On the trail of Manchester Museum's moving Egyptian mummy
An ancient statue has worked wonders for Manchester Museum
By Neil Tweedie
6:55AM BST 26 Jun 2013
Little is known of Neb-Senu, a name equivalent to John Smith in ancient Egypt. He was a civil servant, probably, and a senior one; a man of means, given the quality of the statue that was made to act as a lifeboat for his soul, should his mummified body ever be destroyed. Old Neb died in about 1800 BC, and that really should have been that – just another bit of trade for Osiris, god of the afterlife. But now, 3,800 years later, he’s back, and doing wonders for visitor numbers at Manchester Museum. 8)
Neb’s statue, housed at the institution for 80 years, has suddenly started to rotate – anti-clockwise, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. One day, his face is turned towards those peering into the glass case that houses him; the next, his back is turned.
Why the statue rotates is one of those mysteries that allow us to forget the likes of George Osborne for a moment. Lighter statues next to Neb’s don’t move, nor do the Perspex cubes that number each item. The display case is locked, and only two members of staff have a key. Science, in the guise of the ubiquitous Professor Brian Cox, has attempted an explanation, but some prefer an other-worldly cause.
“I don’t believe this is a purely physical thing,” says Anna Garnett, an Egyptologist attached to the museum. “This appears to involve a force beyond the physical. Some will say that the spirit of Neb-Senu has entered the statue, and I for one would not discount that.”
The figurine, just 10 inches tall and carved from serpentine, became a subject of worldwide interest after Campbell Price, curator of the museum’s large collection of Egyptian artefacts, resorted to time-lapse photography to catch the statue as it turned. And so it did. The footage went viral on the internet and telephones at the museum have not stopped ringing since.
“It’s been on the ABC breakfast show in America and we’ve had calls from Germany, Italy, Serbia and Japan,” says Garnett. “I’m off to do CNN now.”
A stream of people is filing past the cabinet when your correspondent arrives.
“My mother saw it on television in Hong Kong and asked me to get a picture,” says Yulan Li, a Chinese student studying in Northampton. “Maybe there is magic here.”
Or maybe the great god HGV, who now and then rumbles down neighbouring Oxford Road. Yet there is no obvious traffic vibration, and no adjacent machinery – an air-con unit, say. “Maybe it’s a magnetic force,” ventures Milia Bane, from Galway.
“It’s a toughie,” says John, her perplexed other half. “Mad that, innit?” offers Nathan Ferguson from Failsworth, Manchester. “Summut mad there.”
Summut mad all right. The statuette was bequeathed in 1933 by one Annie Barlow, a mill owner from Bolton who, like many of her wealthy contemporaries, sponsored archaeological digs. This was the era of great discoveries – only a decade earlier, Howard Carter had unearthed the tomb of Tutankhamun.
“We don’t know anything about the tomb from which the statue came,” says Garnett, “only that it carries Neb-Senu’s name and hieroglyphs offering a standard gift to Osiris of beer, beef and fowl.”
Neb’s job and status can be gauged from his attire, a civil-service-issue kilt. The statuette was re-housed in the cabinet last November, and soon started turning. Prof Cox suggests “differential friction”, but even an O-level physicist knows a force must be exerted to move an object.
“There is a suggestion that the turning is caused by people walking past and causing vibrations, but on one occasion when the chamber was empty, the statue moved 45 degrees in 90 minutes,” says Garnett.
So what’s eating Neb? Has his tomb been destroyed by robber or earthquake, forcing his soul to flee into the figurine? A few feet away lie sarcophagi belonging to two wealthy brothers, Khnum-Nakht and Nekht-Ankh. Maybe, just maybe, Neb doesn’t like his new neighbours. Maybe he was in the equivalent of the Inland Revenue, and they ran ancient Egypt’s answer to Google. Garnett says that she, too, has sensed a tension between the exhibits.
Curse of the Mummy? Or the curse of Eddie Stobart? Watch this space…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/muse ... mummy.html
