Beginning 2,000 years ago, a mysterious culture called the Moche inhabited and controlled Peru’s northern coast. Before the 1980s, little was known about the Moche civilization but, over time, archaeologists started discovering monuments and tombs that contained beautiful pottery and elaborate murals of hunting, fighting, sacrifice, and graphic sexual encounters.

The Moche’s erotic pottery represents one of the most thorough records of sexual practices ever left behind by ancient cultures. It is the most prevalent form of erotic art in archaeology.

At least 500 of the thousands of ceramic jars found in Moche tombs depict sexually explicit artwork, usually as free-standing, three-dimensional figures on top of or as a component of a vase.

The sex-themed objects are both works of art and practical clay pots with hollow interior chambers for liquid storage and pouring spouts that are frequently shaped like phallic symbols. Thus, many of the pottery bottles represented the discharge of sexual fluids and were likely employed in rituals and ceremonies.

The largest collection of pre-Columbian erotic ceramics is on show in the Larco Museum (Museo Larco) in Lima, Peru. It shows “a conception of sexuality and eroticism integrally related to a comprehensive understanding of the world and its animating vital energies,” according to the Museum. According to the Andean worldview, a creative meeting (tinkuy) between diametrically opposed complimentary energies creates life (yanantin). The bodies of men and women express this dualism. All of the photos below are from their collection.

Why did the Moche create erotic art?

There are many theories as to why the Moche ceramists created erotic art – and such graphic pieces, at that! One theory is that they were purely symbolic, another is that they were used in fertility rituals and another is that the Moche were just a very sexually unrepressed people and they liked to express themselves, their fantasies and fetishes through their ceramic pieces.

I like the last theory but really I believe it was likely a combination of the three theories.

The Moche lived in an extremely arid, desert environment so praying to the rain and fertility gods makes a lot of sense.

Many of their erotic art is believed to be based on the concept of life itself. Sex to create life, semen as seed, the vagina and womb as mother earth. There’s a lot of crossover, let’s be honest.

There are also a host of sexual scenes that have nothing to do with reproduction, like ceramic peices depicting masturbation, sex with animals, sex with skeletons and deities, oral sex…and the list goes on. Those Moche had a vivid sexual imagination and rather than hiding it, as we tend to do post-Catholic and Christian influece, they made it into something beautiful and shameless.

Moche ceramic vessels were predominantly found in tombs, which means they were important artefacts that people of the time would send off with their loved ones. Objects of this type are usually considered highly valuable and, based on the craftsmanship of these Moche vessels, it’s no surprise. In fact, all 45,000 precolumbian ceramic vessels in Museo Larco (Lima, Peru) were found in tombs (including the sexy ones).

Interestingly, though the human figures in the Moche sex pots are seen performing a variety of sex actions using their hands, nipples, mouths, genitals, tongues, buttholes, and where masturbation, anal sex, and fellatio are frequently portrayed, vaginal penetration (by penis) and cunnilingus were infrequently portrayed. I guess they had some preferences there, or maybe depicting vaginas was to sacrilicious, even for them.