How creepy is this?
Museum bosses are totally spooked after a time-lapse video revealed an Egyptian statuette has been slowly rotating in it's display case at the Manchester Museum, with no apparent explanation as to why.
The statue is a 25 centimetre relic of a man named Neb-Senu. It dates back to 1800BC and has been at the museum for 80 years. It was discovered in a mummy's tomb as an offering to the Egyptian God Osiris. The inscription on the statue asks for "bread, beer and beef".
The museum set up the time-lapse camera after repeatedly finding the statue facing the wrong way. No-one has access to the display case.
Campbell Price who is a curator at the museum told the Manchester Evening News, "I noticed one day that it had turned around. I thought it was strange because it is in a case and I am the only one who has a key. I put it back but then the next day it had moved again. We set up a time-lapse video and, although the naked eye can't see it, you can clearly see it rotate on the film. The statue is something that used to go in the tomb along with the mummy."
It has now been dubbed the "mystery of the moving mummy".
So why is this innocent little Egyptian relic channeling the Exorcist with it's scary circles? Is it haunted?
Price says, "In Ancient Egypt they believed that if the mummy is destroyed then the statuette can act as an alternative vessel for the spirit. Maybe that is what is causing the movement."
Gosh, that explanation just freaks me out more.
However TV physicist Brian Cox has offered a more rational explanatin. He's told the Daily Mail that the vibrations caused by footsteps of passing visitors could be making it turned. This is called "differential friction", where two surfaces - the serpentine stone of the statuette and the glass shelf it is on cause a subtle vibration which causes the statuette to turn.
Watch the time-lapse footage and decide for yourself.
Is it an ancient Egyptian curse?
