You probably have boxes full of stuff you never unpacked from your last move. But I’m willing to bet one of those boxes does not contain an ancient Roman penis carved from bone.
As Popular Science reports, that is a claim a Dutch museum can make: the Valkhof Museum in Nijmegen recently found one such eight-inch-long ancient carved penis while cataloging the roughly 16,000 unopened boxes of artifacts collected over the last 70 years. So far, they’ve only opened about 300 of those boxes, and already they seem to have won the grand prize of the ancient Roman bone penis.
The penis itself dates back roughly 1800 to 2000 years, to when modern-day Nijmegen in the Netherlands was called Noviomagus. This town was a key Roman military hub near the Empire’s northern outskirts. If you know anything about ancient Roman history, you’ll know that the discovery of a gigantic carved phallus isn’t exactly out of the norm. What is a bit unusual is the material it was carved from.
Museum Opens Old Box, Finds Ancient Roman Bone Penis Inside
Ancient Romans loved carving phallic symbols out of stone, metal, and sometimes wood, but this bone penis isn’t just a big discovery because it’s hysterical, but because it’s the first known example of a phallic symbol carved from bone, probably sourced from local livestock like cattle or goats.
A penis carving was not an obscenity in Roman culture. It was a symbol of protection, fertility, and good fortune, which is why doorways were adorned with carved penises and why some people wore penis-shaped amulets to ward off the dreaded “Evil Eye.” What elicits giggles today was once a sacred symbol with deep spiritual significance.
The bone penis isn’t all they’ve found in those boxes. The researchers found tons of ancient pottery, including an ancient drinking cup known as a “face beaker,” so called because it had a human face scrawled on it.
All told, penis and pottery alike tell a story of a sprawling civilization whose reach wasn’t just geographic but wormed its roots deeply within cultures far beyond its origins. Ancient Romans carved spiritually meaningful penises out of a set of favored materials, so of course, parts of Roman civilization way out on the outskirts of its reach did the same with whatever they could get their hands on, even way up in the Netherlands.
The museum still has over 15,000 boxes left open, so who knows what troves are still left to uncover, and how many penises are left to unbox.
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