It was originally transported when those feathers were relatively fresh. Now they are 500 years old. Feathers aren't meant to survive that long and remain struc

It was originally transported when those feathers were relatively fresh. Now they are 500 years old. Feathers aren't meant to survive that long and remain structurally sound. When Tutankhamun's tomb was found, there were these beautiful beaded sandals that had been preserved exactly as they had been left for 3,200 years. When the archaeologist or assistant (I forget) went to pick them up to transport away, the thing burst apart collapsing into a pile of unordered beads. The strands that had been used to construct it had deteriorated to dust hundreds or thousands of years earlier and the sandals were held together only by the static configuration of the beads. Picking it up changed the relative angle of "down", and boom. Edit: Corrected date.