The Biblical Archaeologist - Vol.27, N.1

32 Pages·1964·3.2 MB·English

by  American Schools of Oriental Research

The
BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST
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Published by
THE AMERICAN SCHOOLS OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH
Jerusalem and Bagdad
Drawer 93-A, Yale Station, New Haven, Conn.
Vol. XXVII February,1 964 No. 1
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Fig. 1. Canannite predecessors of the Iron Age t??r?'
saucer lamp. Above: Middle Bronze
Age lamp of ca. 1700 B.C., from el-Jib.
Photo courtesy of James B. Pritchard,
The University Museum, University of
Pennsylvania. Right: Late Bronze Age
lamp of ca. 14th century B.C., from
Hazor. From Hazor II, pl. CLXXVII, no. 4, courtesy of Y. Yadin, the James de Rothschild
Expedition. (Each illustration in this article has been reduced to one-third of the size of
the object; in a few cases size has been estimated. For technical reasons, line-drawings
from previous publications have been redrawn, making possible a moderately unified
format.
2 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXVII,
The Biblical Archaeologist is published quarterly (February, May, September, December)
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, BY TRANSCRIPT PRINTING COMPANY
PETERBOROUGH, N. H.
The Household Lamps of Palestine in Old Testament Times
(First of a three-part series)
ROBERTH ouSTON SrITH
College of Wooster
Although less impressive than monumental remains, lamps are among
the most important artifacts of the ancient world. During their long history
they underwent frequent changes of form, with the result that today they
afford archaeologists a valuable chronological yardstick for the dating of
other remains. They also constitute a rich mine for students of cultural dif-
fusion, ceramic techniques, art, religious practices and, in some cases, sym-
bolism. And to scholar and layman alike lamps impart, to an extent hardly
matched by any other common ancient objects, an impression of the reality
of life in times long past.
Lamps are mentioned many times in the Bible, sometimes in contexts of
considerable significance. The student of the Bible finds his attention drawn
particularly to the ancient lamps of Palestine, since most of the biblical al-
lusions to lamps arise from a Palestinian context. A century ago, when bib-
lical archaeologyw as just coming into existence as a discipline, not even an
outline of the history of these lamps could have been given, for objects had
not yet begun to be excavated in such a way that they could be arranged
sequentially and correlated with historical data. Today, having at our dis-
posal a large amount of carefully excavated material, we can recover in con-
siderable detail the history of Palestinian lamps throughout the biblical
period.
There are, to be sure, gaps in our knowledge, for some of the necessary
evidence concerning rare specimens-particularly those of fine quality--is
1964, 1) THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST 3
lacking. We regret, for example, not having full information about metal
lamps, for, as the ancients themselves knew, metallic forms sometimes in-
fluenced ceramic ones (see Wisdom of Solomon 15:9). If we had a full
repertory of metallic lamp forms we could undoubtedly explain puzzling
features of certain terracottal amps. By working carefully, however, with the
existing archaeological evidence we can fill in the picture reasonably well.
The First Israelite Lamps
From the time of the Hebrew
settlement through the beginning
of the divided monarchy, the per-
~??'
iod commonly called Iron I, which
spanned approximately the years
1200-900 B. C. - the dates are
still the subject of lively debate -
the only lamp in widespread use in
Palestine was a simple wheelmade
L';
one of the kind shown in Figure
2. Archaeologists, seeking a con-
venient descriptive term, have var-
iously called this a "shell lamp,"
"cocked hat lamp," and "saucer
lamp." The ancient Hebrew, not
needing to trouble himself with
Fig. 2. Ifrroomn IT ellal mepn -Nofa scbae.h . 10Pthho tcoe nctouurryt esBy. Co.f, descriptive terms, called it by the
tShceh loPoal loefs tiRneel igiIonns.t itute of the Pacific generic name ner (plural ner6th), a
word meaning simply "lamp."
This term ner comes from the root nyr (nwr), which probablyo riginally
meant "to flame." Many extra-biblical texts more ancient than the Old Testa-
ment use cognate terms in a way which reveals the background of the He-
brew word. In the Ugaritic texts we find what appears to be a masculine
noun n-y-r used in connection with the moon-god Yarikh (Nik. and Kath.
1.16, 2.3) and with the stars (Keret 2.1.37), and a feminine noun n-r-t used
in a fixed (and probably very old) formula referring to the sun-goddess
Shapash (Baal 2.8.21, Aqhat 1.4.49, etc.). Celestial associationsa re similarly
attested in Accadian-Assyrian literature, where niiru is frequently used of
gods such as Shamash (= Ugaritic Shapash), Marduk and Ninib, and nan-
naru (from the same root) is used specially of the moon-goddess Sin, with
the meaning "luminary, light-bearer." Aramaic texts from later times use
cognate terms in a similar way, as does ancient Arabic tradition (e.g., the
use of nfir in the Koran to refer to the moon, Sura 71.16). Celestial bodies
4 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXVII,
were probably being called by the term ner or its various Semitic cognates
long before lamps came into common household use; thus we do not find
household terminology moving into cosmology but rather cosmology influ-
encing household usage.
Canaanite affinities were not limited to matters of terminology. The
Hebrews did not invent the saucer lamp, but borrowed it largely unchanged
from the Canaanites of the end of the Late Bronze Age, whose ancestors in
Syria and Palestine had gradually been developing it since early in the 2nd
millennium B.C. Contrary to widespread assumption, the lamp did not arise
as an imitation of a shell. Bivalve shells may indeed have been used as lamps
in some instances along the Mediterranean coast, as they apparently were
upon occasion at Carthage in North Africa,1 and conch shells were made
into lamps (and copied in stone and metal as well) in Mesopotamia as far
back as the 3rd millennium B.C.;2 but these practices do not stand in the
mainstream of lamp history. The saucer lamp actually developed from the
ordinary household bowl, which itself had been used as a lamp during the
Early Bronze Age. An interesting attempt to adapt the bowl-form to the spe-
cific function of a lamp had been made during the centuries of disruption
following the Early Bronze Age, when potters devised a flat-bottomed bowl
with an undulating rim forming four equidistant spouts. When the chariot-
warriorsa nd city-builders of the early 2nd millennium B.C. came upon the
scene they did not perpetuate this design, but fashioned a simpler lamp by
putting a single little spout on one side of a bowl. The development of the
saucer lamp through the Middle and Late Bronze Ages consisted mainly of
the evolution of the spout into an increasingly large and well-defined fea-
ture of the lamp (see Fig. 1).
By virtue of this Canaanite ancestry, Hebrew lamps had cousins in Cy-
prus, north Africa, Egypt, Malta, Sardinia and elsewhere, even in parts of
continental Europe-in short, wherever the Canaanite culture went over the
centuries. During the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, specimens of Canaanite
lamps had appeared only occasionally outside Syria-Palestine, but in the Iron
Age they came into use to varying extents in these regions as a result of the
energetic trade and colonization pursued by those latter-day Canaanites
known as the Phoenicians. Even in areas where the Phoenicians were not
actively colonizing, saucer lamps sometimes may have influenced local forms.
The earliest household lamps of Greece, for example, appearing around 700
B.C., were saucer lamps not greatly unlike those of the Canaanites, even
though they had some distinctly local features.3
1. M. Moore, Carthage of the Phoenicians, p. 32.
2. L. Woolley, Ur Excavations: The Royal Cemetery, p1s. 101a, 102a, 163, 182; cf. the bivalves
and metal imitations used as cosmetic bowls, pl. 137c.
3. R. H. Howland, The Athenian Agora IV: Greek Lamps and Their Survivals, nos. 1-20.
1964, 1) THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST 5
Let us take a closer look at the Iron I saucer lamp of the Hebrews.
Potters manufactured lamps as a part of their much larger repertoryo f cera-
mic vessels. The craftsman first shaped a simple clay bowl and then folded its
rim so as to form both a flange around the oil reservoir and a spout for the
wick. This spout was probably called a museqeth. This noun, from the verb
ysq, meaning "to pour, cast, flow," appears in connection with lamps only in
Zech. 4:2, where until fairly recently it was mistranslated" pipe."4A lthough
its attestation in the Old Testament is both late and scanty, it probably was
used throughout the Iron Age to refer to a spout of almost any kind. The
lamp-spout, was perhaps not originally devised as a wick-trough at all, but
as a means by which the oil in the lamp could be poured back into a small-
mouthed storage bottle without spilling; but it must at once have proved
useful in holding the wick in position, for even the earliest Canaanite speci-
mens of saucer lamp usually show by their carbon deposits that the wick was
laid in the spout.
The shape of the bowl and the folds of the wick-trough were deter-
mined largely by common practice, potters ordinarily being careful imitators
but reluctant innovators. The shape varied slightly from place to place and
doubtless from potter to potter, as it necessarily does in a hand-crafted item,
but throughout Palestine lamps of this period were fairly uniform in design.
The most notable variation appears in the flange, which is usually fairly
pronounced but sometimes, in a manner reminiscent of certain Late Bronze
Age forms, is slight or even non-existent. Specimens were usually from five
to six inches in length, though potters sometimes turned larger ones. As in
any period, the kind of clay which was used varied with the locality, but
throughout the Iron I period it tended everywhere in Palestine to be coarse
with a sprinkling of limestone grits to give it strength. To judge from the
speed with which Palestinian potters work today, an ancient potter was able
to fashion a lamp in a few minutes, although the drying of the clay required
many days and the firing and cooling of it several days more. An Iron I lamp
was usually fired moderately hard to some drab shade of brown. While gen-
erally pleasing in proportions, it seems to have been regarded by both its
manufacturer and its user as a strictly utilitarian object, for it was almost
never painted or otherwise decorated. In view of the simplicity of its pro-
duction, a finished lamp probablys old for very little.
Wicks were ordinarily made of flax, the usual term for which was
pisheth; but in the two passages in the Old Testament where "wick"i s speci-
fically intended, a less common term for flax, pishtah, from the same root, is
used. The ancient Hebrews perhaps had no more specific term for "wick"
4. On the proper derivation and meaning of the term, see W. F. Albright, The Excavation of Tell
Beit Mirsim II, p. 4.
6 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXVII,
than this, though in later times the Aramaic word petilah, which literally
means "twistedc ord,"b ecame a common designation for "wick."A wick could
presumably be plaited from raw flax with little difficulty, but one could also
be improvised from worn-out linen cloth or a number of other substances.5
Specially woven wicks may, of course, have been available for ceremonial
purposes. As the carbon deposits on many lamps indicate, the wick was
usually allowed to project slightly beyond the edge of the spout. The amount
of this projection, along with the size and porosity of the wick, largely deter-
mined the size of the flame. The ordinary saucer lamp was intended to hold
only one wick, as its single spout indicates.
When a householder wanted an especially bright light he could sprinkle
some salt into the oil, apparently with the idea that it would clarify the
flame. The Greek historian Herodotus noted in the 5th century B.C. that
Egyptians fed their lamps on a mixture of oil and salt (History 2.62), and
in the early centuries of the Christian era rabbis also knew the practice.6
We cannot be sure when the idea of salt as an additive first became known
in Palestine, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that it dates back to the
Iron Age. The function of the salt is not entirely clear. There is no doubt
that burning sodium gives a bright yellow flame, but since salt is not soluble
in oil it could not be drawn up into the flame. G. and C. Charles-Picard,
who have performed some experiments with ancient lamps, say that a lamp's
flame is brightened by the addition of a few grains of coarse salt directly to
to the wick,7 but in my own experiments with ancient lamps I have been
unable to get any satisfactoryr esults by this method.
A much more effective way of obtaining a brighter light from a single-
spouted lamp was the improvisation of a compound lamp by laying addi-
tional wicks on the flange at the back of the lamp's oil reservoir.T his prac-
tice was surely known in Iron I, though our earliest evidence consists of two
Iron II specimens, one from 'Ain Shems and another from Tell en-Nasbeh,8
which show soot-blackening from six wicks laid at intervals along the flange,
in addition to carbon on the spout. The householders may have been im-
provising seven-spout cult lamps of the type which we shall soon discuss.
Improvisations were not, of course, limited to adaptions of regular saucer
lamps; sometimes an ordinary bowl was pressed into service as a lamp-
probably most often in connection with burials, where there was sometimes
a need for lamps on short order.
5. Cf. the list given many centuries later in the Mishnah, Shabbat, 2.1, 3 (all Talmudic citations
are from the Babylonian Talmud). Numerous weeds and barks were usable.
6 Shabbat, 67b and the editorial notes in the Soncino translation of the tractate; also S. Kraus,
T7 alGnm. uadnidsc hCe . ACrhcahraleeos-loPgiciea,r d, I, Dp.a il6y9 . Life in Ancient Carthage, p. 144.
8. E. Grant, Ain Shemis Excavations II, pl. XLV, no. 33; C. C. McCown, Tell en-Nasbeh 1, pl. 39,
no. 16.
1964, 1) THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST 7
Many substances could be and were used as fuel for lamps,9 but the
commonest of them was olive oil, extracted from the fruit by means of a
series of beatings and pressings."0T he first extraction, obtained by beating
the olives by hand, produced a light, relatively fat-free oil which was edible.
The second and third extractions, obtained by crushing the olives in a press,
produced oil of increasingly fatty content which was decreasingly edible.
Consequently it was this oil of lower quality which was most often used in
lamps, though only the best grade of oil was prescribedf or certain cult lamps
(see Exod. 27:20, Lev. 24:2). Imported oils - sesame oil from Mesopotamia,
castor oil from Egypt, or even more exotic substances-may occasionally have
been used as lamp fuel," but it is unlikely that the ordinary householder
could have afforded anything but local produce. It is impossible to determine
by means of chemical analysis the kinds of oil used, since decomposition has
almost always removed any residue of oil a specimen may have contained.
A lamp of moderate size held enough oil for it to burn throughout the
night if one desired, and since householders did not have the luxury of
matches they had to keep a banked fire or a pilot light burning continuously.
If analogies from other cultures are valid, we may assume that a woman was
regarded as a poor housekeeper if she allowed her pilot flame to go out and
had to borrow fire from a neighbor. It may be such a concept which under-
lies the statement in the famous ode to a good wife in Proverbs 31:18, "Her
lamp does not go out at night." Seeing that a pilot light stayed lit was not a
task for a sluggard, for although a lamp would burn for several hours after
being kindled, its wick would eventually burn down and require adjustment;
the dutiful housewife would therefore probably have needed to arise two or
three times during the course of the night to attend the lamp. This ever-
burning flame did not, so far as one can discover, have any particular re-
ligious significance;12y et what connotations popular piety gave to it we
cannot say.
The equipment for the maintenance of a lamp included several items
besides the wick and the oil. Obviously a householder needed a storage con-
tainer for the oil supply, but we cannot identify any particular form or size
of vessel used for this purpose. He also needed a sharp-pointed instrument
with which to adjust the position of the wick from time to time as the lamp
burned. Numerous metal and bone objects which might have served such a
9. On the substances used in later centuries, see the Mishnah, Shabbat, 2.1-3 and Kraus, Talmu-
dische Archaeologie, I, pp. 226f. Among the items which had probably been used for a very long
time are animal fat and the sap of resinous trees.
10. See the Mishnah, Menahoth, 8.4f., which probably describes practices which were already
centuries old; see further in Kraus, Talmudische Archaeologie, II, pp. 217ff. and J. M. Calderon,
"Olive Oil," Encyclopedia Britannica (1960 ed.), XVI, p. 775.
11. K. Galling, Zeitschrift des Deutschen Paliistina-Vereins (ZDPV), XLVI (1923), pp. 32ff.
12. Ibid., where Galling discusses the matter at some length.
8 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXVII,
function have been found in Palestine, but apparently none in clear associa-
tion with lamps; in any case, such objects are far less numerous than lamps
themselves, a situation which suggests that the householder frequently used
nothing more than a sliver of wood as a wick-adjuster. Tweezers sometimes
may have been used to extinguish a lamp's flame; apparently utensils of this
sort, on a larger scale (i.e., tongs), are mentioned in connection with the
tabernacle and temple lamps of the Yahweh cult under the name of mel-
qdhayim or malqdhayim (see Exod. 25:38, 37:23; Num. 4:9; I Kings 7:49
[= II Chron. 4:21]; cf. Isa. 6:6), from the root lqh meaning "to take."
Tweezers (and rarely tongs) have been found among excavated Palestinian
artifacts, but never in close connection with lamps. Probably not to be in-
cluded among the items of lamp maintenance is the knife-blade, since lamp
wicks did not have to be kept trimmed in order to operate satisfactorily.
Lamps were probably kept most of the time in concave niches in the
walls of the house. House walls have rarely survived well enough for such
niches to be preserved, but some Iron Age tombs contain them, as do some
water tunnels.13 When the householder put a lamp on a table he probably
placed beneath it a bowl, primarily for the purpose of guaranteeing stability
to the round-bottomed vessel. Rabbinic literature of many centuries later
speaks of this custom, but Iron Age evidence is largely lacking. One can
compare, for what it is worth, the arrangemento f lamps and bowls in founda-
tion deposits such as we discuss below. In Punic burials at Carthage saucers
seem regularly to have accompanied lamps, but it is not clear whether these
were always placed under the lamps. There is no close correlation of lamps
and bowls in Palestinian interments, but the disorder in which most Iron
Age tombs are found makes conclusions difficult. Iron I lamps are often
poorly balanced, tending to tip backward when placed on a flat surface. The
lamps cannot have been used in such a position; the lamp-maker seems to
have supposed that the lamp would be placed in some kind of concave rest-
ing place where balance was not required. On a table, a bowl would most
easily meet this need.
A bowl beneath the lamp would also have caught any oil which might
slowly seep through the lamp, though a well-made specimen did not absorb
and exude oil very rapidly. Some scholars have suggested that a lamp was
soaked in water prior to each use, or even kept in a saucer filled with water,
so that the water would fill the pores of the clay and prevent oil seepage.
It is somewhat more likely that users poured a little water into a lamp before
they poured in the oil; this would fill the pores of the clay and give the oil a
surface upon which to float. W. M. F. Petrie draws attention to a passage
13. See, for example, W. F. Bade, Some Tombs of Tell en-Nasbeh, pp. 11, 16 (lamp-niches in a
tomb), and J. B. Pritchard, Gibeon, p. 61 (lamp-niches in a tunnei).
1964, 1) THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST 9
in an Egyptian demotic text which speaks of one's putting gum-water or other
substances into new lamps, presumably to fill the pores in some sort of per-
manent fashion.14 The Talmud mentions saucers filled with water set be-
neath lamps (Shabbat, 47b), but the passage may presuppose the special
circumstances created by the use of
naphtha as fuel in Mesopotamia in
post-biblical times. It also speaks of
one's putting a lump of clay under a
lamp in order to make it burn more
slowly (Shabbat, 67b); but an ord-
inary saucer lamp with a moderate
flame could not have become greatly
heated, and in any case the clay
could not have had much effect on
the performance of the lamp.
While speaking of the use of
water in the operation of lamps, we
may note an interesting lamp (Fig.
3) which has a built-in compart-
ment below the oil reservoir. Using
the neatly-made funnel which the
potter has provided, the household-
er presumably filled the compart-
ment with water and thereby pre-
Fig. 3. Lamp with lower compartment, late
Iron I or Iron II period, from 'Ain vented oil from seeping from the
Shems. (The cross-section is schematic
rather than to exact scale.) Photo lamp's base. This ingenious kind of
courtesy of Palestine Archaeological
Museum, Jerusalem, Jordan. lamp did not come into regular use,
perhaps in part because of the complexity of its construction.
Lamps may sometimes have been placed on lampstands, but the use
of such stands is not well-attested in the Iron Age. Bronze stands have been
found, but never in direct associationw ith lamps. The Iron I lampstand may,
as some scholars have assumed, have resembled a Late Bronze II tripod stand
of bronze found at Megiddo along with a ceramic offering bowl.15 Ceramic
lampstands are also not common in the Iron Age, those few which have
been found probably had a cultic function. The specimen shown in Figure
4, with its pointed base which was designed specifically to fit the hollow
stand, was found in an Iron Age tomb, where it had presumably been used
in rites for the dead. Some saucer lamps with similar basal projects have
14. Petrie, Roman Ehnasya, p. 13.
15. For the stand and bowl, see H. G. May, Material Remains of the Megiddo Cult, pl. XVII, nos.
M2702 and P3052.
10 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXVII,
t~'I
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I,
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YI
I1
/#
vr
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Fig. 4. Lamp with ceramic stand, Iron I period, from el-Jib. From Animual of the Departlent of
Antiquities, III (1956), fig. 20, no. 53, courtesy of Awni K. Dajani, Director of the
Department of Antiquities.
been found at Byblos in Syria. Similar in form, but larger and more elegant,
are certain tall ceramic stands which have been found primarily in Canaanite
contexts in Palestine.16 These lampstands were probably used chiefly in
sanctuaries, as they were in the Bucheum (shrine of the bull god) in the
16. See, for example, Albright, Tell Beit Mirsim I, p1s. XLIV, no. 14 and L, no. 2.