An Egyptian statute that dates back to 1800 BC was videotaped spinning on its own in a museum in the United Kingdom.
The statue, which is a 25-centimeter relic of a person named Neb-Senu, rotated around 180 degrees in a closed glass case at the Manchester museum.
“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,” Campbell Price, the Manchester Museum curator, told the Manchester Evening News.
Price added: “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.”
A translated inscription on the back of the statue asks for “bread, beer, and beef.” It was discovered in a mummy’s tomb.
“The statuette is something that used to go in the tomb along with the mummy. 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.
Some experts say there is a scientific reason behind the statue’s spinning.
“The statue only seems to spin during the day when people are in the museum,” Carol Redmount, a professor of Egyptian archeology at the University of California, Berkeley, told ABC News. “It could have something to do with its individual placement and the individual character of the statue.”
(Video by Luke Lovelock, Media Technician, Manchester Museum)
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