Sex toys of the Secretum (British Museum)

Satyr and nymph, intent de violació, exposició la Bellesa del Cos (wiki)

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Would billionaires donate their toys?

The Secretum (Latin for "hidden away") was a British Museum collection of the 19th and early 20th centuries that held artifacts and images that were deemed sexually graphic.

Many of the items were phallic amulets, sexy charms, and votive offerings, often from pre-Christian traditions, including the worship of Priapus (constantly erect), a Greco-Roman god of fertility and male genitalia.

Newar Vajracharya priest, Nepal

Items from other cultures covered a wide range of human history, including ancient Egypt, the classical era Greco-Roman world, the ancient Near East, medieval England, sex-crazed Japan, and Kama Sutra India.

Many of the early donations or sales to the museum -- including those from the collectors Sir Hans Sloane, Sir William Hamilton, Richard Payne Knight, and Charles Townley -- contained items with erotic or sexually graphic images; these were separated out by museum staff and kept from public display.

Cupid, Kamadeva, Eros? Destroy this mad brute

Modern scholars believe the segregation was probably motivated by a paternalistic (in loco parentis) stance from the museum to keep what they considered morally dangerous material away from all except scholars and members of the clergy, who are very interested in sex and erotic material for coming closer to their God or gods or the children.

What materials and modern artifacts might be sent to the Secretum if the collection continued?

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Flute blowing Zen, Komuso

By the 1860s there were around 700 such items held by the British Museum. In 1865 the antiquarian George Witt donated his phallocentric collection of 434 artifacts to the museum, which led to the formal setting up of the Secretum to hold his penile collection and similar items.

The Secretum collection began to be gradually broken up in 1912, with the transfer of items into departments appropriate for their time frame and culture.

The last entry into the Secretum was in 1953, when the British Library found 18th-century condoms being used as bookmarks in a 1783 publication they held.

The last remaining items were moved out of the collection in 2005. More

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