a tall and
broad-chested man with strong cheek bones. At 5 feet 8 inches (1.73
meters), Timur was tall for his era. The examinations confirmed that
Timur was lame and had a withered right arm due to his injuries. His
right thighbone had knitted together with his kneecap, and the
configuration of the knee joint suggests that he had kept his leg bent
at all times and therefore would have had a pronounced limp.
[75][76]
Gerasimov reconstructed the likeness of Timur from his skull and found
that Timur's facial characteristics displayed Mongoloid features with
some Caucasoid admixture. Oshanin also concluded that Timur's cranium
showed predominately the characteristics of a South Siberian Mongoloid
type.
[76]
It is alleged that Timur's tomb was inscribed with the words, "When I
rise from the dead, the world shall tremble." It is also said that when
Gerasimov exhumed the body, an additional inscription inside the casket
was found, which read, "Whomsoever opens my tomb shall unleash an
invader more terrible than I."
[77] In any case, three days after Gerasimov began the exhumation,
Adolf Hitler launched
Operation Barbarossa, the largest military invasion of all time, upon the Soviet Union.
[78] Timur was re-buried with full Islamic ritual in November 1942 just before the Soviet victory at the
Battle of Stalingrad.
[79]
