Exclusive: Optical engineering that went into 1,600-year-old Lycurgus Cup has baffled experts for centuries The Romans’ proficiency in the art of glass-making has produced some of the wonders of antiquity, but few of their creations better a 1,600-year-old masterpiece which sits in the British Museum.
Depending on where a light source is positioned, the Lycurgus Cup changes colour, from jade green under normal lighting to ruby red when lit from behind – an astonishing feat of optical engineering that has confounded historians and glass-makers for centuries.
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