The Bayeux Tapestry depicts one of Britain’s most famous clashes, the Battle of Hastings in which William the Conqueror defeated Harold Godwinson to take the English throne.
Now, the cloth is subject to a new battle as two historians have gone head-to-head over the number of penises included on the historical work, kept in Bayeux, France.
Oxford academic Professor George Garnett counted 93 penises on the embroidered fabric in 2019, with 88 belonging to horses and another five to men. But Bayeux Tapestry scholar and expert on Anglo-Saxon nudity Dr Christopher Monk believes he has found one extra on another man in the tapestry.
Speaking to HistoryExtra, Dr Monk said: “I am in no doubt that the appendage is a depiction of male genitalia – the missed penis, shall we say? The detail is surprisingly anatomically fulsome.”
Professor Garnett maintained on the HistoryExtra podcast that he was still correct, as he believed the potential penis was the scabbard of a man’s dagger due to the “yellow blob” at the end, which he took to be brass.
He said: “If you look at what are incontrovertibly penises in the tapestry, none of them have a yellow blob on the end.”
As well as debate over this additional appendage, many scholars are still discussing why the Tapestry includes the male members.
While most of the horse penises are believed to portray them as stallions, Professor Garnett highlights there are three horses where their endowments are emphasised.
Harold Godwinson and William the Conqueror are portrayed as mounting horses with particularly large penises.
“William’s horse is by far the biggest,” Garnett said. “And that’s not a coincidence.”
The human penises remain a mystery, as they can be found in the borders of the Tapestry above and below.
Professor Garnett has agreed with an argument made by his fellow Tapestry scholar, Professor Stephen D White, who has said that some of the illustrations in the border refer to Aesop’s fables.
The Oxford scholar said: “We know the designer was learned – he was using [ancient Thracian] Phaedrus’s first-century Latin translation of Aesop’s fables, rather than some vague folk tradition.”
The professor believes the depictions of nudity in the Tapestry are there to make a point: “Sexual activity is involved, or shame, and that makes me think that the designer is covertly alluding to betrayal.”
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