Forget the arrow... 93 other ways the Bayeux Tapestry will catch your eye
AFTER nearly 1,000 years, you’d think that the Bayeux Tapestry would have given up all its mysteries.
however, a rather saucy secret is woven among the knights, kings and peasants.
For stitched into the epic artwork are some 93 penises – and one expert is proud to have studied them all.
George Garnett, a history professor at oxford, made the surprising discovery after closely scrutinising the tapestry, which depicts the Norman invasion of 1066.
In a report of his findings, he said that 88 of them belong to horses, and five are attached to men who appear in the margins.
But no human genitalia are depicted in the main body of the tapestry, which is technically an embroidery and was woven by women in england.
Famous though the work is – and it is soon to be lent by France to england for public display – apparently no one had ever bothered to count the depictions of male members before.
In a report for the BBC’s history extra website, Prof Garnett said: ‘The Bayeux Tapestry can arouse obsessiveness of many kinds in modern historians.
‘one type involves tallying the number of images. There are, we are told, 626 humans, 190 horses, 35 dogs, 37 trees, 32 ships, 33 buildings, etc. To the best of my knowledge, no one has yet tallied the number of penises.’
According to him, their inclusion may be symbolic – rather than evidence of an embroiderer with a childish sense of humour.
For example, while some of the horse organs featured could simply be for realism, William the Conqueror’s horse has ‘by far the largest’, which may illustrate the duke’s power. meanwhile, the handful of naked humans in the margins may have alerted contemporary viewers of the work to ‘themes of betrayal and deceit’.
one naked man appears below an image of a priest harassing a woman, a scene which the professor described as the tapestry’s ‘#meToo’ moment.
he presented his findings to the Bayeux Tapestry Day conference at st Anne’s College, oxford.