what is 70 meters long and has 93 penises

April 8, 2021 10:58 AM

Its existence has been marked by turbulent periods when it was in danger or at serious risk of being damaged. After being rescued many times, the Tapestry has survived and continues to reveal its secrets today. The full Bayeux Tapestry is now accessible on every computer screen and tablet. For the first time, you will be able to freely explore the entire Tapestry with a never seen quality of images.

Previouslies.

posted by Too-Ticky (36 comments total)

Somebody did the origin story of the English ruling class in bandes dessinée form? Cool.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 11:18 AM on April 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

A very crowded submarine?
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:21 AM on April 8, 2021 [7 favorites]

who stitched the dicks?
posted by chavenet at 11:22 AM on April 8, 2021 [5 favorites]

I did a tiny embroidery project recently, and it's so cool to zoom all the way in and see that they were using the exact same stitches as me, nearly a thousand years ago.

(But seriously, what's the deal with Aelfgyva)
posted by theodolite at 11:32 AM on April 8, 2021 [9 favorites]

who stitched the dicks?

Some bored, but totally hardcore, school kids in the 14th century probably.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 11:54 AM on April 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

Cunk on Bayeux
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:57 AM on April 8, 2021 [12 favorites]

I think my favorite part is when William's army has just landed, and they're setting up camp, and then all of a sudden there's a guy on a horse with kind of a funny pleased-looking expression on his face, and the inscription says HERE IS VVADARD, and I'm like, hello Wadard, nice to meet you, and then he never shows up again, but all I needed to know is that there really was a Wadard and he liked horses and he looked like this: 😌
posted by theodolite at 11:57 AM on April 8, 2021 [19 favorites]

all I needed to know is that there really was a Wadard

Sockpuppet name up for grabs?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:45 PM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Behold! It is the site upon which I display my tapestry.

Lay thine eyes upon it and thou shall see it in its entirety.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 1:16 PM on April 8, 2021 [5 favorites]

pretty sure all male animals would have penises too... since we've made this partially about penis count... shouldn't we count those?
posted by Nanukthedog at 1:35 PM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

The number of 93 refers to the penises that are visibly depicted on the carpet, and yes, most of them belong to horses. Here's more about the penis count.
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:48 PM on April 8, 2021 [5 favorites]

MeFi: here's more about the penis count
posted by elkevelvet at 2:13 PM on April 8, 2021 [15 favorites]

Don't be distracted by the penises. This is absolutely amazing, and why didn't I know about this before? I'm up to segment 17.
posted by bluesky43 at 2:40 PM on April 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

When I first moved to Hawai‘i for grad school and was trying to furnish my apartment, I was delighted to find a throw pillow with a panel from the Bayeux Tapestry at the salvation army. In the midst of all the rattan furnishings and floral print, it seemed delightfully out of place.
posted by deadbilly at 2:43 PM on April 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

The number of 93 refers to the penises that are visibly depicted on the carpet, and yes, most of them belong to horses. Here's more about the penis count.
posted by Too-Ticky
From the "the secret of the Bayeux Tapestry" posted by Too-ticky

...Keeping a tally of penises reveals that the designer of the tapestry had a hitherto unremarked obsession of his own. I say his, because this is just the sort of thing which will be familiar to anyone who has spent any time in a boys’ school, but seems unlikely to have been the product of a female mind – though one may nevertheless imagine some tittering on the part of needlewomen (if they were not needlemen) as they embroidered these bits of the design, vestiges of which are still traced on the back of the linen. A fortiori this is likely to have been the case if the needlewomen were nuns, and therefore debarred by vocation from carnal relationships. I am making large assumptions about continuity in male and female psyches over a millennium, but in this instance I do so with few qualms. Does the profusion of penises reveal anything more than a male adolescent mentality on the part of the tapestry’s designer?
posted by bluesky43 at 2:46 PM on April 8, 2021

This is SUPER COOL. I also do embroidery and it’s neat to zoom in and see the actual individual stitches.

I have a big tattoo wrapping around my bicep with two rows of Bayeux Tapestry border animals (sans penises). My artist went through David Wilson’s great book and picked out the critters that looked the coolest and would translate best to skin. I think it’s two lions, a griffin, and three dogs? Honestly, kind of hard to tell. I’ll have to see if I can find them on the site.

The artist said she had fun with the project because the animals reminded her just a little of American traditional tattoos (2D, stylized, bold outlines, solid colors). When I originally approached her, I just wanted one of the dudes on horseback. Sans penis. So I’m glad she prodded me to think of something else.

I’ve had the tattoo for ten years and in that time, exactly one stranger has recognized where the art is from. Most everyone else who comments on it guesses it’s from Ancient Egypt.
posted by liet at 2:50 PM on April 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

So cool! In the museum, they do their best to keep you on a schedule with a guided narration that has no pause or rewind buttons. Admirable efficiency, but I could have spent much more time admiring the stitchery.
posted by mersen at 3:02 PM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Another cool thing to see since you can zoom in so close: you can see the yarn pretty clearly because most of the filler stitching is laid work. It looks loosely plied and even a little uneven. I’m sure it was spun by professionals, so my wild-ass guess is that it was on purpose for better coverage?

I’m a pretty experienced handspinner, but I’ve never spun for embroidery so I don’t know what I’m talking about.
posted by liet at 3:13 PM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

...Keeping a tally of penises reveals that the designer of the tapestry had a hitherto unremarked obsession of his own. I say his, because this is just the sort of thing which will be familiar to anyone who has spent any time in a boys’ school, but seems unlikely to have been the product of a female mind – though one may nevertheless imagine some tittering on the part of needlewomen (if they were not needlemen) as they embroidered these bits of the design, vestiges of which are still traced on the back of the linen. A fortiori this is likely to have been the case if the needlewomen were nuns, and therefore debarred by vocation from carnal relationships. I am making large assumptions about continuity in male and female psyches over a millennium, but in this instance I do so with few qualms. Does the profusion of penises reveal anything more than a male adolescent mentality on the part of the tapestry’s designer?

It wouldn't surprise me if stallions do get erections during battles; they fight among themselves to get access to mares in the wild, after all, and I doubt they wait around to take advantage of any victories they may achieve since they might be challenged by another rival at any time and lose, or they might be severely wounded and capable only briefly.

Some degree of mating battle madness might also have been highly desirable in a warhorse, and cavalrymen could have looked for that in a mount. If so, it would be interesting to know if they did anything to encourage it in the runup to battle. it probably would have helped that there were also stallions on the other side, but it seems possible that things like liberally splashing mare's urine around could have been useful. Not to mention more direct approaches.

How far such considerations might also apply to the human participants in a battle is . . . outside the scope of this comment.
posted by jamjam at 4:02 PM on April 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

Keeping a tally of penises reveals

CUSTOMER: in a row?
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:43 PM on April 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

Try not to embroider any penises on the way through the parking lot!
posted by automatronic at 4:54 PM on April 8, 2021 [5 favorites]

Mostly Boats and Horses
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:07 PM on April 8, 2021

CUSTOMER: we agreed on a hundred penises. What is this bullshit
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 5:52 PM on April 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

HERE IS VVADARD the somewhat amused and slightly bored.
posted by Stoneshop at 3:20 AM on April 9, 2021

My favorite few square inches. I giggled for long minutes in front of it, thinking about the artisan spending months lovingly weaving that long liquid dog turd. True Art!
posted by Freyja at 7:04 AM on April 9, 2021

My favorite few square inches

Of what? Since it's not the Bayeux Tapestry. It's very nicely done, though.
posted by Too-Ticky at 7:19 AM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

Too right! Wrong set of tapestry, I had mistakenly metatagged it as Bayeux in my head when I saw it. Still primo woven art.
posted by Freyja at 8:27 AM on April 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

These two pairs of figures are thought to invoke two [of Æsop's] fables. The first concerns a widow who embarks on an affair with a guard stationed at the cemetery where her husband is buried. The guard’s role was to prevent the bodies of crucified criminals from being recovered by their relatives. When one was stolen while the guard and widow were disporting themselves, she gave him her husband’s corpse to hang on the empty cross in its place. The second concerns a man and a prostitute, in which the prostitute professes that she loves this client above all others, and he says that he likes what she says, but does not believe her. Both therefore involve illicit sex, dissimulation, deceit, and betrayal, and suggest to the well-read viewer a subversive interpretation of the main action. Even a viewer entirely ignorant of Æsop, provided he or she were observant, might find these distracting images puzzling or disquieting, when contemplated in juxtaposition with the adjacent main action.

I am unfamiliar with this subset of the fables. How interesting.
posted by Orlop at 8:30 AM on April 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

From that same article at History Extra, I am interested by the idea that the marginalia may be commenting on the main action. I've heard of the tapestry and seen reproductions of bits of it, of course, but don't know much about it. I'm being educated today! Yay.
posted by Orlop at 8:41 AM on April 9, 2021

Also, I'm loving looking at the animals in the border. The artist(s) who drew these had really paid attention to the movement and postures of dogs and birds.
posted by Orlop at 8:53 AM on April 9, 2021

Would the elites of that day have put depictions of sexual content on prominent display in a cathedral? I was thinking of jokingly calling this a fapestry, but then there have been many wealthy patrons of artful erotica/pornography throughout the paths of human history, and I'd be curious to know if there have been any serious-minded historians outside the web who have researched this aspect in some of the alternative theories about its commission and creation.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:10 AM on April 9, 2021

Metafilter: Don't be distracted by the penises.
posted by hanov3r at 11:14 AM on April 9, 2021

Would the elites of that day have put depictions of sexual content on prominent display in a cathedral?

If you look at the art in religious buildings from that age, there are tons of depictions of sex and sex-related items. Since it's hard to know what people were thinking 1000 years ago, I'll stick to the simple answer to your question is yes. Yes they would.
posted by mumimor at 11:51 AM on April 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

Well, there's this famous 1145 stained glass window at Chartres cathedral depicting the stem of Jesse, in which “A white tree trunk rises from Jesse’s groin”.
posted by jamjam at 1:15 PM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

Would the elites of that day have put depictions of sexual content on prominent display in a cathedral?
Sheela na gig, Sheela na gig, you exhibitionist!
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 3:03 PM on April 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

Very cool, thanks!
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:06 PM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]