The first known Roman brothel token to have been discovered in London and most likely Britain, is on temporary display at the Museum of London.
The token or spintria, depicts a man and a woman having sex on one face, and has the Roman numerals XIIII (14) on the other. The lady appears to be lying on a couch on her front and a male figure is positioned behind her.
The spintria is roughly the size of a 10 pence piece and may even be the only such token ever found in Britain. It was then declared to the Museum of London under the Portable Antiquities Scheme.
Caroline McDonald, Museum of London Curator, said, “This is the perfect archaeological object. It’s sexy and provocative in the best sense of the word. The lot of a Roman sex slave was not a happy one and objects like this can help the Museum of London provoke debates about issues that are relevant to the modern city and its visitors. Museums should engage with these more grown-up and sometimes less comfortable topics”
The item was discovered by Regis Cursan, who was using a metal detector to search for artifacts near Putney Bridge in West London. He told the Daily Mail, “The day I made the find it was a very low, early tide and raining heavily. At first I thought it was a Roman coin, because of the thickness and diameter. When I rubbed the sand off the artefact the first thing I saw was the number on one side and what I thought was a goddess on the other. Little did I know at the time it was actually a rare Roman brothel token. To find something like that is a truly exciting find.”
The object has been dated, by experts at the Museum of London, to the Roman period and approximately the 1st century AD. There is much debate about the precise use of these Roman spintria although they are widely thought to be brothel tokens, which were exchanged for sex. Other suggested uses have been made, such as gaming tokens. If this item is indeed a brothel token, the reverse numeral may indicate the price of the service shown on the front of the token.
Jonanthan Jones, an art historian, writes in The Guardian that “these Roman tokens, with their detailed depictions of sex acts, had a dramatic influence on the birth of modern pornography. While the Putney token has been hailed as a rare discovery from Roman Britain, such artefacts showing similar scenes were actually well known in Renaissance Italy. Scholars in the 16th century didn’t know what they were – maybe something to do with the reputed excesses of the emperor Tiberius? – but they did leap on evidence of ancient Roman erotic art.”
The brothel token is on display at the Museum of London until April 2012.
Sources: Museum of London, The Guardian, and The Telegraph
