| Secret Cabinet Naples |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT SECRET MUSEUM, NAPLES | |
| collection of naples national archaeological museum | |
| art museums and galleries in italy | |
| archaeology museums | |
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| sex museums | |
| pornography | |
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Throughout ancient Pompeii , Erotic Frescoes , depictions of the god Priapus , sexually explicit Symbols , Inscriptions , and even household items (such as phallic oil lamps) were found. Ancient Roman culture had no concept of sexuality and viewed sexually explicit material very differently to most present-day cultures. Ideas about Obscenity developed from the 18th century to the present day into a modern concept of Pornography . Although the excavation of Pompeii was initially an Enlightenment project, once artefacts were classified through a new method of Taxonomy , those deemed obscene and unsuitable for the general public were termed Pornography and locked away in a Secret Museum. The cabinet was only accessible to "people of mature age and respected morals", which in practice meant only educated males. The catalogue of the secret museum was also a form of censorship, where engravings and descriptive texts played down the content of the room. The excavation of Pompeii was important to a breadth of powerful, and often conflicting, interests who saw the discovery of Pompeii as validating their own view of history, excluding anything that did not fit the model. The variety ranges from Mussolini who saw the excavation of Pompeii as validating the continuity of a superior race, to the Vatican who saw it as evidence of a direct link to the Holy Roman Empire . In either case, the presence of sexually explicit material was problematic. Re-opened, closed, re-opened again and then closed again for nearly a hundred years, the secret room was briefly made accessible again at the end of the 1960s before being finally re-opened in the year 2000. Since 2005, the collection was held in a separate room in the Naples National Archaeological Museum . A sign on the door warns the public of its contents. REFERENCES Kendrick, Walter. The Secret Museum – Pornography in Modern Culture (Berkley: University of California Press, 1996) EXTERNAL LINKS
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