This is the story of how the puzzling inscriptions on some ancient oil lamps illuminate an entire era. These modest artifacts offer us a vivid picture of the spiritual life of the earliest Christian pilgrims.
The inscriptions appear on a particular sub-sub-subtype of ceramic oil lamp from a particular locale and a particular time. The time is the Byzantine period, which, as defined by scholars working in Israel, extends from 313, when Constantine legalized Christianity, to about 638, when the Arabs conquered Palestine. The locale is Palestine, especially the vicinity of Jerusalem. Though these lamps are found throughout the region, their concentration around the city suggests Jerusalem was a center for their manufacture and distribution.
The oil lamps with which we will be concerned are known as slipper lamps,1 a name suggested by their shape. They come in two sizes, small and large. The smaller ones are older, dating from the second half of the fourth century to the mid-sixth century. The larger ones date from the mid-sixth to the late seventh or early eighth century. The smaller ones are more oval in form, the larger ones somewhat more elongated.
The two kinds of slipper lamps can also be distinguished by their decorative details. A cross is often depicted on the nozzles of the smaller slipper lamps—a clear indication that the lamps were used by the Christian community in Palestine, which was thriving at this time, largely due to the influx of pilgrims to the holy sites, especially Jerusalem. A motif found primarily on the larger slipper lamps is more difficult to understand. It looks like a depiction of a palm branch, running along the nozzle from the large filling hole to the small wick hole. At first sight, this motif might be considered another Christian symbol, the palm branch being associated with Palm Sunday. But a closer look reveals that on many slipper lamps three branches appear on either side of the stem. The motif could as easily be interpreted as a Jewish menorah (plural, menorot), or seven-branched candlestick. Indeed, because of this decorative element, many of these lamps are also called candlestick lamps.
Scholars do not agree about the proper interpretation of this palm branch motif. Is it a palm branch, a palm menorah or, perhaps, a tree of life?2 That the palm branch is indeed a menorah is further suggested by the fact that some of the branches extend from what appears to be a tripartite base. Similar bases appear on many ancient depictions of menorot. Yet these slipper lamps also include clearly Christian symbols and, as we shall see, inscriptions, and they date from a period when Jerusalem’s population was predominantly Christian. However, the appropriation of Jewish themes and symbols is characteristic of early Christianity.3 In my opinion, the occasional inclusion of a tripartite base, as well as the orientation of the top of the branches towards the wick hole (when the oil lamp was lit, the palm branch motif or menorah would appear to burst into flames), indicates that the Jewish menorah may have provided the inspiration for this motif, even though the number of branches is not always consistent and the tripartite base is often not represented.
Slipper lamps can also be classified on the basis of whether or not they are inscribed. On most lamps, the area around the filling hole is decorated with raised lines radiating from the hole; lamps decorated in this manner are referred to as radiated. On some, however—the kind we will focus on—an inscription encircles the filling hole; these lamps are referred to as inscribed. Most of the inscribed examples are later, larger slipper lamps.
042
The inscriptions are in Greek, but they are often very hard to read because they employ peculiar ligatures (combinations of characters) and symbols, and they sometimes have reversed letters.4 The definite pattern to these distortions suggests that they are deliberate rather than accidental.
The reading of the inscriptions is also made difficult by various spelling errors, such as ioticism (the use of the letter i instead of other vowels with the same sound) and the use of beta (b) for pi (p). These errors, however, simply reflect the way in which Greek was pronounced in Palestine during the Byzantine period.5 For example, phainei (shines) is written as it was pronounced, pheni. Modern analogs would be the slang spelling of nite instead of night or the American spelling of analog and catalog versus the British analogue and catalogue. For these reasons, I do not think the difficulty in reading these inscriptions can be attributed, as some scholars have suggested, to the deterioration of Greek script in Palestine during the Byzantine period, or to the repeated copying of these inscriptions by successive generations of potters.6
The following are the four main formulae inscribed on slipper lamps:7
“The light of Christ shines for all” (FWS CRISTOU FENI PASIN)
“Of the Mother of God” (THS QEOTWKOU)
“Of Saint Elias” (TOU AGIOU HLIA)
“Good oil lamps” (LUCNARIA KALA)
Most scholars have ignored the significance of the inscriptions themselves. They have interpreted the phrase “The light of Christ shines for all”—by far the most common formula—as simply a clever conceit for the decoration of an oil lamp. But if the inscriptions were virtually meaningless, why were only certain ones employed? For a long time I pondered whether the selection of the formulae was not as deliberate as the apparent errors in letter forms and spelling.
What finally enabled me to break the code and establish the significance of these inscriptions were the so-called Menas flasks from Egypt. Menas flasks are ampullae (flasks with globular bodies, narrow necks, and two handles from neck to shoulder) brought by pilgrims from the tomb-shrine of Saint Menas west of Alexandria, in Egypt.8 The shrine dedicated to this third- to fourth-century martyr was one of the most popular in Byzantine Christendom. Miraculous cures were thought to occur here so frequently that the shrine even included special rooms for sick pilgrims.
Dating from the fourth to seventh century, Menas flasks are contemporary with the slipper lamps found in Palestine. In addition to the figures and motifs that decorate the sides of the Menas ampullae, Greek inscriptions appear on many of the flasks. The longer inscriptions read “We receive the blessing of Saint Menas” (TOU AGIOU MENA EULOGIAN LABOMEN) or something else to that effect. But most read simply “Of Saint Menas” (TOU AGIOU MENA). This meant that whatever pilgrims carried in those flasks (probably water or oil from the shrine) bore the blessing of Saint 043Menas. The key point, however, is that the Menas flasks are associated not just with Saint Menas the person, but specifically with his shrine at Alexandria.
If the inscriptions on the Menas ampullae refer primarily to the shrine rather than to the person, might not the same be true for the inscriptions on the slipper lamps from Palestine? We have seen that the inscriptions on the slipper lamps are not just generic formulae: Could they refer to specific holy sites?
Let’s consider one of the standard inscriptions found on slipper lamps: “Of the Mother of God.” Just as “Of Saint Menas” is an abbreviated form of “We receive the blessing of Saint Menas,” so the formula “Of the Mother of God” should be understood as “We receive the blessing of the Mother of God.” Indeed, this suggestion is borne out by a few slipper lamp inscriptions that do in fact read “Blessing of the Mother of God.” By analogy, these lamps should be associated with a specific shrine or sanctuary dedicated to the Theotokos (Mother of God) in the Jerusalem area. Because a number of Byzantine churches and sanctuaries in and around the city were dedicated to the Theotokos, it is difficult to make a specific association. The tomb of Mary is one possibility; the Nea Church, constructed by Emperor Justinian (527–565) and dedicated to the Theotokos, is another.9 Perhaps when the formula may be associated with more than one sanctuary, the lamps were in fact associated with more than one site. Presumably, the lamps were purchased by pilgrims who stopped at the site or sites while visiting Jerusalem.
What about the most common formula on these lamps, “The light of Christ shines for all”? How should this be understood? Almost a hundred years ago, the great French scholar Charles Clermont-Ganneau suggested that this formula had its source in the liturgy used by the Greek Orthodox on Holy Saturday (the day before Easter) during the Ceremony of the Holy Fire in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.10 The focal point of this ceremony, which remains one of the highlights of the Orthodox Easter ritual, is the Rotunda of the Anastasis, or Resurrection, in the center of which lies the tomb of Jesus. During the Ceremony of the Holy Fire, light is passed by the Greek Orthodox patriarch from the lamps that hang above the sepulchre through the crowd until everyone’s lamps and candles are lit.11 The Byzantine pilgrim Bernard the Monk gives the earliest description (c. 870) of the Ceremony of the Holy Fire, although it is mentioned briefly a century earlier in another source.12
The lighting of lamps is also a feature of a vespers service known as the Lychnikon or Lucernare (Service of the Lamps), which is described by another pilgrim, Egeria, who traveled from Spain to the Holy Land at the end of the fourth century. Like the Ceremony of the Holy Fire, the Lychnikon takes place in the Rotunda of the Anastasis and usually ends with a procession to the True Cross, the most important relic in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. With bishop, clergy, laypeople and catechumens in attendance, the Lychnikon is normally held at 4:00 p.m. At the end of the service, each participant dips a thumb into the holy oil, blessed by contact with the True Cross, and makes the sign of the cross on his forehead with it.13
Slipper lamps inscribed “The light of Christ shines for all” must thus be associated with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Large numbers of lamps and candles were lit, as they still are today, for the ceremonies and services held in the church. Christian pilgrims who participated in the Ceremony of the Holy Fire or in 046the Lychnikon (and perhaps in other services) could purchase these lamps, use them in the ceremonies and then take them home.
Some examples of this particular inscription contain an additional word: “The light of Christ shines for all, kale” (FWS CRISTOU FENI PASIN KALH). The word kale is usually interpreted incorrectly as an adverb—hence, “the light of Christ shines beautifully for all.” Stanislao Loffreda has shown, however, that this translation is grammatically incorrect. On the basis of a few fuller inscriptions, he has suggested the reading “The light of Christ shines for all, good evening (kale spera)” (FWS XRISTOU FENI PASIN KALH [E]SPERA).14 This variant of the usual formula may have been associated specifically with the evening vespers service known as the Lychnikon.
I mentioned earlier that the longer inscriptions on the Menas flasks generally read, “We receive the blessing (Greek, eulogia) of Saint Menas.” Apparently, not only were the contents of the flask blessed, but the object itself was considered a “blessing.”15 Pilgrims who visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre took pellets of earth from the tomb as “blessings.” Modern visitors to the church notice that Golgotha (Calvary), the rocky outcrop on which, according to tradition, Jesus was crucified, is completely encased in glass. This protects what is left of the hill from those who, like their predecessors, would chip off a piece of the rock and take it home. The Piacenza Pilgrim, who traveled to the Holy Land around 570, describes drinking out of the skull of a martyr to gain a blessing. The late sixth-century bishop and historian Gregory of Tours describes pilgrims who took home ribbons they had tied around the column where Jesus was scourged as blessings to help them in sickness. Even small tokens of hospitality, such as pieces of fruit given to pilgrims by monks, were considered blessings (eulogiai), as was, apparently, any object associated with a holy site or holy personage.16 In the eyes of a Byzantine pilgrim, a lamp that had been lit with the holy fire from the tomb of Jesus must have constituted a blessing of special magnitude.
The Piacenza Pilgrim vividly describes taking oil as a blessing at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre:
The Tomb is hewn out of the living rock, or rather in the rock itself … and in the place where the Lord’s body was laid, at the head, has been placed a bronze 047lamp. It burns there day and night, and we took a blessing (eulogia) from it, and then put it back …
At the moment when the Cross is brought out of this small room for veneration, and arrives in the court to be venerated, a star appears in the sky, and comes over the place where they lay the Cross. It stays overhead whilst they are venerating the Cross, and they offer oil to be blessed in little flasks. When the mouth of one of the little flasks touches the Wood of the Cross, the oil instantly bubbles over, and unless it is closed very quickly it all spills out.17
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre has always been the focal point of Christian pilgrimages to Palestine, drawing the largest crowds during the most important holidays. This no doubt explains why slipper lamps inscribed “The light of Christ shines for all” are so much more common than those bearing other formulae. The production of these inscribed lamps catered to the thriving trade to Christian pilgrims in Byzantine Jerusalem.
If the principle suggested here is applied consistently, the slipper lamps inscribed “Of Saint Elias” should be understood as saying “We receive the blessing of Saint Elias” and should be associated with a specific holy site, not just with a person. This site could be a sanctuary associated with the prophet Elijah or another person named Elias. If the prophet Elijah is intended, then the lamps may be associated with the sanctuary of Mar Elias on the road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.18 Another possibility is the Elias who served as the patriarch of Jerusalem from 494 to 513. His feast is celebrated by Syrian Catholics on February 18.19 However, since there are no known shrines dedicated to Elias the Patriarch, it is more likely that the lamps were associated with a shrine or sanctuary of the prophet Elijah.
It is even more difficult to suggest an associated holy site for the formula “Good oil lamps.” Here, the formula appears to allude to the fact that the lamp itself was considered a blessing. Like the inscription “The light of Christ shines for all,” this formula may also have liturgical associations. In early Christianity, the evening lamp-lighting was greeted with prayer and praise, as with the great lamp-lighting hymn of thanks (the Phos Hilaron) cited by St. Basil in the fourth century.20
The inscribed lamps thus were associated with specific Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and were obtained by pilgrims as blessings.21 The association of the inscribed slipper lamps with specific sites in Jerusalem constitutes important evidence for the existence of a local ceramic industry in Judea during the Byzantine period.
The objection might be raised that if the lamps were produced for pilgrims, they should be widely distributed, when in fact, they are most commonly found in Palestine, especially in Jerusalem and the surrounding area. The only published example of 070an inscribed slipper lamp found outside Palestine known to me is from Cyprus; it is inscribed “The light of Christ shines for all, kale.”22 Again, we find a parallel with the Menas flasks, most of which come from the shrine of Saint Menas itself.23 Although Menas flasks were undoubtedly intended for use by pilgrims, the majority have been found at the point of origin (or, at least, the point of distribution).
What is the relationship of the radiated slipper lamps to the inscribed exemplars? Both variants are identical in ware, form, distribution and date, and have the same palm-menorah motif on the nozzle. The radiated lamps may have served as substitutes for the inscribed lamps sold to pilgrims. This suggests another analogy with the Menas flasks, which do not always bear inscriptions but which are invariably decorated with some sort of motif. Thus, the uninscribed Menas flasks served the same purpose as the inscribed ones. The same may be true of the radiated slipper lamps. However, the prevalence of the radiated slipper lamps as compared to the inscribed ones suggests to me another possible understanding of the relationship. Perhaps the inscribed lamps were developed by potters as a modified form of the radiated lamps to supply the trade introduced by pilgrims. If so, the radiated lamps were, at least originally, unconnected with this trade and were simply a local utilitarian type. The absence of inscriptions on the radiated lamps makes it difficult to resolve this matter, however.
The term eulogia refers to any object that carried a blessing.aEulogiai thus bear witness to the devotional experience of the first Christian pilgrims. Unlike ordinary souvenirs, eulogiai often represent the locus of that experience. The images, symbols and messages carried by these objects were therefore intended to give meaning to the pilgrimage experience rather than to provide mere decoration. Eulogiai, being amuletic in nature, continued to exert their power of salvation even after the pilgrimage came to an end.24 The peculiar letter forms, reversals and ligatures found on the inscribed slipper lamps should probably be understood in connection with magical practice. Perhaps they were intended to conceal the text from the layman—or from evil forces.25
These slipper lamps actually belong to a larger category of eulogiai, including the well-known flasks now in museums in Monza and Bobbio in northern Italy.26 According to tradition, this unique collection of metal flasks was presented to the Longobard queen Theodolinda at the beginning of the seventh century. The flasks originally contained oil made holy by its association with the tomb of Christ. Their superb workmanship indicates that they were intended as royal gifts.
Round clay tokens, dating from the mid-sixth to early seventh century and depicting New Testament scenes, also served as eulogiai. Like the Menas flasks, the tokens depict scenes associated with specific shrines; they may even have been made locally from soil taken from the holy sites. The women at the tomb appear on tokens associated with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the adoration of the Magi on tokens from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and the miraculous draught of fishes on those from a shrine on the Sea of Galilee. Archaeologists at Beth Shean, in the Jordan Valley, have discovered eight of these tokens, including five from the fifth- to sixth-century home of a wealthy Christian family.27
Other types of eulogiai associated with the Holy Sepulchre are hexagonal and octagonal glass bottles dating to the late sixth and early seventh centuries. They too held holy oil from the church.28
The trade in religious objects was thus centered around Christianity’s most important shrine, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Religion and commerce have always been connected.29 The money pilgrims paid for food, lodging, tour guides and souvenirs must have had a powerful effect on all sectors of the local economy, including the ceramic industry that produced the slipper lamps. During the Byzantine period, tourism to Jerusalem and environs reached a level of intensity that was unsurpassed until the 20th century. Shortly after his legalization of Christianity in the early fourth century, Emperor Constantine embarked upon a building program that included the construction of four churches in or near Jerusalem, foremost of which was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. At the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Jerusalem was raised to the status of a patriarchate, joining Rome, Constantinople (modern Istanbul), Antioch and Alexandria in holding this important and prestigious position. From the time of Constantine until the Moslem conquest, churches, monasteries, hostels, hospitals and educational institutions were constructed throughout the city. Thousands of pilgrims and monks visited or settled in Jerusalem. These building projects and the revenue produced by the tourism industry had a visible impact on the appearance of the city. During the course of the Byzantine period, Jerusalem gradually spread southward from the core of the Roman city, called Aelia Capitolina (the northern half of the present Old City). The city appears at the height of its 071expansion in the Byzantine period in the famous Madaba mosaic map.
The eulogiai known as slipper lamps deserve to be part of this picture.
This is the story of how the puzzling inscriptions on some ancient oil lamps illuminate an entire era. These modest artifacts offer us a vivid picture of the spiritual life of the earliest Christian pilgrims. The inscriptions appear on a particular sub-sub-subtype of ceramic oil lamp from a particular locale and a particular time. The time is the Byzantine period, which, as defined by scholars working in Israel, extends from 313, when Constantine legalized Christianity, to about 638, when the Arabs conquered Palestine. The locale is Palestine, especially the vicinity of Jerusalem. Though these lamps are found throughout […]
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For recent discussions of these lamps, see Jodi Magness, Jerusalem Ceramic Chronology (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), pp. 173–177, 250–258; Stanislao Loffreda, Lucerne Bizantine in Terra Santa con Iscrizioni in Greco (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1989); Eugenia L. Nitowski, The Luchnaria—Inscribed Lamps of the Byzantine Period, Occasional Papers of the Horn Archaeological Museum, Andrews University (Berrien, MI: Andrews University, 1986); and Nitowski, “Inscribed and Radiated-Type Byzantine Lamps,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 12 (1974), pp. 18–34.
2.
For discussions of the meaning of this motif, see Renate Rosenthal and Renee Sivan, Ancient Lamps in the Schloessinger Collection, Qedem 8 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1978), p. 166; Nitowski, “Inscribed Lamps,” pp. 23–24; and Charles A. Kennedy, “The Development of the Lamp in Palestine,” Berytus 14 (1963), pp. 83–85. Loffreda (Lucerne Bizantine, pp. 215–218) has suggested identifying it as a tree of life.
3.
See, for example, Robert Alexander Stuart Macalister, The Excavation of Gezer 1902–1905 and 1907–1909, vol. 3 (London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1912), pl. 105:27. For the appropriation of the menorah motif by Christians, see Leonard V. Rutgers, “Archaeological Evidence for the Interaction of Jews and Non-Jews in Late Antiquity,” American Journal of Archaeology96 (1992), pp. 110–111; and Erwin R. Goodenough, “An Early Christian Bread Stamp,” Harvard Theological Review 57 (1964), pp. 133–137.
4.
See Nitowski, “Inscribed Lamps,” pp. 26–31; see also Loffreda, Lucerne Bizantine.
5.
See Loffreda, Lucerne Bizantine, pp. 177–185.
6.
See Kennedy, “Development,” pp. 85–86.
7.
For a comprehensive list and discussion of the various formulae that appear on these lamps, see Loffreda, Lucerne Bizantine.
8.
For Menas flasks, see John W. Hayes, Roman Pottery in the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1976), p. 52; and Ormonde Maddock Dalton, Byzantine Art and Archaeology (New York: Dover, 1961), p. 606.
9.
Sylvester J. Saller, Excavations at Bethany (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1957), p. 178; Nahman Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1983), pp. 229–246.
10.
Charles Clermont-Ganneau, Recueil d’archéologie orientale, vol. 3 (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1900), p. 42. This has not gone unchallenged; see the discussion in Loffreda, Lucerne Bizantine, pp. 228–229. The reconstruction of the liturgy in Jerusalem during this period is problematic. However, I believe that Clermont-Ganneau was correct in identifying the formula “The light of Christ shines for all” as liturgical (even if it is not derived from the liturgy of St. Basil). The phrase seems to occur in a number of early liturgies associated with the evening prayer.
11.
See the account of Bernard the Monk in John Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims Before the Crusades (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1977), pp. 143–144.
12.
See Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims, p. 142, n. 16.
13.
See Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims, p. 67; Nitowski, Luchnaria, p. 14.
14.
Loffreda, Lucerne Bizantine, pp. 83-103.
15.
See Cynthia Hahn, “Loca Sancta Souvenirs: Sealing the Pilgrim’s Experience,” in The Blessings of Pilgrimage, ed. Robert Ousterhout (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 1990), p. 90.
16.
For the pilgrim accounts mentioned here, see Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims. Also see E.D. Hunt, Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire AD 312–460 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), p. 130.
17.
Piacenza Pilgrim v. 171–172, in Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims, p. 83.
18.
See Saller, Excavations at Bethany, p. 179, n. 97.
19.
See Edmund Venables, “Elias I,” in A Dictionary of Christian Biography, ed. W. Smith and H. Wace (New York: AMS Press, 1984), pp. 84–86; Herbert Thurston and Donald Attwater, Butler’s Lives of the Saints, vol. 3 (New York: P.J. Kenedy and Sons, 1956), p. 154; Saller, Excavations at Bethany, p. 179, n. 97.
20.
See Nitowski, Luchnaria, pp. 21–23.
21.
The use of the Greek word kalon or kala to describe a ceramic vessel or its contents is also attested in the early Roman period at Masada. There the inscription kalon keramion (KALON KERAMION) is painted on a number of storage jars. Of course, the cultural context is different. However, as in the case of the inscribed lamps, the plainness of the jars indicates that the inscriptions could not refer to their beauty; see Hannah M. Cotton and Joseph Geiger, Masada II, The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963–1965, Final Reports: The Latin and Greek Documents (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1989), pp. 180–181.
22.
Clermont-Ganneau, Recueil d’archéologie orientale, pp. 41–42. Could the apparent absence of these lamps outside Palestine reflect a failure to recognize or identify them?
23.
See Dalton, Catalogue of Early Christian Antiquities and Objects from the Christian East (London: British Museum, 1901), p. 154.
24.
See Hahn, “Loca Sancta Souvenirs”; and Hunt, Holy Land Pilgrimage, pp. 128–130.
25.
See Joseph Naveh, “Lamp Inscriptions and Inverted Writing,” Israel Exploration Journal 38 (1988), p. 43.
26.
See André Grabar, Ampoules de Terre Sainte (Monza-Bobbio) (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1958).
27.
See L.Y. Rahmani, “Eulogia Tokens from Byzantine Bet She’an,” ‘Atiqot 22 (1993), pp. 109–119.
28.
See Dan Barag, “Glass Pilgrim Vessels from Jerusalem: Part I,” Journal of Glass Studies 12 (1970), pp. 35–63; Barag, “Glass Pilgrim Vessels from Jerusalem: Parts II and III,” Journal of Glass Studies 13 (1971), pp. 45–63. I am grateful to Professor Barag for bringing this group of objects and the relevant articles to my attention.
29.
See David P.S. Peacock, Pottery in the Roman World: An Ethnoarchaeological Approach(New York: Longman, 1982), p. 157.
