Pompeian phallus

myminifactory

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 from Pompeii and Herculaneum, held in separate galleries in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy, formerly known as the Museo Borbonico. "Cabinet" refers to a cabinet of curiosities, a well-presented collection of objects to admire and study. Throughout ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum, erotic frescoes, depictions of the god Priapus, sexually explicit symbols, and inscriptions, even household items like phallic oil lamps were discovered. 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. Although the excavation of Pompeii was initially an Enlightenment project, once artefacts were classified through a new method of taxonomy, those deemed obscene and unsuitable for the general public were termed pornography and in 1821 they were 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, for an additional fee. This peep show was still operating at Pompeii in the 1960s. The cabinet was only accessible to people of mature age and respected morals, meaning educated men. The catalogue of the secret museum also served as a form of censorship, as engravings and descriptive texts downplayed the content of the room. The excavation of Pompeii was crucial to powerful interests who saw the discovery of the buried city as validating their view of history, but excluded anything that did not fit their preferred model. In the 1930s, Benito Mussolini saw the excavations as validating the continuity of a Nova Roma. However, the presence of sexually explicit material posed a problem. Reopened, closed, reopened again and then closed once more for nearly 100 years, the secret room was briefly made accessible in the late 1960s before being finally re-opened in 2000. Since 2005, the collection has been kept in a separate room in the Naples National Archaeological Museum.