Is Pharaoh’s Curse Spinning a Museum Statue?

 

In more wacky news from abroad, some are claiming that an Egyptian statue displayed in the Manchester Museum (Manchester, UK) is spinning on its own.

MummyStatueThe ten-inch black statue was taken from the tomb of some Pharaoh. The name Neb-Senu is mentioned but it’s not clear if he is the pharaoh or the man who made the statue, or if he is the subject of the statue from other articles I read. Anyway, the statue was once an offering to the Egyptian god Osiris. What curators recently noticed was that over the course of a few days, the 4,000 year old statue started rotating slowly until it reached a 180 degree turn, never moving beyond that.

So they installed a time lapse camera and sure enough, it shows the statue rotating on its own slowly over the course of three days until it reaches completely around with its back facing the museum onlookers.

Curator Campbell Price thinks there is a mystical reason for the statue’s strange behavior, but scientists disagree.

I’ll share that video of the statue moving with you below, however I think the best explanation for what’s happening here was provided by an engineering student from Drexel University (USA) in the comments section of one article I read. He writes:

“There are vibrations in the glass most likely from an old magnetic ballast in the fluorescent lighting built into the case, which hum and vibrate as the bulb begins to go bad. The statue only turns when the lighting is on, reinforcing this explanation. Assuming there is a slight angle towards the back of the case, it is sensible that the pivot point under the body of the statue would have a greater influence over the vibration of the significantly less massive rotational component of the base which would have a significantly greater amplitude of longitudinal vibration. The smaller statues would not be similarly affected because of the far less significant mass at the pivot point and therefore have a more uniform vibration response. I am a computer engineering student at Drexel University in Philadelphia.” Signed iaw11.

Gotta love engineers! But it makes sense. I think we’ll call that another mystery solved!

Here’s the video of the statue moving:

ManchesterMuseumMuseum Closure?

One interesting side note: this museum along with others in the area have been targeted as places to close to save government money. I know for sure the Manchester Museum of Science (or MOSI, as they call it), is one of them. Is that the same museum as the Manchester Museum? I don’t know. But I still think it’s highly suspicious that this “phenomenon” starts to happen right around the time that government officials are talking about closing down museums due to budget cuts.

Maybe it isn’t the fluorescent lights?

Til the next time!

 

MYSTERY SOLVED!

Thanks to this ITN news report from November 2013, we see that the “mystery” has officially been solved.

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