Osiris, the green-complected, half-mummified God of the dead in the Egyptian pantheon, may be manifesting himself in a subtle way. A statue that was made long ago, found in a mummy’s tomb 80 years ago, has perhaps channeled his spirit, and can be seen spinning in its display case with the use of time elapsed footage provided by the Manchester Museum in England.
The statue’s owner, Campbell Price, an Egyptologist by trade, believes that the statue, to use modern parlance, may be haunted. “In ancient Egypt they believed that if the mummy is destroyed then the statuette can act as an alternative vessel for the spirit,” he told the Manchester Evening News. “Maybe that is what is causing the movement.”
Maybe. Or maybe not. “[Physicist Brian Cox] thinks it’s ‘differential friction,’” Price told The Daily Mail, a process happening when two types of surfaces – glass and stone in this case, “cause a subtle vibration which is making the statuette turn.” Indeed, in the video it appears the statue only turns during the day, when there is a lot of foot traffic going on.
Nevertheless, Price isn’t convinced, “It has been on those surfaces since we have had it and it has never moved before,” he said. Well, could that be because it was placed in a subtly different manner than before? Or perhaps Osiris, or as Price believes, the mummy’s Ka (spirit), was off on other business at the time?