Does this Greek statue show an ancient laptop?
When you think of ancient Greece you probably think marble columns, depictions of Olympian gods, and MacBooks -- oh wait, not MacBooks. Yet one image of a 2,100-year-old stone relief, or a sculpture that is found on a wall or embedded into a wall's surface, has been making the Internet rounds by seeming to show a young girl holding up what looks like a modern laptop, offering it to a woman who is lounging back, arm stretched out toward the object.
Is this fulfilling some ancient prophecy of a computerized future? Experts scoff at the idea. But the image of the 100 B.C. sculpture from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California, has become something of a social media phenomenon. While the image is not new, a recent story about it on The Daily Mail's website has brought it back to social media attention, reports CNET.
On its website, the museum describes the marble sculpture -- called "Grave Naiskos of an Enthroned Woman with an Attendant" -- as showing the woman reaching out "to touch the lid of a shallow chest." So, no, the ancient figure is not reaching out for the latest Apple product. But that hasn't stopped some from speculating about the object in question.
On its official Facebook page, the Getty Museum responds to the conspiracy theorists with humor. When one user writes, "This is what happens when time travelers don't cover their tracks thoroughly enough. Learn from Doc Brown, people!" the museum responds, "So true, so true."
A different user saw something entirely different in the statue, making it something of an archaeological Rorschach test: "Pizza box. And the pizza is stuck to the lid," the user suggested.
The museum responded: "The best answer yet!"
