Luxor4u

Its some years ago now but I remember Jane Akshar, a dear old member of this forum was doing research in ancient Egyptian pornography, and asked if any one had such information that may be available. I remember writing that the British Museum has a special private area, that can be viewed by appointment only, it is in the vaults, way underground below this wonderful institution, and known by the code name as Cupboard 59, though in fact it's not really a cupboard at all.

Well,.......strange but true, as of June 16th 2017, an organisation known as Treausure Hunt At The Museum, and totally independent of the BM are putting on a display in various parts of the Museum, including the Egyptology Department, various items relating to sexual practise and pormography, both gay and straight, that will be discreetly displayed throughout the museum. I understand that the Ancient Roman Department will offer some rather, shall we say, special items,.........Mabel, get the smelling salts.

Many of the items are to be displayed publicly for the first, some are quite shockers, and therefore the BM are being a bit cagey about how long this exhibition will be available. I understand there will be quite a few 'gallery talks', these are where small groups are given a special tour by one of the organisers officials., I understand there are to be a few lectures. I should point out at this stage that this whole exhibit is being organised by an external company, which I can tell you is very rare at the BM.

The press reviews should be quite interesting, especially when Manchester University Museum are still having trouble calling a certain collection of items from a certain tomb in Egypt, by their real names, and that is still called The Tomb of the Two 'Brothers'.

I don't know where A-Four gleaned his information from for this event but treasure hunts in museums are not that unusual.

Here is an article from The Telegraph giving information about this particular treasure hunt at the British Museum.

British Museum hosts x-rated hunt to find its naughtiest treasures

By Hannah Furness, arts correspondent
2 JUNE 2017 • 9:00PM

The British Museum is to host an x-rated “love hunt”, which will see members of the public seek out the naughtiest items in its collection.

Visitors will be invited to “titter at some semi-pornographic 5th Century Greek pots” and “gawk at the enormous phallus of a Priapus” in an event aimed firmly at adults.

Promising an exploration of the museum’s “naughty and amorous tales”, a specially-designed treasure hunt will see teams of visitors romp through the galleries, set “playful” tasks to take photographs in front of key exhibits.

It is being organised by external company Treasure Hunt At The Museum (THATMuse) and follows similar challenges at the British Museum with different themes.

Attendees are invited to “search for the impish Putti” and “vie to capture the beautiful Venus”, from June 16th onwards.

While not conceived or run by British Museum staff, the event follows a schools sex and relationship education programme of workshops based on the museum’s objects.

Speaking during a panel event in April, director Hartwig Fischer said the workshops were an example of how museums can help to “mitigate” a perceived lack of arts in state schools.

"They [museums] offer protected spaces and offer schools the possibility for pupils to engage with objects and address difficult subjects," he said then.

"We run a sex and relationship programme that works much better in museums where you have objects that you can relate to and where it is easier to talk about these things.”

Official educational talks use artefacts from Japan, ancient Egypt and Greece to explore pornography and consent, and items from India, ancient Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome to discuss LGBT issues through history.

The less official Love Hunt will see groups of tourists given a worksheet with clues relating to adult-themed objects and images in the museum, tasked with tracking them down.

Once they succeed, they will then be offered a mix of “intellectual questions” about the subject in hand, or a more lighthearted task relating to it.

Previous hunts have seen participants dared to serenade the Museum’s restaurant with a love song, winning bonus points for overcoming their embarrassment in front of an audience.

Others have required guests to act out scenes in paintings.

Of the Love Hunt, the invitation explains: “Throughout the evening you will caper around the museum, finding treasures, photographing them and learning about the artefacts along the way.”

The treasure hunt is carried out in small groups during the Museum’s regular opening hours, with players working around members of the public seeing its sights in the usual fashion.

The Museum already allows guests to take photographs freely. With 6.4million visitors a year, it is Britain’s busiest and most popular museum or gallery.

Organisers expect Love Hunt to attract adult players, and are braced for interest from hen dos.

THATMuse said: “It’s fondly referred to as “the World’s Museum”. But with a collection of 8 million objects, covering 807,000 sq feet, just where does one start?!?

“Join us on a treasure hunt to give you some focus, threading themes and cultures together.”

The British Museum runs its own family-friendly treasure hunts, inviting children to become “explorers” with a journey of discovery around the museum.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06 ... treasures/

HEPZIBAH wrote:I don't know where A-Four gleaned his information from for this event but treasure hunts in museums are not that unusual.

Such rude comments as this are a fine example why I and others no longer really can be bothered to give first hand info.

As for GLEANED, it more than likely that YOU were able to gleam your knowledge only from reference to the Internet through my info here.

This forum must start to respect its members otherwise it will quickly end up like E4u

A-Four wrote:

HEPZIBAH wrote:I don't know where A-Four gleaned his information from for this event but treasure hunts in museums are not that unusual.

Such rude comments as this are a fine example why I and others no longer really can be bothered to give first hand info.

As for GLEANED, it more than likely that YOU were able to gleam your knowledge only from reference to the Internet through my info here.

Rude? No. An error in wording? Yes. I used the word 'gleaned' which on reflection was incorrect as that really means 'from a number of sources'. A-Four's information may or may not have been 'gleaned', but I should have written 'I don't know where A-Four got his information from...'. My comment about treasure hunts in museums is just a reference to fact!

A-Four, I assume that 'gleam' was a typo on your behalf. (Gleam being a reference to light and reflection unless I'm very much mistaken.

A-Four wrote:This forum must start to respect its members otherwise it will quickly end up like E4u

Perhaps it's time you started to lead by example.

I think A-Four is getting a little carried away......I can see him quivering with excitement

He seems a little muddled if he thinks the Tomb of the Two Brothers (Nakht-Ankh & Khnum-Nakht) had anything "exciting" in it. The entire contents rest in Manchester and are quite interesting...although not in the titillating sense.

He's probably confusing the more recently discovered tomb of Khnumhotep & Niankhkhnum....which displays the two male occupants in what could be described as an intimate embrace...giving rise to all sorts of speculation.

The fact that both held the title "overseer of the manicurists in the palace of the king" didn't help

Once again we are treated to an A4 mystery of “I know something you don’t, but I will word it in such a way that no one else will understand what I am on about”. At least Hepzi picked up on what you should have been telling us and openly explained what it was about, no “I have friends in high places” and always insinuating that you know something secret when in fact you do what you accuse everyone else of doing. If you had really wanted to inform the members about this event you could have done it without all the hint, hint, nudge nudge. In any event I cannot conceive of anything that they have in these museum collections that would shock the average TV viewer, we are inundated with documentaries that show all sorts of sexual acts in ancient cultures, from Greece to Rome to Egypt, nothing is held back from graphic images on pots and statues to pornography on brothel walls, there are plenty of dildo’s thrown is as well, so quite what can be so shocking I have no idea, unless you led a very sheltered life. So instead of criticising other forums, why not get posting something of interest, that goes for your buddies, its no use doing bugger all then complaining all the time as you seem to do.

Once again we are treated to an A4 mystery,.............

With all due respect to our members of this forum, I wrote information that I had received through a friend, I was not aware that the info had been released to The Telegraph or any other news outlet, like in the past when I have give such information which I might had, I bother to write up my own personnel views, rather than some quick copy and paste, or worse still 'living' on this forum, posting up to FIFTEEN times a day, mostly slagging off other member written work.

Would it not have been more polite for your colleague here, to have written something like,..... Further to A4's subject post here, I can add,..........but no,......then we look at the other comments and we know why.

For those (like A-Four) averse to the internet I reproduce the following in full. Incidentally, it's Cupboard 55....not 59.

Ever Heard Of The British Museum's Long-Lost 'Porn Room'?

The British Museum dates back to 1759, and has seen many incarnations; from the days when it would only allow 10 guests in at a time, to nowadays as the most-visited museum in the UK.

A former Secretum resident, the Bodhisattva Tara. Photo: Phil Rogers

In the Victorian era the museum contained a very special room for objects deemed too obscene or perverse to sit alongside the rest of the collection. Cupboard 55 was created in response to the Obscene Objects Act (1857), and designated the 'Cabinet of Obscene Objects'. It had another colloquial name: the porn room.

To enter the Secretum, one needed a special permit. This was given only to gentlemen who could prove they were of 'mature years and sound morals.' It's understandable that the prudish Victorian era was fertile ground for creating a Secretum, but what's more shocking is quite how long it lasted. Items were added as late as the 1950s.

We know why you clicked on this article. You want to know specifically which objects the Secretum held. Allow us to shed its secrets. There was this sculpture of a satyr engaged in sexual acts with a goat (still owned by the museum, currently not on display):

Satyr and goat. © Trustees of the British Museum

Then there was part of a temple wall, that featured lovers doing... what lovers do. That manoeuvre on the left side is altogether admirable; think of the hours of yoga spent to achieve such flexibility (again, currently not on display):

Fragment of lovers sculpture. © Trustees of the British Museum

Next is our favourite; a Roman terracotta lamp depicting a naked woman sitting on a crocodile. Except that the woman is actually sitting on an enormous human phallus emerging from the crocodile's tail. The British Museum suggest the woman might be an obscure caricature of Cleopatra (this one is on display at the museum):

Possibly Cleopatra. © Trustees of the British Museum

To us, it looks that it's more likely the doodle of a miscreant teenager. Imagine in thousands of years time, a discovery of exercise books from a boy's school. What they might see as an interesting relic of the past, might just be someone embarrassing their mate by drawing penises over everything.

And what of the Secretum now? A journalist headed down there in 2008, only to be disappointed. Cupboard 55 has mainly been filled up with objects relating to Judaica.

Even though the Secretum is dead, the British Museum still isn't averse to putting age limits on certain exhibits.

http://londonist.com/london/history/the ... s-secretum

Carry on your twittering A-four, we all have the right to post as we think, and create our own artistic licenses. I spend many a moment on the odd occasion attempting a bit of code breaking.

Newcastle, I was truly shocked by your included images, I would never have thought that such things went on never mind that people actually depicted them. I mean, just imagine that in ancient Egypt if some miscreant had scrawled an obscene sketch on a cave wall at Deir El Bahari depicting Senemut giving Hathshepsut one doggy style, now that sort of thing would be hidden from our eyes forever and kept under strict control, so no one would know of its existence would they? As to that goat picture, I am sure I have seen that on the coat of arms of a small village somewhere in Wales.

I refrained from posting the Turin "erotic" Papyrus out of consideration for those of a nervous disposition, the ladies on here...and any men on here anxious about the dimensions of their procreative appendage.

Oh please don't I have enough problems looking at the god Min

The satyr and the goat are from Newcastle's personal collection.

LuxorFan wrote:The satyr and the goat are from Newcastle's personal collection.

Which reminds me....time I asked for that item back

newcastle wrote:

LuxorFan wrote:The satyr and the goat are from Newcastle's personal collection.

Which reminds me....time I asked for that item back

The goat?

I think he's Kid-ing.

newcastle wrote:

LuxorFan wrote:The satyr and the goat are from Newcastle's personal collection.

Which reminds me....time I asked for that item back

Goodness me, I completely forgot. Your impressive collection of Old Kingdom phalluses are winging their way back to you. Many thanks for loaning them to me. They were invaluable to my, om, er research.