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A museum is investigating a real-life curse of the mummy’s tomb after a relic almost 4,000-years old started moving on its own.

The 10-ins tall statuette of a man called Neb-Senu, which dates back to 1800 BC, mysteriously spins 180 degrees with nobody going near it.

Curators were left scratching their heads after they kept finding it facing the wrong way and rigged up a time-lapse camera to catch whoever was moving it.

But incredibly the camera shows the figure moving of its own accord in front of crowds of visitors who pass by with hardly a second look.

Now TV brainbox Brian Cox, who presents programmes such as the Wonders of Life, is among a group of experts being asked if they have any idea what is causing the phenomenon.

The statue has been in the Manchester Museum for over 80 years.

Scientists who explored Egyptian tombs in the 1920s were popularly believed to be struck by a ‘curse of the Pharaohs’.

Museum curator Campbell Price believes there could be a spiritual explanation to the spinning statue.

(Image: Manchester Museum)

Egyptologist Mr Price, 29, said: “I noticed one day that it had turned around. I thought it was strange because it is in a case and I am the only one who has a key.

“I put it back but then the next day it had moved again. We set up a time-lapse video and, although the naked eye can’t see it, you can clearly see it rotate on the film.

“The statuette is something that used to go in the tomb along with the mummy.

“Mourners would lay offerings at its feet. The hieroglyphics on the back ask for ‘bread, beer and beef’.

“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.”

Other experts have a more rational explanation - suggesting that the vibrations caused by the footsteps of passing visitors makes the statuette turn.

(Image: BBC)

That’s the theory favoured by Professor Cox - but Campbell said he was not convinced.

He added: “Brian thinks it’s differential friction where two surfaces, the serpentine stone of the statuette and glass shelf it is on, cause a subtle vibration which is making the statuette turn.

“But it has been on those surfaces since we have had it and it has never moved before. And why would it go around in a perfect circle?”

* How our sister website the Manchester Evening News is reporting the story .