Lamp Depicting Profile of a Man

Commonly used throughout the Roman world, terracotta lamps were a regular feature of daily life. This small, handleless, red-slipped lamp belongs to the group of mold-made Roman lamps, dating to the 1st century CE, known as Loeschcke type 1B or Broneer type XXII. Siegfried Loeschcke, a German archaeologist, originally classified the forms of mold-made lamps found at the Roman legion camp of Vindonissa (Switzerland) in 1919; and Oscar Broneer, a Swedish archaeologist, categorized the ones from ancient Corinth in 1930. The types of lamps found at both sites are known from other archaeological contexts throughout the Roman world, including Cyprus and Turkey. Loeschcke type 1B/ Broneer type XXII lamps have a circular body, a wide angular nozzle with volutes on either side, often a small ring base, and relief bands around a central discus, the form of which can vary.

Workshops used molds to create standard lamps quickly and in large numbers. Lamps of the same type as this example are known from a wide geographic range, suggesting a large trade network of both lamps and molds. Many of the lamps feature an impressed design in the central discus. On this lamp, a youthful Black African man with short curly hair faces to the viewer’s right. A small filling hole pierces the lamp at the base of the figural design. At least three very similar lamps, possibly produced with the same mold, are known from other collections and excavations: one in the Louvre Museum, Paris, one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and one from a Hellenistic-Roman chamber tomb in Northern Cyprus.