Photographer: Newcastle University
STORY – The rough discovery. A phallic-shaped piece of wood discovered near Hadrian’s Wall in northern Britain in the Roman fortress of Vindolanda has intrigued researchers. In reality, this object was discovered in 1992, but only recently have specialists reinterpreted its usefulness in a study published in the journal Antiquity and available on the University of Cambridge website.
In fact, the researchers were challenged by the object’s size, as it’s the first time they’ve observed a life-size penis sculpture, while they’re more likely to be found on a reduced scale. They therefore conducted an attrition analysis of the object to determine its use and compared it to archaeological and contextual data.
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COLLINS & SANDS (2023), CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
This wooden Roman phallus may be the first ancient sex toy discovered
This phallus is a source of questioning. Robert Collins, first author of the study, notes in Antiquity, “Its size and the fact that it was carved in wood raise several questions about its use in antiquity.”
Sex toy or torture object?
It is noted that its proportions and the wear concentrated on the two ends allow several hypotheses to be put forward. It could be part of a sculpture or a pestle, the larger end of which is used to grind materials. Or it could end up being an antique sex object, a sex toy.
However, according to the study, the term “sex toy” would be anachronistic. And it could be that this item, on the contrary, was not intended to bring joy.
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“The use must not have been exclusively sexual or for the pleasure of the user. Such tools may have been employed in acts that perpetuated power imbalances, such as B. between an enslaved person and his owner, as evidenced by the recurrence of sexual violence in Roman literature.” In other words, it could very well have been a tool of sexual torture.
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