Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
In this hanging attachment, a tabula ansata with a heavy ring on a knob at the top is supported in the center by the joined tails or caudal fins of two dolphins and on the sides by volutes that rest on the heads of the dolphins. A rudimentary palmette hangs below the point where the dolphins’ tails come together. The bodies of the dolphins are hollow on the underside. The nose of each dolphin is flattened to rest on a rectangular socket (2.1 x 1.9 cm and 2.3 x 1.75 cm) with upper and lower moldings and attachment holes (4.5 mm) in front and back so that a pin could go directly through.
The upper and lower moldings of the tabula ansata, bases, and volutes are decorated with slanted, parallel hatches. The spaces between the handles and the framing molding of the tabula ansata are triangular; there is no trace of an inscription.
The stylized dolphins have depressed, fish-like eyes with raised pupils. One has a pectoral fin and flukes below the head; the other has a knob rather than a fin on the head and a row of bumps below.
A very similar device that suspended a double piriform lamp, with more graceful and finely modeled dolphins, was found at Herculaneum (1). The Harvard lamp hanger is larger and heavier and could have supported a lamp with five or six lights, such as 1990.71, or a polycandelon. The similarity of the opening formed by the curved back of the dolphins and the volutes to a rein guide on a wagon or chariot has been noted, but the best parallels are found in connection with lamps (2). A lamp hanger of similar dimensions in the Malcove collection has identically arranged elements, but the tabula is more elongated and the dolphins are less natural, rendered almost like sea monsters. The tabula is inscribed with a dedication in letters whose forms C. P. Jones dates between the late second and early fourth centuries CE (3).
NOTES:
1. See M. Conticello de’ Spagnolis and E. De Carolis, Le lucerne di bronzo di Ercolano e Pompei (Rome, 1988) 139, 146, and 184, no. 120.
2. See D. M. Bailey, A Catalogue of Lamps in the British Museum 4: Lamps of Metal and Stone, and Lampstands (London, 1996) no. Q3649, pls. 35-37, a very heavy and elegant first-century CE example in the British Museum, excavated from the Cluny baths in Paris; for the original illustration of this lamp and dolphin hanger and the objects found with it, see J. Bonnet, P. Velay, and P. Forni, Les bronzes antiques de Paris, Collections du Musée Carnavalet (Paris, 1989) 270-71, no. 405, figs. 30-31, pls. 401-403.
3. Compare S. D. Campbell, The Malcove Collection: A Catalogue of the Objects in the Lillian Malcove Collection of the University of Toronto (Toronto, 1985) 54, no. 49, which is described as a “lamp hanger” and “possibly for a large bronze polycandelon” dated as early as the third and as late as the sixth century CE, although Jones dates the letter forms slightly earlier. Clay examples of lamp hangers with dolphins—imported and local ware—dated to the first to early second centuries CE have been found at Pergamon; see A. Heimerl, Die römischen Lampen aus Pergamon vom Beginn der Kaiserzeit bis zum Ende des 4. Jhs. n. Chr., Pergamenische Forschungen 13 (Berlin, 2001) 65-66, 70, 158, and 180; nos. 751 and 1036-37; pls. 18 and 22 (no. 1036 is inscribed on both sides). For references on tabulae ansatae, see P. N. Hunt, “Bronze Votive Tabulae Ansatae at Summus Poeninus in the Roman Alps,” in From the Parts to the Whole: Acta of the 13th International Bronze Congress, held at Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 28-June 1, 1996, eds. C. C. Mattusch, A Brauer, and S. E. Knudsen (Portsmouth, RI, 2002) 2: 233-40, esp. 233, where he notes that “bronze examples are among the earliest extant forms, dating to the Julio-Claudian era.” Hunt also notes a Tiberian bronze example in the Ashmolean Museum with chain loops for hanging; see ibid., 233 (CIL IX 1456).
Jane Ayer Scott
