bronze statuette of a Genius cucullatus (or a
Priapus?) discovered in
Picardy, northern France, made in two parts, with the top section concealing a giant phallus.The hooded cape was especially associated with
Gauls or
Celts during the Roman period. The hooded health god was known as
Telesphorus specifically and may have originated as a Greco-Gallic syncretism with the
Galatians in Anatolia in the 3rd century BC. The religious significance of these figures is still somewhat unclear, since no inscriptions have been found with them in this British context. while Graham Webster has argued that the curved hoods are similar in many ways to contemporary Roman curved phallus stones. However, several of these figures also seem to carry swords or daggers, and Henig discusses them in the context of warrior cults.
Guy de la Bédoyère also warns against reading too much into size differences or natures in the figures, which have been used to promote theories of different roles for the three figures, arguing that at the skill level of most of the carvings, small differences in size are more likely to be hit-or-miss consequences, and pointing out that
experimental archaeology has shown hooded figures to be one of the easiest sets of figures to carve. ==See also==