• 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