Sunday, January 24, 2016

Spinning Statuette in Manchester Museum

Several months ago, we noticed that one of our Middle Kingdom statuettes was spinning around imperceptibly slowly in its new case in our Egyptian Worlds gallery. We set up a time lapse camera to take one image every minute for a week. This is the result. 
The cause may be subtle vibrations from footfall or traffic outside, but the statuette has been on a glass shelf in about the same place in the gallery for decades and has never moved before -- and none of the other objects in the case move in any way.  
A mystery? See for yourself.