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1,600-Year-Old Roman Nail Cleaner with Phallic Handle Unearthed Near Cheltenham
A small Roman object discovered near Cheltenham combined personal grooming with supernatural protection. One end was designed to clean beneath the fingernails; the other was shaped into a phallus believed to ward off evil and bad luck. The copper-alloy tool was found in Gloucestershire during archaeological excavations carried out ahead of improvements to the M5…
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Only Known Roman Bone Phallus Discovered in Museum Storage in the Netherlands
A routine inventory inside a Dutch museum storage facility has revealed something archaeologists almost never see: a Roman phallus carved from bone, an object so unusual that it may be the only confirmed example of its kind from the ancient world. The artifact surfaced during a large-scale cataloging project at the Valkhof Museum in the…