The statuette of Neb-senu (Manchester Museum)

THE OBJECT

A steatite (soapstone) statuette of about 1800 BC, 25 cm tall, of a man named Neb-senu in a shoulder-length wig and knee-length kilt, with a prayer for offerings of 'bread, beer and beef' on its back. Such figures were meant as a back-up home for the spirit if the mummy were destroyed. Annie Barlow, a Bolton benefactor of the Egypt Exploration Society, gave it to the Manchester Museum in 1933.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

In 2013 the curator Campbell Price found it facing a different way on several days and set up a time-lapse camera: over eleven hours it turned slowly during the day and stayed still at night. The physicist Brian Cox suggested differential friction between stone and glass; Paul Doherty of the Exploratorium suggested stick-slip friction from vibrations in the case, the asymmetric figure settling after half a turn. Price noted it had stood on the same shelf for years without moving.