Pottery oil lamp with wick
Lámpara de aceite de cerámica con mecha
- Date
- c. 2000 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Southern Levant, Israel
- Credited to
- Bronze Age potters of the Near East
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A clay bowl with a spout for a flax wick that burns olive or sesame oil. It gave a steady, controllable light, cleaner than an open fire or fat in a stone.
Shell and stone oil lamps exist from the fourth millennium BC in Mesopotamia and Egypt; the pottery lamp with a nozzle becomes standard in the Bronze Age, with no single established origin.
What it led to
- night-time domestic lighting across the Mediterranean
- mass-produced Roman moulded lamps
- oil lamps of the Islamic world and India