lamp

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Object Type
Museum number: EA48555
Description: Mould-made brown pottery lamp: head of Dionysos, with fillet and blooms, and hair formed into rays; a bunch of grapes hangs on each side of the neck; above the head, on the face of a stub-handle, he wears the 'hemhemet' crown. Hexagonal groove round wick-hole; nozzle flanked by volutes. Oval base; 'alpha' impressed. Brown, micaceous clay with traces of a white, post-firing pigment. Plaster mould.
Cultures/periods
Production date: 150-250 (about)
Findspot: Found/Acquired: Alexandria (Egypt)
Materials
Technique: mould-made; impressed; pigmented
Dimensions: Length: 9.80 centimetres; Width: 5 centimetres
$Inscriptions
Curator's comments: Close: Petrie, W.M.F., 1905. ‘Roman Ehnasya (Herakleopolis Magna) 1904’. London : Egypt Exploration Fund, pl. LV, H 25; Cahn-Klaiber, E.M., 1977. ‘Die antiken Tonlampen der Archäologischen Instituts der Universität Tübingen’. Tübingen, 150, dated second to third century AD; Robins, F.W., 1939. ‘The story of the lamp : and the candle’. London : Oxford University Press, pl. XIII, 11.
Bibliographic references: Lamp / Catalogue of the Lamps in the British Museum (1982); Walters 1914 / Catalogue of Greek and Roman Lamps in the British Museum (400); Menzel 1969 / Antike Lampen im Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseum zu Mainz (513); Perlzweig 1961 / Lamps of the Roman period, first to seventh century after Christ (p.16, note 19); Cahn-Klaiber 1977 / Die antiken Tonlampen der Archäologischen Instituts der Universität Tübingen (p.176, note 241)
Location: Not on display
Condition: good
Associated names
Acquisition name
Acquisition date: 1871
Department: Egypt and Sudan
BM/Big number: EA48555
Registration number: 1871,0619.401

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