Sunday, January 18, 2009

Those Naughty Greeks!

Beware! The following content may be offensive to those sensitive to graphic material . . . even if it is over two thousand years old.

I found these images at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. I find them pretty funny and evidence to prove that humans are not that much more sex-obsessed now than they were then. We might have more access to sexual material, but it seems that it has always been on our minds. Since I do study gender and biblical material, I always find this stuff fascinating. And titillating.

Ancient Greek servingware...for that special occasion, maybe?
In tiny letters, the Greek translates to something like, "Hold on!"


A satyr - those satyrs are always having a good time with their gigantic phalluses!

Another interesting piece of, ahem, dinnerware.

This is my favorite - you'll have to click on the picture to enlarge it to get a better look. It's a signet ring - for sealing what kind of letters, I don't know. Love letters? A bit too obvious, I should think. The description reads, "Erotic Scene, Sappharine Chalcedony, Greek, 4th Century B. C."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Damn. I wonder if this was someone's very-special-occasion dinner set or if they used it all the time? (Or maybe it belonged to a brothel?) Seeing that makes me wonder what the anthropologists of two thousand years from now will think if some sort of paper-eating bug strikes our civilization and the only thing to survive is a copy or two of Hustler :). (I'm betting that whoever owned the sealing ring had friends who ended up rolling their eyes a lot. "Oh, that's just Polynikes being Polynikes.")

- Marian

janjan said...

You know, even if all our paper is eaten up, the anthropologists might still have our electronic remains, and then they'd be even MORE convinced that we're sex-obsessed!