A hangover of misplaced Victorian prurience means that the Warren Cup is not nearly as well-known as it deserves to be. A silver drinking cup, dated to the first century AD and from the Middle East, its homoerotic theme meant that it was not displayed in public until the 1980s.
Bought by the British Museum in 1999, it had been on loan from a private collector to the Met in New York. Thankfully, The Guardian reports a new exhibition at the BM "The Warren Cup: Sex and Society in Ancient Greece and Rome" which runs until July 2.
For more details on the Cup I can heartily recommend Dyfri William's The Warren Cup (the detailed photography is especially good and it is a snip at £4) but the Art Bulletin ran a good piece just after the purchase in 1999.
The best image on-line is from the British Museum's website:
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