Spooky Mystery at Bergen Museum

Ancient Egyptian shabti - funerary figures that represent servants in the afterlife - are causing unease for those working at Bergen Museum. Professor Henrik von Achen says colleagues don't like working there at night, and the figures appear to be moving in their glass cases, newspaper Bergens Tidende reports.

BT reporters toured the museum one dark evening and found the Egyptian exhibit disguised a few creepy tales.

"They have behaved strangely since we took them up out of the cellar in 2001," said museum guard Richard Saure. He was the first to notice that small stone figurines, whose job was to work for the dead, were not like other relics.

"They were neatly packed in a case when we brought them up. When we came to work the day after, they were lying all over the place, except for two - two false shabtis," Saure said.

"The exhibition opened in May 2001. Since then these small figurines have moved. Some of them have turned 90 degrees. They stand in glass cases that are sealed and locked but you can see it in the trails in the dust," Saure said.

"I'm a skeptic, but I have to believe what I see. I don't understand this. If it is because of vibrations in the floor, like some claim, why don't other objects move?" the guard wondered.
Professor von Achen has nothing to add to dampen the mystery.

"Someone has made them and laid them in a grave. Now they are out of the grave's darkness. What do they bring? If we ask, maybe they answer, that is the magic of the museum," von Achen said.
www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article.jhtml?articleID=693418

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Last updated 21/12/2003

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