Netherlands museum finds 8″ Roman boner in storage

I apologize profusely for the title. It wrote itself; I was merely a conduit.

Researchers have discovered a unique Roman phallus carved out of bone in the stores of the Valkhof Museum in Nijmegen. While phalluses were very common in the Roman world as even the most cursory skimming of this blog’s archives could confirm, they were made of stone or metal. Only one other possible phallus made of organic material has been recorded, a wooden one that may actually be a drop spindle found at Vindolanda in northern England in 1992. The Nijmegen phallus is 20 centimeters (7.9-inch) long and is the only known Roman phallus carved out of bone, so you see, I really had no choice in the matter of the title.

The Province of Gelderland has a depot full of 16,000 boxes containing archaeological materials recovered in excavations over the past 70 years. The province was given possession of them 20 years ago after a change in the law consolidated all these diverse finds under the umbrella of the provincial government, but they didn’t have the wherewithal to do anything with them. Late last year, Gelderland finally allocated €8 million ($9.24 million) to unpack every box, document the artifacts, recover a selection of the most significant pieces, then repack everything else. The endeavor is expected to take at least six years to complete, and the Valkhof Museum has been given the job.

The museum has gone through the first 300 boxes, and several exceptional pieces were found from the Roman period. Most of the objects in these first 300 boxes were excavated from the site of Canisius College, a former boarding school in Nijmegen-East, and date to 2,000-1,800 years ago. They include a set of cups and bowls from a luxury earthenware service that is finely decorated with mold-pressed scenes and patterns, such as a deer leaping through a forest.

Found at the site of a Roman army camp is another stand-out object: a drinking cup with an expressive face on it. It was found near a Roman army camp and is nearly intact. Face beakers were manufactured in the Mediterranean in the 1st century A.D. and spread over Roman territory with the legions. The faces covered the entire beaker at this early stage, as in the Nijmegen example. Later the form evolved into pots and jars with the facial features occupying a smaller area just below the shoulders of the pot. In the Rhineland area, they are found in military burial or rubbish pit contexts. Archaeologists do not believe the faces represented an actual person, but rather were used as grave goods to ward off evil.

Which, coincidentally, is the same role Roman phalluses played. They were apotropaic, ie, had the power to ward off the evil eye. Romans wore them as amulets, carved them over doorways, on bridges, on milestones and carried them in processions.

* This article was originally published here