THIS ancient Greek tombstone has plot notes in a flap – because they think it shows a woman using a laptop with USB ports.
One crazy theory claims that this is proof that a time traveler took a portable computer back to the time the marble relief was sculpted in 100 BC.
The 91 cm statue, called Grave Naiskos Of An Enthroned Woman With An Attendant, is on display at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California.
It was used as a funeral monument and shows a woman sitting on an armchair while a slave woman holds open a thin folding box.
The mistress touches the lid and stares at the top portion – which some online think is the screen of a laptop.
There are two holes along the side that resemble USB ports or other cable entries.
The base is too shallow to serve as a jewelry box, according to a video on the conspirators’ YouTube channel Still Speaking Out.
“It shows an astonishing object that bears a striking resemblance to a modern laptop or other portable device,” the video claims.
“When I look at the sculpture, I can’t help but think of the Oracle of Delphi, which was supposed to allow priests to connect with the gods to retrieve advanced information.”
The explanation is more down-to-earth, experts say.
According to a historian’s gallery description of the sculpture, the woman whose grave it marked can be seen looking into a “shallow coffin”.
It was a common theme in funeral art at the time, expressing the hope that loved ones would enjoy the same earthly pleasures in the afterlife.
The object could also have been a pair of wax tablets used for writing, says archaeologist Kristina Killgrove wrote in Forbes.
She adds that the holes in the side could have contained wooden objects that have since rotted away.
It’s not the first time gallery visitors have claimed to have found evidence of time travel in works of art.
Art lovers were baffled by a woman “holding an iPhone” in an 1860s painting.
Another man was spotted with his thumb on what appears to be an iPhone in a 1930s mural of a scene from 17th century New England.
And Apple boss Tim Cook joked that he had found one of his company’s gadgets in a 350-year-old masterpiece in Amsterdam.
Meanwhile, sports fans thought a time traveler was videotaping a Mike Tyson fight with an iPhone in 1995.
And what appears to be a flip phone was spotted in a photo of Brazil’s captain celebrating after the 1962 World Cup final.
1 Comment
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