Disgraceful Archaeology

by Paul Bahn

  28

  WIND-BREAKS — OR GONE WITH THE WIND

  The historian Suetonius (AD 69–140) said of the emperor Claudius that he intended to publish an edict allowing to all people the liberty of giving vent at table to any distension caused by flatulence. This was upon hearing of a person whose modesty, under such circumstances, had nearly cost him his life.

  The obscene tenures by which certain estates in England were held in ‘sergeantcy’ date back at least to the early fourteenth century: Baldwin le Petteur (note the name) held 110 acres of land in Hemington, County of Suffolk, by sergeantcy, for which on Christmas Day, every year, before our sovereign lord the King of England, he had to perform one saltus, one sufflatus and one bumbulus (or pettus) — i.e. he was to dance, make a noise with his cheeks, and let a fart. As Camden says in his Britannia: ‘Such was the plain, jolly mirth of those days’ (28).

  Similarly, at Montluçon in France, any prostitute who was about to enter the town for the first time had to pay a toll on the bridge of one fart. According to Victor Hugo, this custom was generally known in France in the fifteenth century, and records of the Montluçon toll system go back to 1398. In England, the stage directions to old Morality Plays often include ‘Here Satan letteth a fart’. Later, a poem was written called ‘The fart censured in the Parliament House’, based on an ‘escape’ of this kind that took place in 1607, though possibly it occurred in Elizabethan times (29).

  The fart was a divinity among the ancient Egyptians, the personification of a natural function. It was depicted as a crouching child making some effort. The ancient Pelusians, a people of lower Egypt, venerated a Fart, which they worshipped under the symbol of a swelled paunch. Farts were a good omen for the Greeks, a bad one for the Romans.

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  The deities of many ancient peoples — Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and others — were restricted in their powers and functions. They were not able to cure all diseases, only particular kinds, each god being a specialist; consequently, each was supposed to take charge of a section of the human body. Hence, Bel-Phegor (see below, p. 75) was doubtless the deity to whom the devotee resorted for the alleviation of ailments connected with the rectum and belly — the worshipper would offer him the sacrifice of flatulence and excrement, testimonies of the good health for which gratitude was due to the deity. In medieval times, they were replaced by Saints — for example, Saint Erasmus was in charge of ‘the belly with the entrayles’, while Saint Phiacre was invoked to relieve people of ‘the phy or emeroids, of those especially which grow in the fundament’.

  Although the adoration of Flatulence cannot be found among the Chinese, religious customs equally revolting have been ascribed to them. Mohammedans who travelled through China in the ninth century reported that ‘the Chinese are addicted to the abominable vice of Sodomy, and the filthy practice of it they number among the indifferent things they perform in honor of their idols’.

  There is a story that Henry VIII of England enjoyed rhyming, and one day, while travelling on the river from Westminster to Greenwich to visit ‘a fair lady whom he loved and lodged in the tower of the park’, he challenged Sir Andrew Flamock to compose with him. The King wrote:

  Within this tower

  There lieth a flower

  That hath my heart.

  Exactly what Sir Andrew replied has been kept discreetly hidden, but a version of his answer appeared in one of the worst plays of almost any century:

  Within this hour

  She pist full sower

  And let a fart

  Legend has it that the monarch was not amused and bid Flamock ‘avant varlet and begone’ (30).

  30

  MALE BITS AND HOW TO USE THEM

  Male sexual organs are depicted in Moche pottery, showing testicles and penis, with the foreskin folded back showing the gland. These were drunk from, thus converting them into a sort of instrument of artificial fellatio.

  One Moche pot shows a male anally penetrating a female asleep in bed between her parents.

  In Moche pottery, 95 percent of the sex depicted seems to be anal, though heterosexual; the fellatio is all heterosexual, but there is no cunnilingus. Whether engaged in vaginal, anal or oral intercourse, the male face always remains totally impassive.

  Musical instruments can often be seen in an erotic context, especially in Graeco-Roman figurines where the man’s phallus is either part of the musical instrument or used for playing it.

  The Romans had ‘willy pots’ — the Roman site of Stonea Grange in Britain produced a pot with no less than 21 phalli shown on it. In fact the Romans were obsessed with phalli — little boys wore them round the neck, there were phalli hung up in Pompeian houses with bells on them and wings; they had phalli outside the doors, on street corners, etc. Many other ancient cultures, such as the Egyptian, also employed erotic amulets with huge phalli.

  The House of the Vettii at Pompeii has a fountain in the form of an ithyphallic figure, with its phallus serving as a waterspout; and a painting of Priapus weighing his enormous penis. Other erotic scenes are painted in a small room by the kitchen.

  The ancient Greek visual arts show that they admired a thin, short penis, terminating in a long pointed foreskin; the small penis goes with a scrotum of normal size, while the erect penis is depicted with normal proportions.

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  Greek artists often emphasised the small pointed penis of Herakles as opposed to the stubby and circumcised genitals of barbarian attendants. Aristotle’s explanation for this predilection for small genitals was that the small penis is more fertile than the large one, because the seed has a shorter distance to travel through it, and so doesn’t cool off so much.

  The Greek taste for dainty, pointed penises led to a custom of infibulation — to prevent the foreskin from becoming damaged while exercising in the nude, young athletes tied it down over the glans with a leather string, sometimes tucking up the penis with the same string as well. The knot was called ‘kynodesme’ or’dog tie’, and functioned something like a jock strap.

  One Greek vase shows a musician, whose hands are fully occupied with the double pipe, having a spontaneous ejaculation, while a bewildered bee dodges the bombardment.

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  There is also an ancient Greek depiction of a hairy satyr masturbating while pushing a penis-substitute into his own anus.

  Egypt’s king Menaphta, who defeated the Libyans in 1300 BC, collected the penises of his slain enemies as battle trophies.

  During the summer of 415 BC, Athens was shaken by a scandal. A group of conspirators, moving through the city under cover of night, mutilated the ‘herms’, statues of the god Hermes — these statues were plain rectangular pillars, with a head and erect male genitals. Almost all of them were castrated — a highly symbolic crime. There were hundreds of them, in private and public places. It was never discovered who did the terrible deed (32).

  In ancient Greek comedy there are a number of jokes about the use, by women of a respectable class, of self-satisfiers or dildos, made of leather. They were known as olisboi, derived from a verb meaning to glide or slip. A few vases show naked women using them in fairly fantastic ways — they could be prostitutes, or simply imaginary scenes.

  The island of Lesbos, to the ancient Greeks, was not associated with female homoerotism but with fellatio — the verbs ‘lesbiazo’ and ‘lesbizo’ refer to that practice. The ancient Greek word for ‘lesbian woman’ in our sense was ‘tribas’, from a root meaning ‘rub’.

  In an old Greek comedy, one woman suggests that the dildo resembles the real organ as the moon resembles the sun it looks the same but lacks heat (33).

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  FEMALE BITS AND HOW TO USE THEM

  In the Moche pottery of prehistoric Peru, males sometimes caress women’s chins, and occasionally touch their breasts, but there are no cases of these being sucked or kissed. In fact, kissing of any kind is only depicted between women and corpses.

  The Egyptians used the word for female p
rivate parts as a deprecation a woman who had played a dirty trick on someone was called a ‘kat tahut’ — ‘kat’ means vulva, while ‘tahut’ probably means prostitute. Vulvas were carved on pillars to call people cowards.

  The Egyptians were very amused by female flashers one tomb inscription tells the story of Re, chairman of the council of gods, who was sulking after being insulted by a rival. He only cheered up after his daughter Hathor lifted up her skirt towards him; this made him laugh uncontrollably, and he went back to work on the council.

  In the emperor Nero’s reign, see-through clothes were all the rage in Rome, exposing breasts and genitals. Seneca, the first century philosopher, noted that this meant women had nothing left to reveal to their lovers in the bedroom that they had not already shown on the street.

  Remote Easter Island, in the South Pacific, has many amazing rock-carvings of vulvas. The clitoris was deliberately lengthened from an early age, and girls were expected to straddle two rocks to display them to priests at certain ceremonies at Orongo, a clifftop ceremonial site. The longest were honoured by being immortalised in stone, and their proud owners would get the best warriors as husbands. These littoral clitoral displays thus led to artists beavering away at images of the island’s finest.

  Women in Classical Athens removed their pubic hair by singeing and plucking.

  NUMBER ONES AND NUMBER TWOS

  Captain John G. Bourke’s book of 1891, Scatalogic Rites of all Nations, was marked ‘Not for General Perusal’. Among the ‘disgusting rites’ covered is one he witnessed among the Zuni of New Mexico in 1881 — the Urine Dance. During a parody of a Catholic service, some men drank heartily from a vessel of urine. More was then brought, a large tin pailful, not less than two gallons.

  The dancers swallowed great draughts, smacked their lips and, amid, the roaring merriment of the spectators, remarked that it was very, very good .… one expressed regret that the dance had not been held out of doors, in one of the plazas .… there they always made it a point of honor to eat the excrement of men and dogs.

  As for the Celtiberians of Spain, although they boasted of cleanliness both in their nourishment and in their dress, it was not unusual for them to wash their teeth and bodies in urine. Strabo said that the Iberians:

  do not attend to ease or luxury, unless one considers it can add to the happiness of their lives to wash themselves and their wives in stale urine kept in tanks, and to rinse their teeth with it, which they say is the custom both with the Cantabrians and their neighbours.

  Cosmetics: Pliny claimed that pigeon’s dung was applied externally for all spots and blemishes on the face, as was crocodile dung, which also removed freckles. ‘An application of bull-dung, they say, will impart a rosy tint to the cheeks, and not even crocodilea is better for the purpose’. Galen and Dioskorides also alluded to the extensive use, by Greek and Roman ladies, of crocodile dung as a cosmetic, while Sextus Placitus said bull-dung was used by women to remove all facial blemishes. Paullini said that human excrements have peculiar salts that are more strengthening and useful than soap, so a young girl could improve her complexion wonderfully by washing her face in cow-dung, and drinking her brother’s urine fresh and warm, while fasting. The urine of a boy took away freckles from a face washed with it, while the crust that gathers on urine standing in chamber pots should be rubbed on birth-marks on children. Dog urine was prescribed to restore the colour of the hair.

  According to Pliny, the Scythians preferred mares for the purposes of war because they can pass their urine without stopping in their career.

  Early travellers among the Chukchi of Siberia reported that they offered their women to the travellers, but the latter had to show themselves worthy by undergoing a disgusting ordeal — the girl or woman who was to spend the night with the guest presented him with a cup of her urine, and he had to rinse his mouth with it. If he was brave enough to do this, he was considered a sincere friend; if not, an an enemy of the family.

  The Chukchi used to pretend to be passing urine in order to catch their animals which they wanted to use with their sleds. The reindeer, horses and cattle of the Siberian tribes are very fond of urine, probably because of the salt it contains, and when they see a man walking out from the hut, as if for the purpose of relieving his bladder, they follow him up so closely that he finds the operation anything but pleasant.

  The dogs of the Eskimo are equally fond of excrement, especially in cold weather, and when a resident of the Arctic desires to relieve himself, he finds it necessary to take a whip or stick to defend himself against the energy of the hungry dogs. Often, when a man wants to urge his dog-team to greater exertion, he sends his wife or one of the boys to run ahead, and when at a distance, to stoop down and make believe they are relieving themselves. The dogs are thus spurred to furious exertion, and the boy runs on again, to repeat the delusion. This never fails of the desired effect, no matter how often repeated (34).

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  Divination: The ancient Peruvians had one class of ‘wizards’ who ‘told fortunes by maize and the dung of sheep’, while eighth-century Europe also had pagan superstitions involving divination or augury by the dung of horses, cattle or birds.

  Among the superstitious practices of the Greeks, Plutarch mentions ‘rolling themselves in dung-hills’, ‘foul expiations’, ‘vile methods of purgation’, ‘bemirings at the temple’, with ‘penitents wrapped up in foul and nasty rags’ or ‘rolling naked in the mire’.

  The Romans and Egyptians had gods of excrement, whose special function was the care of latrines and those who frequented them. According to the eighteenth-century Spanish author Torquemada, the Egyptians ‘used to adore stinking and filthy privies and water-closets .… and they adored the noise and wind of the stomach when it expels from itself any cold or flatulence.’ The Romans also venerated latrines, and made sacrifices to them. The Roman goddess was called Cloacina, one of the first of the Roman deities, believed to have been named by Romulus himself. Under her charge were the various cloacae, sewers, privies, etc. There was also a god of ordure named Stercutius; one for other conveniences, Crepitus.

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  Several seventeenth-century travellers to Tibet reported that the grandees of the kingdom were very anxious to procure the excrements of the Grand Lama, which they usually wore about their necks as relics, in the form of amulets or as powder in bags; and they mixed his urine with their victuals, imagining this would secure them against all bodily infirmities (35).

  It was forbidden to commit desecration — the Romans had inscriptions warning of the wrath of the twelve great gods, and Jupiter and Diana too, against all who did any indecency near temples or monuments. The Emperor Caracalla put to death those who urinated in front of his statues.

  The Assyrians’ Venus had offerings of dung placed upon her altars, while their neighbours, the Israelites and Moabites, had a similar ceremonial in their worship of Bel-phegor (see above, p.62). The devotee presented his naked posterior before the altar and relieved his bowels, making an offering to the idol of the foul emanations. All the outward orifices of the body were presented to the idol, as well as all their emanations or excretions: tears from the eyes, wax from the ears, pus from the nose, saliva from the mouth, and urine and dejecta from the lower openings (36).

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  The Mexicans had a goddess, Suchiquecal, the mother of the human race, depicted in a state of humiliation, eating ordure; another goddess, Tlacolquani, was also an eater of ordure because she presided over loves and carnal pleasures, and heard and pardoned the confessions of men and women guilty of unclean and carnal crimes.

  Herodotus said that Egyptian women urinated standing up, and men sitting down. They relieved themselves indoors and ate outside. It is said that Apache men also urinated sitting down, but the women did it standing up. The same has also been said of the Mojaves of the Rio Colorado, and of some Australian Aboriginal tribes (37).

  A genuine Pompeii graffito — Hac ego cacavi — I had a shit here (38).


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  From ancient Cyprus, a seventh-century BC jug from Karpass, now in the British Museum, shows a ship carrying two large storage jars. A man squats on one of the two steering oars, and defecates towards a large fish.

  The Chumash of California had a somewhat dirty ‘coyote dance’ — the dancer was a single man, impersonating the coyote. He sang ‘The devil goes ahead. The tail swishes, so that the hunk of crap remains here on the ground.’ During the last part of the song, he was trying to persuade someone to come over to lick his penis for him; but by the last verse, he had lost all hope and so did it himself. The last part of the song meant to swing your tail so that you would be able to defecate, and the dung would remain there for the coral snake. He continued: ‘Do not distrust me. All this shit piled high — I have crapped it all’. With the last verse, the coyote licked his penis. Then: ‘Do not think me arrogant — Everything that is piled up here is my crap.’ As he began to sing this last verse, he loosened his garment, and when finished, he squatted down and defecated amid the people. The dancer took a drink of seawater in the morning so that when this part of the dance came he could crap on cue.