Pompeian phallus

myminifactory

Human: This is an ancient sculpture of a phallus, part of a famous exhibition in Gabinetto Segreto. The Secret Museum or Secret Cabinet of Naples is the collection of erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum, held in separate galleries in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy. A cabinet refers to a well-presented collection of objects to admire and study. Throughout ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum, erotic frescoes were found along with depictions of the god Priapus, sexually explicit symbols and inscriptions. Household items like phallic oil lamps also existed. The Ancient Roman understanding of sexuality viewed explicit material very differently from most present-day cultures. Ideas about obscenity developed from the 18th century to the present day into a modern concept of pornography. Once Pompeii was excavated, artefacts deemed obscene and unsuitable for the general public were termed pornography in 1821 and locked away in a Secret Museum. The doorway was bricked up in 1849. At Pompeii, locked metal cabinets were constructed over erotic frescoes which could be shown to gentlemen but not ladies at an additional fee. This peep show was still in operation in the 1960s. People of mature age and respected morals, meaning educated men, had access to the cabinet. The catalogue of the secret museum played down the content of the room through engravings and descriptive texts. The excavation of Pompeii validated various interests who saw it as a way to validate their own view of history but excluded anything that did not fit their preferred model. In the 1930s, Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini viewed the excavations as validating the continuity of Nova Roma but was bothered by sexually explicit material. The secret room was briefly re-opened at the end of the 1960s before being finally re-opened in 2000 and moved to a separate room in the Naples National Archaeological Museum since 2005.