One of Britain's Most Famed Sights is Decorated with Ancient Dick Pics

In 122 CE, the emperor Hadrian started construction on a defensive fortification to protect the Roman province of Britannia from the “barbarians” who lay to the north. By 207 CE Hadrian’s wall was in need of extensive repairs, and the soldiers shuttled stone to the site from a nearby quarry. Inevitably, they got bored and etched their names, details of their life and even selfies into the rock face. When archaeologists from Newcastle University excavated the quarry, they discovered that at least one soldier had something of an artistic flair and had etched phallic graffiti into the walls of the site. Some things about the human condition—war, love, and a desire to immortalize one’s penis using the art of the “dick pic”—are universal.

The Written Rock of Gelt, as the graffiti is known, also contains all kinds of other inscriptions: a portrait of what is likely to be a commanding officer and references to names of those present. One inscription refers to “the consulship of Aper and Maximus” and enables archaeologists to identify the precise year during which the graffiti was written and the renovation project was undertaken. Another inscription identifies its author as working in the “Second Legion Augusta … under Agricola.” Tucked amongst these historical nuggets is the Rock of Gelt phallus. As artwork goes, however, it’s not alone: Newcastle archaeologists Rob Collins stated that he has found 57 other depictions of male genitalia scratched on Hadrian’s Wall (which, to be clear, is 73 miles long).

The interest in drawing penises is not just a feature of Roman military life. Outside of Roman Britain people were equally as invested in phallic imagery. As Kristina Killgrove has written, Pompeii is famously covered in erotic artwork: excavations have revealed a fresco of the minor deity Priapus (with comically oversized penis) at the House of the Vetti; a flying penis amulet; and statue of Pan engaged in sexual congress with a goat (to be fair to Pan, he is half goat himself). Doorways all over Pompeii were decorated with tintinabula, erotic wind chimes made of bronze phalluses hung with bells. There’s so much phallic imagery and artwork in Pompeii that the eighteenth-century historian Richard Payne Knight argued that there was a kind of ‘Cult of the Penis’ there. As it turns out, the wind chimes are not specific to Pompeii; they have been found elsewhere in the Roman empire. The Romans really delighted in painting, sculpting, and casting male genitalia.

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