“I counted the penises in the Bayeux Tapestry and I have no regrets”: what one Oxford professor found when he studied the rudest bits of the embroidery
More than six years since Professor George Garnett totted up the depictions of male genitalia in the famous Bayeux Tapestry – causing a media storm in the process – and he has no regrets. Speaking to Professor Garnett and fellow Tapestry scholar Dr Christopher Monk, David Musgrove reveals how the surprisingly explicit subject matter still has plenty to tell us about our medieval forebears
It’s not too often that medieval historians grab national headlines, but when you get an Oxford academic counting penises in a world-famous embroidery, you’re sure to arouse media attention.
On HistoryExtra in 2018, Professor George Garnett of St Hugh's College at the University of Oxford published his findings on the number of male genitalia stitched in the Bayeux Tapestry – and its importance. He counted 93 penises and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the research went viral.
“I think my academic colleagues were mostly very entertained,” Garnett revealed in a 2025 follow-up interview on the HistoryExtra podcast. “One of them said to me, ‘You’re not a historian of masculinity; you’re a historian of masculinities, 93 of them.’”
- On the podcast | The 93 penises of the Bayeux Tapestry
Most likely created in the late 11th century, the Bayeux Tapestry depicts the events leading up to and including the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. Beyond the grand battle narrative, the artwork is packed with curious details, some of which are surprisingly explicit.
Garnett, following a rich academic tradition of counting items in the Tapestry, tallied up the number of penises it includes. “There are 88 attached to horses, and four – or possibly five – attached to human figures,” he explains.
What do the penises in the Bayeux Tapestry mean?
Why so many? In the case of the horses, for the most part, the depiction of genitalia is simply anatomical detail, but there are some exceptions, notes Garnett. The designer of the Tapestry was evidently and – specifically – concerned with three horses’ penises in particular, he says.
"The rest are just to demonstrate that the horses in question are stallions. But the ones that matter? They’re associated with important men.”
Most notably, Harold Godwinson – who, as King Harold II, would die at Hastings – and his vanquisher, Duke William of Normandy, are shown on steeds with noticeably larger endowments. “William’s horse is by far the biggest,” Garnett notes. “And that’s not a coincidence.”
Away from the equines, inclusions of human genitalia in medieval art aren’t entirely unique to the Bayeux Tapestry. As Garnett explains, there are quite a few sculptural depictions of genitalia in sheela-na-gig carvings on medieval churches.
“I’m thinking in particular of Kilpeck Church in Herefordshire. But the genitalia depicted in those cases are female, whereas in the Bayeux Tapestry, there’s no evidence of any female genitalia at all – bar one instance of profuse pubic hair.”
Where can you find the Bayeux Tapestry penises?
So where are these human penises in the Tapestry? The Bayeux Tapestry tells the story of the Norman Conquest in its main central panel, but there are borders above and below. These contain decorative elements, beasts both real and mythical, and various mini action scenes that don’t at first glance seem to relate to the main narrative. It’s in these borders that the human penises lie.
What does it all mean? Professor Garnett agrees with the argument made by his fellow Tapestry scholar Professor Stephen D White, who has established that some of the stories being told in the border of the Tapestry are visual references to Aesop’s Fables, the Classical Greek tales that used animals to deliver moral and life messages.
Though we still don’t know who the designer of the tapestry was, they are quite clearly alluding to these fables, explains Garnett, and using the classical stories to comment on the main narrative.
“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.”
Instead of being random crude additions, the depictions of nudity in the Bayeux Tapestry are making a point, says Garnett. “Sexual activity is involved, or shame, and that makes me think that the designer is covertly alluding to betrayal.”
One of the most striking images supports this interpretation. In the so-called ‘Ælfgyva scene’, a woman seems to be mysteriously levitating while a cleric either caresses or accosts her. Beneath them, in the lower border, is a naked man with prominent genitals, crouching and apparently aping the stance of the priest.
“What’s fascinating,” Garnett says, “is that everybody who saw the tapestry at the time must have known exactly what that was being referred to. But we don’t.”
How far the intended audience at the time would have understood what the Tapestry was supposed to convey in the border scenes is impossible to say, and perhaps may not even have been a concern for the designer anyway.
“The audience would have had to be very educated to pick up all the allusions,” Garnett says. “But it may be that the designer simply took pleasure in his own virtuosity – it didn’t matter to him whether every viewer caught all the references.”
Despite the jokes and the media attention, Garnett insists that his work isn’t about sensationalism – it’s about understanding medieval minds.
“The whole point of studying history is to understand how people thought in the past,” he says. “And medieval people were not crude, unsophisticated, dim-witted individuals.”
His analysis of the Bayeux Tapestry reveals a world where humour, politics, and classical learning were intertwined. “The designer was an intelligent, highly educated individual, using literary allusions to subvert the standard story of the Norman Conquest.”
Counting the penises in the Tapestry, then, is neither smutty nor silly
Counting the penises in the Tapestry, then, is neither smutty nor silly. “What I’ve shown,” he concludes, “is that this is a serious, learned attempt to comment on the conquest – albeit in code.”
So, does he regret the attention that his study of medieval penises has brought him?
Not at all. “It didn’t take me very long,” he admits. “I’ve written books that took me 20 years. That article took me one afternoon. But if there’s even a mention of penises, suddenly it attracts vast numbers of people who would never dream of opening an academic journal.”
Garnering this reach beyond academia did, as you might expect, invite some objections in social media commentary, which Garnett’s family delighted in passing onto the professor. “My sons were ecstatic at the latest abuse heaped upon me online. Someone wrote, ‘If only he’d looked in a mirror, he would have seen a 94th!’”
A missed penis?
There is one possible new twist in this story though – the chance that there could be a 94th penis in the Tapestry.
In Professor Garnett’s count, the human genitals are all attached to naked figures, but there is one depiction early in the border of a clothed, running man with something hanging low beneath his tunic. Garnett is clear in his view that this is a scabbard of a sword or dagger, but there is an alternative take.
Dr Christopher Monk is a Bayeux Tapestry scholar and an expert on Anglo-Saxon nudity, and he spoke to HistoryExtra.
“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”, says Monk.
In 2016, Monk wrote a book chapter on nakedness in the Tapestry, which featured in the edited collection ‘Making Sense of the Bayeux Tapestry’, “and as far as I could see, no one had noticed it before. Having spent several years looking closely at depictions of nakedness in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts for my doctoral research, I think I had gotten my eye in, so to speak.”
Monk also noted that significantly, “some of the stitches appear to be original: the pale thread of the circular testicles and possibly the tip, or glans, are so; the black stitches of the shaft are, though, later restoration.”
As part of his investigation, Monk spoke to medieval embroidery expert Dr Alexandra Makin, on the nature of the stitching at this point in the border. “I knew there was some restoration in places. Alex had studied the back of the Tapestry and taken photographs, so was in a position to use her expertise in answering my queries.”
“I wrote about Alex’s observations in a footnote for the aforementioned chapter. I also noted there that [19th-century antiquarian draughtsman] Charles Stothard restored the appendage in his published drawings in the early 1800s. As he only restored parts for which ‘traces of the design’ – needle holes and vestigial threads – were present when he studied the tapestry, he must have been confident in his restoration.”
It seems, says Monk, that the observations by both Alex and Stothard corroborate each other, though neither is saying the appendage is a depiction of male genitals.
“That’s my own interpretation of the stitches which, as I’ve implied, depict all the necessary parts – a penis, with its distinct glans, and two testicles.”
If you follow this line of thought, then the penis count rises higher, and allows for even more examination of the Tapestry’s apparent fascination with the phallus.
We’ll leave it to you to decide if you agree with Professor Garnett or Dr Monk, but either way, it’s clear that the rude parts of the Tapestry are there for a reason, and trying to unravel that reason helps us better understand the embroidery and what it can tell us today.
Professor Garnett was talking to Dr David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation
Unravelling The Bayeux Tapestry
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Authors
David Musgrove is content director of the HistoryExtra.com website and podcast, plus its sister print magazines BBC History Magazine and BBC History Revealed. He has a PhD in medieval landscape archaeology and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.