Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1888 — Curious Lamps of Long Ago. [ARTICLE]

Curious Lamps of Long Ago.

Chicago News. The first lamps were probably the skulls of animals, in which fat of some kind was burned. Among the many beautiful works of art excavated at Herculaneum and Pompeii none are more exquisite than the candelabra. Egyptian records say that the new lamp was invented in Egypt, but it is more than probab e that lamps originally came from India or China. Lanterns were also known to the ancients. They were of a cylindrical form and built up of iron bars, the intervals between being made of translucent horn. When lamps began to be made out of earth or metal they were iu the form of a shell, and in the earliest lamps we find the shell reproduced in earthenware j stone, or metal. In Zetland at the present time travel-, ers may see the shell of the “roarin’ buckle,” the fusus antiqus, hung up for lamps, to which, indeed, their shape very well adapts them. Lamps have been found of marble, •granite, bronze, gold, silver, ivory, onyx and other valuable materials, and the labor expended on some portions of their construction seems almost incredible., ~ Many o f the “statue lamp stands” have been found in Pompeii, and among them one is preserved in the Neapolitan museum which represents au image which is doubtless meant for Silenus. The most common form of the lamp in Great Britain during the early middle ages was thgt-of the ordinary stone pot, cither round or,^ square, from the side of which hung a wick of twisted -cord or a piece of rope.

Another very beautiful lamp stand was found at Herculaneum. It represents the figure of a boy standing by a column a little higher than his head. One arm is extended, the fingers holding the chain from which the lamp is suspended, the other, holding the trimmer. The statue is about two feet high. The ancieut wicks consisted of a few threads, which were inadequate to soak up the oil, and constant trimming and adjusting were necessary to preserve the light at all while the and smell inseparable from this f kind of light are insufficiently attested by frequent allusions in the writings of the ancient poets. ... - .