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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: KRO-LAP |
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LAMP (from Gr. Xag ras, a torch, Xaaav, to shine) , the general term for an apparatus in which some combustible substance, generally for illuminating purposes, is held. Lamps are usually associated with lighting, though the term is also employed in connexion with heating (e.g. spirit-lamp); and as now employed for oil, gas and electric light, they are dealt with in the article on LIGHTING. From the artistic point of view, in modern times, their variety precludes detailed reference here; but their archaeological history deserves a fuller account. Ancient Lamps.Though Athenaeus states (xv. 700) that the lamp (Xbxvos) was not an ancient invention in Greece, it had come into general use there for domestic purposes by the 4th century B.C., and no doubt had long before been employed for temples or other places where a permanent light was required in room of the torch of Homeric times. Herodotus (ii. 62)sees nothing strange in the " festival of lamps," Lychnokaie, which was held at Sais in Egypt, except in the vast number of them. Each was filled with oil so as to burn the whole night. Again he speaks of evening as the time of lamps (aepi Xb vwv, vii. 215). Still, the scarcity of lamps in a style anything like that of an early period, compared with the immense number of them from the late
Decoration was con-fined to the front of the handle, or more commonly to the circular space on the top of the lamp, and it consisted almost always of a design in relief, taken from mythology or legend, from objects of daily life or scenes such as displays of gladiators
the chase. A lamp in the British Museum has a view of the interior of a Roman circus with spectators looking on at a chariot race. In other cases the lamp is made altogether of a fantastic shape, as in the form of an animal, a bull's head, or a human foot. Naturally colour was excluded from the ornamentation except in the form of a red or black glaze, which would resist the heat. The typical form of hand lamp (figs. 1, 2) is a combination of the flatness necessary for carrying steady and remaining steady when set dcwn, with the roundness evolved from the working in clay and characteristic of vessels in that material. In the bronze lamps this same type is retained, though the roundness was less in keeping with metal. Fanciful shapes are equally common in bronze. The standard form of handle consists of a ring for the forefinger and above it a kindof palmette for the thumb. Instead of the palmette is sometimes a crescent
184o (engraved, Monumenti d. inst. arch. iii. pls. 41, 42, and in Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, 2nd ed. ii. p. 403). It is set round with sixteen nozzles ornamented alternately with a siren and a satyr playing on a double flute. Between each pair of nozzles is a head of a river god, and on the bottom of the lamp is a large mask of Medusa, surrounded by bands of animals. These designs are in relief, and the workmanship, which appears to belong to the beginning of the 5th century B.C., justifies the esteem in which Etruscan lamps were held in antiquity (Athenaeus xv. 700). Of a later but still excellent style is a bronze lamp in the British Museum found in the baths of Julian in Paris (figs. 3, 4, 5). The chain is attached by means of two dolphins very artistically combined. Under the nozzles are heads of Pan (fig. 3); and from the sides project the fore- parts of lions (fig. 5). To what extent lamps may have been used in temples is unknown. Probably the Erechtheum on the acropolis
of Athens was an exception in having a gold one kept burning day and night, just as this lamp itself must have been an exception in its artistic merits. It was the work of the sculptor Callimachus, and was made apparently for the newly rebuilt temple a little before 400 B.C. When once filled with oil and lit it burned continu- ously for a whole year. The wick was of a fine flax called Carpasian (now understood to have been a kind of cotton
flax (Pausanias i. 26. 7). Above the lamp a palm tree of bronze rose to the roof for the purpose of carrying off the fumes. But how this was managed it is not easy to determine unless the palm be supposed to have been inverted and to have hung above the lamp spread out like a reflector, for which purpose the polished bronze would have served fairly well. The stem if left hollow would collect the fumes and carry them out through the roof. This lamp was refilled on exactly the same day each year, so that there seems to have been an idea of measuring time by it, such as may also have been the case in regard to the lamp stand (XbXvetov) capable of holding as many lamps as there were days of the year, which Dionysius the Sicilian tyrant placed in the Prytaneum of Tarentum. At Pharae in Achaia there was in the market-place an oracular statue of Hermes with a marble altar before it to which bronze lamps were attached by means of lead. Whoever desired to consult the statue went there in the evening and first filled the lamps and lit them, placing also a bronze coin on the altar. A similar custom prevailed at the oracle of Apis in Egypt (Pausanias vii. 22. 2). At Argos he speaks of a chasm into which it was a custom continued to his time to let down burning lamps, with some reference to the goddess of the lower world, Persephone (ii. 22. 4). At Cnidus a large number of terra-cotta lamps were found crowded in one place a little distance below the surface, and it was conjectured that there must have been there some statue or altar at which it had been a custom to leave lamps burning at night (Newton, Discoveries at Halicarnassus
Marbles
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LAMP-BLACK, a deep black pigment consisting of carbon in a very fine state of division, obtained by the imperfect combustion of highly carbonaceous substances. It is manufactured from scraps of resin and pitch refuse and inferior oils and fats, and other similar combustible bodies rich in carbon, the finest lamp-black being procured by the combustion of oils obtained in coal-tar distillation (see COAL-TAR). Lamp-black is extensively used in the manufacture of printing ink, as a pigment for oil painting and also for " ebonizing " cabinet work, and in the waxing and lacquering of leather. It is the principal constituent of China ink. End of Article: LAMP (from Gr. Xag ras, a torch, Xaaav, to shine) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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