TWO HISTORIES, ONE OBJECT: THE STORIES OF THE TURIN EROTIC PAPYRUS

Object of the Week | Caitlin McCurdy

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 The erotic section of the papyrus,
Cat.2031/001=CGT55001 Photo by: Nicola Dell'Aquila and Federico Taverni/Museo Egizio.

Ask any undergraduate Egyptologist what object is most likely to invoke giggles, outlandish theories, or simply general intrigue, and they will likely mention the Turin Erotic Papyrus. I certainly found myself drawn to the many questions the artifact posed while studying the great mysteries and stories of ancient Egypt. Yet, this particular papyrus always felt like a footnote, an afterthought, never getting its own conclusion. The papyrus itself is in poor shape, large patches are missing and what’s left is fading, but contained in its disheveled nature is a history that still has not been fully deciphered.

The illustration shows young women, drawn in typical Egyptian art beauty standards engaging in sexual acts with men, who are notably not drawn in the Egyptian art canon’s set standards for men. They are balding and bearded with comically enlarged genitalia. These explicit scenes become all the more peculiar once you look at the drawing of animals engaging in other daily life activities that also appear on the papyrus. The nature of both scenes may suggest a satirical purpose, perhaps to mock the aristocracy of ancient Egypt, or to scandalize contemporary viewers. There is little text that has been preserved so only interpretations based solely on image is possible.

This feels like a study of absences by making interpretations on the lack of information, assumptions about why this artifact was ignored for so long, and then treated like an anomaly instead of an artifact filled with potential information on the attitude of ancient Egyptians towards sex.

Animals participating in activities of daily life = satire ? 

Cat.2031/001=CGT55001 Photo by: Nicola Dell'Aquila and Federico Taverni/Museo Egizio 

A Fragmented History

Currently housed in the Egyptian Museum, or Museo Egizio, in Turin, Italy, the papyri was a part of the museum’s 1824 founding collection made up of over 5,000 artifacts from the cabinet of curiosities of diplomat and explorer Bernadino Drovetti. Drovetti was a 19th century antiquities collector, part of a movement that predated modern archaeological practices. Due to his well-documented habit of intimidating other collectors and inability to record the context in which he discovered objects, the original provenance of many objects is unknown. They were created in ancient Egypt and their story before ending up in the Museo Egizio collection has been lost to time.

The papyrus was found in Deir el Medina, a worker’s village near the necropolis Thebes, active from approximately 1550-1080 BCE. This site is particularly unique as it contains rare artifacts of daily life in ancient Egypt. The inclusion of the erotic papyrus among wills, court documents, and grocery lists suggests a purpose outside the realm of death, which so much of Egyptian material history is concerned with.

Cat.2031/001=CGT55001  Photo by: Nicola Dell'Aquila and Federico Taverni/Museo Egizio. 

Sex & Sensibilities

Can we imagine the shock of a 19th century explorer upon discovering this papyrus? What would he have said about it? The history of any Egyptian artifact is fragmented and takes place across two different time periods. The first history is that of the original creators and users. The individual in Deir el Medina who drew this papyrus, for a purpose we cannot confirm. The second history is that of Bernadino Drovetti and his contemporaries and their influence on the trajectory of the artifacts they encountered on their quasi-archaeological digs as they removed the objects from their contexts and told their own stories with them. Today it is listed on the museum’s online papyrus database, its current status listed as off display for preservation

Artist Recreation of the Papyrus. Source

When we, as modern museum professionals, look upon the artifact we only see the first history through the veil of the second. To understand what the Turin Erotic Papyrus meant to the ancient Egyptians and their views of sex, we need to look at Drovetti and the societal context he studied in, and the attitudes towards sex of Egyptologists in general. The history of colonial aggression and Western repression is embedded into the foundations of the field itself and as a result permeates the objects we study. So much of what remains of Egyptian material culture relates to the dead: mortuary cults, funerary rites, and of course the famous and crowd-drawing mummies. Here we have a piece of their living culture, and yet we do not know what to do with it. Sex as both a part of human life and its place in museums has been treated as an oddity, an outlier, but perhaps with consideration of our own biases we can look at the Turin Erotic Papyrus with new eyes and appreciation.