Turns out it wasn't cursed after all.
Earlier this year, officials at Manchester Museum were puzzled by the mystery of a 10-inch tall figurine of Neb-Senu that appeared to rotate in its display case, and would do so repeatedly over time even after it was put back in place.
“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," curator Campbell Price, 29, told The Manchester Evening News at the time. "I thought it was strange because it is in a case and I am the only one who has a key."
Other experts held that the strange phenomenon had a logical explanation. Several theories were posed, with one suggesting that time-lapse footage of the statue had been doctored to make it appear as if it were moving.
But now, someone's finally gotten to the bottom of the mystery -- literally.
According to the Independent, the statue's convex base, plus vibrations from street traffic from a busy road outside, caused the movement.
"There's a lump at the bottom [of the statue] which makes it more susceptible to vibrations than the others which have a flat base," expert Steve Gosling of the ITV program Mystery Map told the Independent. "The vibration is a combination of multiple sources -- there's buses outside on the busy road, there's footfall activity -- and it's all of those things combined."
As a result of the finding, a special membrane has been affixed to the base of the statue to keep it from spinning. So much for the pharaoh's curse.
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