No writer likes killing a good story but, damn it, the mystery of the moving statue in Manchester Museum has been solved by an interfering engineer!
For months, an ancient Egyptian statue confounded the experts by moving about in its sealed glass case.
The 4,000-year-old statue’s erratic dancing was even captured on camera and posted on the internet resulting in thousands of extra visitors to the museum.
The statue is of a man called Neb-Senu and was intended as an offering to Osiris, ancient Egyptian god of the dead and ruler of the underworld. It was donated to the museum by a private collector some 80 years ago.
Paranormal experts believed the statue had been cursed by an ancient Egyptian god and others suggested that the spirit of Neb-Senu had come from the underworld to take up residence and was causing it to rotate.
But then engineer Steve Gosling began to investigate and discovered that the hard base of the statue was resting very unevenly on the floor of the glass case.
It was so precarious and off-balance that footsteps from visitors to the museum, coupled with vibrations from heavy traffic outside the building, caused it to move in its case. Steve was able to prove his theory by making the statue move at his will.
I bet the smarty-pants is well pleased with himself. Most people much preferred the explanation that it was all to do with a curse from an ancient Egyptian god.