Tintinnabulum (ancient Rome)

In ancient Rome, a tintinnabulum (less often tintinnum)[1] was a wind chime or assemblage of bells. A tintinnabulum often took the form of a bronze ithyphallic figure or of a fascinum, a magico-religious phallus thought to ward off the evil eye and bring good fortune and prosperity.

For other uses, see Tintinnabulum (disambiguation).
A bronze polyphallic tintinnabulum of Mercury from Pompeii: the missing bells were attached to each tip (Naples Museum)
Tintinnabulum depicting a man struggling with his phallus as a raging beast (1st century BC, Naples Museum)

A tintinnabulum acted as a door amulet.[2][3] These were hung near thresholds[4] at a shop or house, under the peristyles (around the inner courtyard or garden) by the bedroom, or the venereum, where the wind would cause them to tinkle.[5][2] They were also made to ring like doorbells, a series of them being tied to cord attached to a bell pull.[6]

The sounds of bells were believed to keep away evil spirits; compare the apotropaic role of the bell in the "bell, book, and candle" ritual of the earlier Catholic Church.[2][7] It has also been surmised that oscilla hung on hooks along colonnaded porticoes may have comparable evil-warding intents.[8]

Hand-bells have been found in sanctuaries and other settings that indicate their religious usage, and were used at the Temple of Iuppiter Tonans, "Jupiter the Thunderer."[9] Elaborately decorated pendants for tintinnabula occur in Etruscan settings, depicting for example women carding wool, spinning, and weaving.[10] Bells were hung on the necks of domestic animals such as horses and sheep to keep track of the animals, but perhaps also for apotropaic purposes.[11]

A number of examples are part of the Secret Museum collection at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli.[12]

See also

References
Citations
  1. In the Latin of 6th-century Roman Gaul; J.N. Adams, The Regional Diversification of Latin, 200 BC–AD 600 (Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 321.
  2. Johns, Catherine (2000), Sex Or Symbol?: Erotic Images of Greece and Rome, Taylor & Francis, pp. 67–68, ISBN 978-0-415-92567-9
  3. Montserrat, Dominic (2013), Huskinson, Janet (ed.), "Reading gender in the Roman world", Experiencing Rome: Culture, Identity and Power in the Roman Empire, Routledge, p. 171, ISBN 9781134693146
  4. Taylor, Rabun (2005), "Roman oscilla: An assessment", ES: Anthropology and Aesthetics (48): 95, ISBN 9780873657662 JSTOR 20167679
  5. Fanin (1871), p. 58.
  6. Deiss, Joseph Jay (1989), Herculaneum, Italy's buried treasure, Getty Publications, p. 38, ISBN 978-0-892-36164-9
  7. "Bronze phallic wind chime (tintinabulum)". Highlights from the British Museum. Archived from the original on 2015-10-18. Retrieved 2017-06-15.
  8. Taylor (2005), pp. 83, 95
  9. Duncan Fishwick, Imperial Cult in the Latin West (Brill, 1990), vol. II.1, pp. 504-5.
  10. Larissa Bonfante, Etruscan Life and Afterlife: A Handbook of Etruscan Studies (Wayne State University Press, 1986), p. 252.
  11. Adams, Regional Diversification, p. 321.
  12. Fanin (1871), pp. 58ff
Sources

Further reading
  • Sex or symbol: erotic images of Greece and Rome by Catherine Johns, The British Museum Press (1982) ISBN 0-7141-8042-4
  • Eros in Pompeii: the erotic art collection of the Museum of Naples by Michael Grant, Antonia Mulas, Museo nazionale di Napoli (1997)
  • The Roman cultural revolution by Thomas N. Habinek, Alessandro Schiesaro (1997) p. 171
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ancient Roman Tintinnabula.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.