1840 (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.
Fig. 4.—Bronze Lamp in British Museum.
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 foreparts
of lions (fig. 5). 
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 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
(λύχνειον) 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, &c., ii. 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.)
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.
LAMPEDUSA, a small island in the Mediterranean, belonging
to the province of Girgenti, from which it is about 112 m. S.S.W.
Pop. (1901, with Linosa—see below) 2276. Its greatest length is
about 7 m., its greatest width about 2 m.; the highest point
is 400 ft. above sea-level. Geologically it belongs to Africa,
being situated on the edge of the submarine platform which
extends along the east coast of Tunisia, from which (at Mahadia)
it is 90 m. distant eastwards. The soil is calcareous; it was
covered with scrub (chiefly the wild olive) until comparatively
recent times, but this has been cut, and the rock is now bare.
The valleys are, however, fairly fertile. On the south, near the
only village, is the harbour, which has been dredged to a depth
of 13 ft. and is a good one for torpedo boats and small craft.
The island was, as remains of hut foundations show, inhabited
