Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This lamp is pear-shaped with a flat top that is surrounded by a sharp, thin rim (2.4 mm thick) extending along the top of the nozzle and around the wick hole. There is no evidence for an attached lid over the large, round pour hole (2.6 cm in diameter). A crescent-shaped handle guard, from which one tip is missing, was cast with the body. Below it is a flat strap handle that is attached at the low point of the crescent and the center of the body. On either side, at the point where the nozzle and body join, is the stub of a suspension ring. A complete, very small ring is at the center of the crescent. The underside of the ring foot (3.39 cm in diameter) shows concentric turn marks with a button in the center. The height of the reservoir is 3.1 cm, and the height of the handle is 2.45 cm.
The lamp is similar to several examples found at Pompeii and Herculaneum with preserved suspension devices. It is also similar to an example with a stopper for the fill hole and a ring through the loop on the crescent, which holds chains attached to the stopper and an implement for adjusting the wick (1). Such lamps were popular throughout the Roman Empire (2). The type appears to be specifically Roman, developed in the first century CE, and it is the forerunner of factory lamps such as one from Thrace that has the name of the maker cast on its crescent symbol (3).
NOTES:
1. See M. Conticello de’ Spagnolis and E. De Carolis, Le lucerne di bronzo di Ercolano e Pompei (Rome, 1988) 195-200, nos. 129-30. See also A. Kirsch, Antike Lampen im Landesmuseum Mainz (Mainz, 2002) nos. 613-16, pls. 27-28. Note that no. 615 preserves the stopper and chain.
2. For an almost identical lamp said to be from England, see J. W. Hayes, Greek, Roman, and Related Metalware in the Royal Ontario Museum: A Catalogue (Toronto, 1984) 134-35, no. 209; Haynes lists examples from Europe to the Levant. For the type, see D. M. Bailey, A Catalogue of Lamps in the British Museum 4: Lamps of Metal and Stone and Lampstands (London, 1996) 36-37; close to the Harvard lamp is no. Q3660, pl. 43, from the Hamilton collection, dated to the second half of the first century CE, which Bailey compares to examples from graves dated by coins to the late first to early second centuries CE. See also P. Dyczek, “Bronze Finds from the Site of the Valetudinarium at Novae (Moesia Inferior),” in Acta of the 12th International Congress on Ancient Bronzes, Nijmegen 1992, ed. S. T. A. M. Moles, Nederlandse Archeologische Rapporten 18 (Nijmegen, 1995) 367-68, fig. 2, for an example from the military hospital at Novae, still in use in the third century CE.
3. S. Krunić, “The Bronze Lamp from Boljetin (Smorna),” Zbornik Narodnog muzeja: Archeologija 15 (1994): 81-86 [in Serbo-Croatian with an English summary]. The lamp comes from the pre-Trajanic building phase of the auxiliary camp at Boljetin and is dated to the last decade of the first century CE. Two Greek inscriptions cast with the lunula are translated “Posidoro’s lamp” and “Hore, son of Moikaporo.” Krunić posits that the first is the maker and the second is the first owner. The name Suro is incised on the top, perhaps a subsequent owner.
Jane Ayer Scott
