#7th century ce
Korean gold earrings, dated to 500-600 CE during the Silla Kingdom. Source: Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.
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Korean gold earrings dating to the 4th to 9th centuries CE during the Silla kingdom. Source: Sue Ollemans Oriental Works of Art.
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Byzantine necklace (6th-7th century). Gold, amethyst, (coloured glass or rock crystal and emerald) beads.
Image and text courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Today’s piece of erotic art history comes to us from Peru and is dated between 550-700 CE. (1) In this scene, a Moche lady lays on her stomach as she tilts her head and reaches back to administer a hallucinogenic enema to herself.
Native Americans throughout South America utilized the practice of hallucinogenic mushroom enemas which is documented thoroughly in their own art. The practice would later be documented in the early accounts of Spanish explorers (2) nearly one thousand years after this piece was made.
It is open to interpretation as to if this is an actual piece of erotic art or if it is just rates an honorable mention, but there is no reason to assume this is a purely chaste enema. Due to enemas’ potential to feel pleasurable, there is an entire genre of enema eroticism in Western culture as well as a Western tradition of combining drug intake with sex acts.
Without borrowing from Western culture, however, another reason to consider the erotic potential of this piece is that the Moche were extremely prolific in their erotic pottery, and a significant portion of it is devoted to anal sex indicating that they were well aware of the erotic potential of anal play. Given that the original erotic significance (or lack there of) of the piece is not currently knowable, it is being included in the erotic art history project as a point of interest.
REFERENCE / FURTHER READING
(1) icollector: Online Collectables Auction: “Pre Columbian Moche Erotic Figure“
http://www.icollector.com/Pre-Columbian-Moche-Erotic-Figure_i15180357
(2) DRUG TIMES ARTICLE: “Psychedelic Enemas”
https://www.drugtimes.org/hallucinogens-culture/psychedelic-enemas.html
MAYAN MUSHROOM STONE ARTICLE: “Origin of a Mushroom Religion; Soma in the Americas”
^^ PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS ARTICLE IS *AMAZING*!!! This article contains the most in depth ancient art history of drug use I have ever seen.
WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE: “Moche Culture”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moche_culture
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