Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/260

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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. 8, 9, 10). The chain is attached by means of two dolphins very artistically combined. Under the nozzles are heads of Pan (fig. 8); and from the sides project the foreparts of lions (fig. 10). 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 continuously for a whole year. The wick was of a fine flax called Carpasian (now understood to have been a kind of cotton), which proved to be the least combustible of all 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 ((Greek characters)) 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 Pharæ 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 adds (vii. 22, 2). At Argos he speaks of a chasm into which it was a local 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, &c., ii. p. 394). These lamps are of terra-cotta, but with little ornamentation, and so like each other in workmanship that they must all have come from one pottery, and may have been all brought to the spot where they were found on one occasion, probably the funeral of a person with many friends, or the celebration of a festival in his honour, such as the parentalia among the Romans, to maintain which it was a common custom to bequeath property. For example, a marble slab in the British Museum has a Latin inscription describing the property which had been left to provide among other things that a lighted lamp with incense on it should be placed at the tomb of the deceased on the kalends, nones, and ides of each month (Mus. Marbles, v., pl. 8, fig. 2). For birthday presents terra-cotta lamps appear to have been frequently employed, the device generally being that of two figures of victory holding between them a disk inscribed with a good wish for the new year: – ANNV NOV FAVSTV FELIX. This is the inscription on a lamp in the British Museum, which besides the victories has among other symbols a disk with the head of Janus. As the torch gave way to the lamp in fact, so also it gave way in mythology. In the earlier myths, as in that of Demeter, it is a torch with which she goes forth to search for her daughter, but in the late myth of Cupid and Psyche it is an oil lamp which Psyche carries, and from which to her grief a drop of hot oil falls on Cupid and awakes him. Terra-cotta lamps have very frequently the name of the maker stamped on the foot. Clay moulds from which the lamps were made exist in considerable numbers. (A. S. M.)

Fig. 9. – Bronze Lamp in British Museum. Fig. 10.

LAMP-BLACK is a deep black pigment consisting of carbon in a very fine state of division, obtained by the imperfect combustion of highly carbonaceous substances, which, producing a smoky flame, forms a deposit of soot or lamp-black. It is manufactured from scraps of resin and pitch refuse and inferior oils and fats, and other similar combustible bodies rich in carbon. For making lamp-black from resinous bodies a cylindrical stone chamber into which the flow of air can be easily regulated by openings at its lower part is used. Within the chamber is suspended a cone of sheet-iron fitting closely to the circumference of the chamber. The iron cone, which has an opening at the top, serves for a chimney, and can be raised or lowered in the chamber at will. The resinous material to be burned is placed in a cast-iron pot, and heated till it gives off vapours, when it is placed in the chamber and set on fire. The access of air is regulated to produce the maximum of smoke consistent with the maintenance of combustion. The abundant deposit of lamp-black on the walls of the chamber and cone is at the end of the operation collected by allow ing the cone to sink, thus scraping the walls and carrying the whole deposit with it. Some manufacturers employ a series of small chambers communicating with each other, a stove tube leading into the first. These chambers have