The present special issue of the journal Archimède: Archéologie et histoire ancienne, organized under the auspices of the Imago Genitalium: Sex and Gender in Ancient Mediterranean Art project, focuses on depictions of the phallus in Antiquity. It aims to fill the gap in research on the sexual parts of the body, their associated organs (the breasts) and their fluids. Due in part to the legacy of Victorian-period laws banning material deemed to be “indecent” or “obscene” because it was held to connote sexuality (however vaguely defined), a large amount of material depicting images of human genitalia in Antiquity has regularly been isolated from its original material contexts, sequestered in specially designated “secret cabinets” of museums, and hidden from public view. Despite some progress, many scholarly accounts of Antiquity fail to integrate this material into the cultural and material contexts from which it was systematically stripped, resulting in distorted views. The present special edition, the first publication of the Imago Genitalium group (https://genitaliaandco.hypotheses.org/equipe), draws attention to representations of the phallus in Egypt, the Levant and Asia Minor, Greece, and the Roman Empire to better understand the cultural significations and ritual functions associated with those representations. Although there are some exceptions, in general the images discussed did not connote “obscenity,” but instead represented the positive terms in a series of overlapping dualities: life/death, creation/destruction, health/illness, protection/harm, and prosperity/misfortune. The essays in this special issue deal with the multifarious appearances and usages of phalli within the contexts of funerary and mortuary practices, rituals of kinship attribution, divination, procreation and fertility, healing and medicine, and artistic conventions deployed to distinguish toddlers from adults or to elicit laughter and thus to avert the evil eye.

Two highly unusual vase paintings, which may be more or less direct representations of Aristophanes, have been first published recently. They have received little attention to date, and yet both bring with them intriguing problems, which are not, in my opinion, resolved in the original publications. This double accession is all the more remarkable since up till now there has been so little that might be claimed to illustrate pictorially the golden age of Old Comedy (say 435 to 390 B.C), however loosely or tightly the debatable term ‘illustration’ is used (see note 24). The best known has probably been the attic oenochoe with a squat, near-naked figure prancing on a low stage before an audience of two. He is usually taken to be burlesquing Perseus; but presumably his stage model, if indeed the genre is comedy at all, did not really perform naked and without mask. Closer to representation of actual performance may be the four unglazed oenochoai with polychrome decoration from towards ...

Abstract: Searching for the reasons of male nudity in Greek Art the first question to be answered is why the Greeks preferred males to be presented nude in art although they were not nude in daily life. Most male Greek statues were represented nude throughout the centuries whereas Greek statues of women were draped in heavy chiton or chimation at least until the Hellenistic age. Also ‘barbarians’ were reflected, except for few depictions, in their traditional clothing. In this paper the reasons of male nudity in Ancient Greek Art will be handled chronologically by offering examples from the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic ages. Mainly statues will be the material to be handled but written sources will also support the frame of the article. Keywords: Nudity, Kuros, Classic, Hellenistic, Sculpture.

This paper explores the function of the maternal phallus in the con

A 4-page paper that uses depicted sign language to translate the signs on an oil lamp from Pompeii. The phallus with wings imagery is usually described as and included in the erotic imagery of Pompeii. This translation shows that the lamp's signs carry on an ancient cosmology greatly predating Pompeii. Compare to the paper: A Moche Erotic Vessel: The Greek Connection.