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A 4,000-year-old Egyptian statue has puzzled curators at
Manchester museum after the relic started to mysteriously spin 180
degrees on its own.
[Scroll down for video]
Is
this a sign of Pharaos curse? In some eerie news, a 4,000-year-old
Egyptian statue has puzzled curators at Manchester museum after the
relic started to mysteriously spin 180 degrees on its own.
The
10-inch tall relic, which dates back to 1800 BC, was found in a mummy's
tomb and has spent 80 years at the Manchester Museum.
However, in
recent weeks, curators were spooked after they kept finding the statue
facing the wrong way. Experts decided to monitor the room on time-lapse
video and were astonished to see it clearly show the statuette spinning
180 degrees - with nobody going near it.
According to local
media, the statue of a man named Neb-Senu is seen to remain still at
night but slowly rotate round during the day.
Scientists who explored the Egyptian tombs in the 1920s were popularly believed to be struck by a "curse of the Pharaohs".
Price,
a curator at the museum on Oxford Road, believes there may be a
spiritual explanation to the spinning statue. "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," said Price.
"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 statuette is something that used to go in the tomb along
with the mummy.
"Mourners would lay offerings at its feet. The
hieroglyphics on the back ask for bread, beer and beef. 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," Price said.
Other experts have a more
rational explanation - suggesting that the vibrations caused by the
footsteps of passing visitors makes the statuette turn.
Professor
Brian Cox, TV boffin and physicist, who presents programmes such as the
Wonders of Life, also favours this explanation. However, Price is not
convinced.
"Brian thinks it's differential friction. Where two
surfaces, the serpentine stone of the statuette and glass shelf it is
on, cause a subtle vibration which is making the statuette turn," Price
said.
"But it has been on those surfaces since we have had it and
it has never moved before. And why would it go around in a perfect
circle?" he asked.
Price is urging members of the public to come along and take a look for themselves.
"It would be great if someone could solve the mystery," he added.
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