Toilet paper holders are an important facet of European bathroom design. The earliest known toilet paper holders are thought to be those found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, while recently unearthed records of toilet paper holder practices in ancient Greece are now bringing us fresh insight into the contrasting cultures of Sparta and Athens. In ancient Rome, toilet paper holders designed by Vitruvius were prized as status symbols, whereas in the later Byzantine Empire, the aesthetic qualities of the toilet paper itself, rather than of the holder, come to the fore for the first time, as evidenced by the lovely icon paper shown right, with its obvious religious significance. The toilet paper holder, previously an essentially secular item except for its little-understood function in Egyptian burial customs, also emerges as religiously central in early Christianity, with an important role to play in the myth of the Holy Grail itself. Some recently discovered British Bronze age cave paintings have provided detailed evidence for the previously disputed nature of the use of toilet paper holders by sun worshippers at Stonehenge.
The artistic glory days of the European toilet paper holder were however the 16th to early 20th centuries, with their splendour of bathroom fittings stretching unbroken from Palladio to Fabergé. Individual toilet paper holders of spectacular opulence have again and again played key roles at crisis points in European history: a uniquely alarming Palladian polar bear holder dissuaded England's Virgin Queen Elizabeth I from marriage with the King of Sweden, one jewelled Fabergé holder precipitated the Russian Revolution, and another exacerbated the course of World War I. In spite of the historical importance of these cultural artefacts, their own history is surprisingly under-researched. Some feminist scholars ascribe this disproportion to the masculine domination technique of "toilet humor", meaning to belittle and ridicule toilet paper holders and other door furniture in the essentially feminine space of the bathroom.
Ancient toilet paper holders: Stonehenge to Caligula
The ancient history of toilet paper holders confounds those who assume that bathroom fittings and sanitary arrangements were primitive before our own day. Recent research by Professor David Summers and his team from the University of Oxford, has shown that the Mesolithic postholes, thought to date to 800 BC, discovered surrounding Stonehenge, were not in fact postholes but a series of public conveniences erected for the use of the Sun worshippers at Stonehenge. This theory is based on the discovery, during construction work at the new visitors' centre in 2004, of bronze artefacts at one time thought to be funerary ornaments dedicated to a phallic god. However, recently discovered cave paintings at Cheddar Gorge, showing these artefacts in use, clearly suggest a woven cloth wrapped around them, which was used in ablutions of a personal nature. These astoundingly graphic cave paintings, which have yet to be opened to public viewing, record accurately the use of the bronze holders with a view of Stonehenge behind. The paintings were probably made by pilgrims returning from their once in a lifetime visit to Stonehenge, and similar paintings have been found in the Ardeche. Typically, pilgrims would paint objects which had impressed them; the fact they painted the toilet paper holders indicates that these were not in common use at this time. There is an apparent allusion to this practice in Canto XCI of Ezra Pound's long modernist poem The Cantos . Pound was drawing on the 12th century Brut of Layamon and it is speculated that, through the monastic inter-library loan system that existed at the time, Layamon may have been familiar with some now-lost early personal hygiene manuals.
In Greece, the Spartans, who favoured the manly virtues of toughness and disregard for bodily comfort, preferred bowls of freshly-harvested thistles and stinging nettles, a habit that led to frequent, heartfelt cries of Oi moi! Aoi Lacedaemonai (Greek: Οι μοι ! Αοι Λακεδαιμωναι! ). The use of ornate pottery holders in Athens and the likely survival of remnants of this hidden tradition in the Grail stories has led the critic Harold Bloom to reassess John Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn . Bloom argues that the lines Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/Are sweeter point to a growing requirement for privacy in the convenience. This, in turn, fed demand for greater numbers of toilet paper holders to service individual cubicles. Close reading of the extant manuscript sources for Plato's Republic has lead to a re-evaluation of one of the best-known passages in that work. It seems that Plato did not wish to bar poets; his censure was rather aimed at the new Athenian softness in the personal hygiene department. Later, in Roman times, toilet parchment holders, similar in style to the Egyptian, were designed by Vitruvius, and much prized by the Romans as a symbol of status. The Emperor Caligula had many of these objets d'art made for his new palace, some of which have been uncovered on the Palatine hill.
Early Christian era: Holy Grail
With the decline of the Western Empire, the sophisticated objects valued by the Romans were replaced by cruder wooden holders used by the Germanic tribes. These have, up to recently, been wrongly categorised by archeologists as votive deposits, but are now recognised for what they were (Gibbon passim ). In the Byzantine Empire, patterned toilet paper emerged as a side product of icon production. The highly ornate holders required to do justice to these art papers were of such value that they were frequently carried from bog to bog by their owners. (See image top right.)
Research currently being carried out at the National Museum of Ireland indicates that the Bronze-age ornate gold torcs found all over the island are not, as was believed, necklaces but are, in fact, toilet paper holders of a pendant type. The fact that many of these were discovered buried in bogs in a manner that indicates that they may have been votive offerings is highly suggestive. With the advent of Christianity in the Celtic area, matters of personal hygiene took a distinctly Spartan turn. For example, in the absence of any suitable vegetation, the monks of Skellig Michael took to using rough earthenware containers filled with pieces of broken shell gathered on the seashore. Winter weather conditions frequently meant that even this rudimentary form of filling for their holders was in scarce supply.
Recently the daring suggestion has been made that the Old French San Greal is a misreading of an Aramaic word deriving from the root sgr , meaning to close , with close associations with personal hygiene. The theory, as formulated by Dan Brown in his important historical monograph The Da Vinci Code , is that the Holy Grail was, in fact, a particularly fine Middle-Eastern toilet paper holder that was brought to Europe by Mary Magdalen as she was fleeing persecution. Close reading of the Gnostic gospels has led Brown to conclude that Magdalen suffered from chronic constipation from an early age. He goes on to claim that the 'Grail' came into the hands of Charles the Bald and later formed a key element in the French elaboration of the theory of the divine right of kings.
The fact that the Holy Grail may well have been a toilet paper holder, requires a thorough review and reinterpretation of the stories surrounding the shadowy, mystical figure of King Arthur. Given the frequency with which holders are found in religious contexts, if, indeed, the Grail was closely associated with defecation, it must be linked, via the use of human excrement in early medieval farming, with Celtic vegetation cults. This link is underscored by the emphasis placed on the role of the Grail in the fertility of the land. For example, in the version of the myth found in the Mabinogion , the failure of the questor Peredur to ask the (somewhat loaded) question Who does the Grail serve , results in the desolation of the land, the infertility of maidens and the confinement of the Fisher King.
It should also be remembered that this practice of soil enrichment and fertilisation resulted in an increase in agricultural output, which in turn hastened the abandonment of that hunter gatherer culture of which the Knights of the Table Round were the nec plus ultra .
Non-Celtic Europe in the Middle Ages
As in so many other areas, Islam led the way when it came to introducing personal hygiene into the Europe of the Dark Ages. Inevitably, many of the finest examples of Hispano-Islamic toilet paper holders and other bathroom fittings are to be found in Spain. The example illustrated here is not untypical in its fusion of Classical, Gothic, Romanesque and Islamic forms and motifs into a whole that is almost organic in its inevitability.
Medieval Europe
The Dark Ages of Early Medieval Europe are subject to great speculation that is unsuited to a scholarly account of this nature. The first reliable information about specialised bathroom facilities in post-Conqu
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