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Ancient Egyptian Statue Starts Moving By Itself At UK Museum
June 25, 2013
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No one seems to know why it's happening, but this Egyptian statue, which is believed to date from 1800 B.C., has started moving on its own.

The statue depicts a man named Neb-Senu, and until recently, it was just one more piece in the Manchester Museum's collection.

But staff at the museum, where the statue is housed in a locked glass case, started noticing that it kept changing position. The statue appeared to be rotating in a counter-clockwise direction even though no one had touched it.

Curious, staff set up a camera, which captured time-lapse footage of the statue over several days. It showed that the statue was indeed turning on its own, although the movement isn't visible to the naked eye.


The face of Neb-Senu (Photo: Manchester Museum)

Some have theorized that the statue is moving because of the vibrations of visitors' feet, which would explain why the rotation only happens during the day.

If the glass that the statue is resting on vibrates slightly, "the vibrating glass moves the statue in the same direction," Paul Doherty, senior scientist at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, told LiveScience.

But that doesn't explain why the statue only began moving recently - or why it stops turning at 180 degrees, so that its back is facing the museum's visitors.

"It has been on those surfaces since we have had it and it has never moved before," museum curator Campbell Price told the Manchester Evening News. "And why would it go around in a perfect circle?"

There's an inscription on the statue's back that asks for sacrificial offerings "consisting of bread, beer, oxen and fowl." No word on whether the museum has tried any of those.

Via LiveScience


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