The Irresistable Arm

While roaming the British Museum last weekend, I noticed that a good deal of the ancient sculpture is out where people can touch it, and that although there is signage here and there telling one that touching the statues causes the stone to deteriorate, certain works seem to invite a lot of handling.
I first noticed this with the monumental Assyrian statues of the five-legged demigods or whatever they might be. People were inclined to reach out and touch their flanks.
Other works, mainly Egyptian, seemed to prompt people to lean against them for photos, as if hugging a lifesized statue of a pharaoh or one of his courtiers made it one of the family. Museum guards made some attempts to deter people from this sort of familiarity.
On the other hand, it appeared that the guards had utterly given up trying to keep people from touching certain other items, like this monumental Egyptian arm. The number of people fondling this arm was so striking, and the flow of new families coming up to pet it so continual, that I decided that (photography being very much permitted) this phenomenon had to be documented. (Note guard minding his own business on the other side of the arm, not long after rescuing pharoah from the embrace of commoners.)