• latw-88-1
    Lydian Lamp (©Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College)

    Lydian lamp

    Date
    Ca. mid-6th c BC, Lydian
    Museum
    Manisa, Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum, 7479
    Museum Inventory No.
    7479
    Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
    L85.030
    Material
    Ceramic
    Object Type
    Lamp
    Site
    Sardis
    Sector
    MMS
    Trench
    MMS-I 85.1
    Locus
    MMS-I 84.1 Locus 34
    B-Grid Coordinates
    E144.5 / S68.7 *100.3 - 100.22
    Description
    Open lamp, with horizontal rim with slight vertical edge. Large nozzle, showing traces of burning, flanked by two small pointed projections. High central cone. Painted bands at bottom of body, nozzle, top of rim, four bands on horizontal lip, one on interior floor of lamp. Slip now burned gray but probably originally orange-brown? Complete, burned. Height 0.03 m, diameter 0.098 m.
    Comments
    From a Lydian house destroyed in the mid-sixth century (Area 1, with 16, 62, 64, 65, 66, 68, 72, 73, 75, 81, 87, 96, 97, 100, 102, 103, 137, 138). Derived from Greek types, lamps do not seem to appear in the Lydian ceramic repertoire before ca. 600 BC. A collection of 10 such lamps was discovered in a building in sector HoB, leading to the suggestion that this building, and this region of Sardis, was used for commercial and industrial purposes (Hanfmann 1961, 12; Hanfmann 1980, 106, fig. 30). The house in which this lamp was found, however, contained seven lamps, but was not primarily commercial.
    See Also
    Cahill, “Persian Sack”.
    Bibliography
    Greenewalt et al. 1988, 68, n. 13, figs. 10-12.
    Author
    NDC