Tainted Stone Oil Lamp Authenticated

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In 2001 or early 2002, we were asked, but declined, to publish an article about an unusual ancient oil lamp. The lamp has surfaced once again in the archaeological world. So I now describe it in the present tense:

The lamp is unusual in several respects. First of all, it is made of stone. Almost all of the thousands of recovered ancient oil lamps are made of clay; stone oil lamps do exist, but they are rare and survive in mere fragments. Unlike clay objects, stone objects are not subject to impurity, so ritual holiness is assured.

Secondly, this oil lamp seems to be much larger and heavier than any other ancient oil lamp ever discovered. It is round and nearly 9 inches in diameter; it weighs nearly 4 pounds.

Third, it has seven spouts or nozzles, rather than the usual single nozzle. Seven is of course a special number in Jewish historiography, and a few other seven-spouted objects, including lamps, although rare, have been recovered. The seven spouts in this oil lamp are arranged equidistantly around the lamp, which, together with a round handle, create an octagonal symmetry.

The lamp’s most unusual feature, however, is the elaborate decoration on its top surface. Opposite the handle, at the top of the disc surrounding the large filling hole in the center into which the oil was poured, is a menorah (seven-branched candelabra) carved in relief. It presumably replicates the menorah in the Temple. At the bottom of the disc, near the handle, is a palm tree, symbol of Judea, carved in relief like the object’s other decorations.

Arranged on either side of the disc between the menorah and the palm tree are the seven species associated with the Jewish festival of Shavuot, or Weeks, and symbolizing the Land of Israel—four on the right side of the menorah and three on the left—an ear of wheat, a basket with figs, three pomegranates, a date palm tree, a bunch of 057 grapes, two olive branches and an ear of barley (see Deuteronomy 8:8).

As noted earlier, a decade ago I declined to publish this oil lamp. It was unprovenanced—we had no idea where it came from—and was very probably looted—unless it was discovered when someone was excavating an addition to an existing structure. I believe we must do everything we can to stop looting (and there is much that could be done that is not being done^a). But once a looted object surfaces, we cannot simply avert our eyes. We cannot not look at it. We must learn what we can from it.^b Unprovenanced looted objects are worth less because they have no context, but they are not worthless.

The reason I declined to publish the object then was not because it was unprovenanced and probably looted. It was because I could not satisfy myself that it was authentic. The man who submitted it to me did not want his name used—this in itself was suspicious. I talked to Israel’s top expert on oil lamps, Varda Sussman. She said that it exhibited stylistic features earlier than the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. and other features typical of a later period. It “falls between the cracks,”^c she said. It was “too good to be true.”

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The lamp was also submitted for publication to Qadmoniot, an Israeli publication intended for the devoted lay (Hebrew) reader. It, too, turned down the publication.

Not long afterward, we published the now-famous James Ossuary inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.”^d The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) subsequently declared the inscription on it to be a forgery.

I was then happy that I had declined to publish the stone oil lamp. It would have just fueled the charge that the James Ossuary inscription was a forgery.

In late 2004, the IAA filed a criminal indictment in what has become known as the “forgery trial of the century.” The indictment included many items alleged to be forgeries, the first of which was the ossuary. But the IAA also threw in for good measure the stone oil lamp, claiming that both the ossuary and the stone oil lamp had been forged by the same person, Israeli collector Oded Golan. The forgery trial lasted five years and produced more than 12,000 pages of trial testimony.^e The case has been under advisement with the trial judge since October 2010. There is no word as to when he will render his decision, presumably supported by a detailed opinion giving his reasons.

I might say, parenthetically, that I firmly believe the ossuary inscription is authentic (which is not the same as saying it refers to Jesus of Nazareth). I believe this not because of my own expertise, but because of the expertise of others. Two of the world’s greatest paleographers of the period and place, André Lemaire of the Sorbonne and Ada Yardeni of the Hebrew University, affirm its authenticity. Not a single paleographer of any standing asserts otherwise. Scientists, too, support its authenticity. These include Amnon Rosenfeld and Shimon Ilani from the Geological Survey of Israel, a leading German expert Wolfgang Krumbein from Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, retired curator of Royal Ontario Museum Edward J. Keall and Professor Emeritus James Harrell of the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Toledo. The only qualified scientist on the other side is Tel Aviv University’s Yuval Goren, an expert in clays, not stone. His testimony at the forgery trial regarding the ossuary’s allegedly fake patina (which he smart-alecky dubbed the “James Bond”) was thoroughly undermined on cross-examination, as he was forced to admit.^f

On the other hand, I recognize that this ossuary, like the other alleged forgeries, has been tainted. In the public mind they are forgeries. Even scholars will avoid them, simply to avoid controversy. These objects will not be cleared for at least a generation.

But back to the stone oil lamp: A new article about it has just appeared in Liber Annuus, the scholarly journal of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem.¹ After reading this article, I decided to expose our readers to this unusual object. If it is authentic, it should obviously be prominently displayed in a museum.

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The authors of the new article are five scientists—two from the Geological Survey of Israel, another from the Department of Geomicrobiology at Ossietsky University in Oldenburg, Germany, another formerly with the Weizmann Institute in Israel and now the head of his own consulting firm and another with the American Museum of Natural History in New York. These are powerful credentials.

The authors examined the lamp with a binocular microscope. It is made of fine-grained beige limestone typically used in Jerusalem material culture in the Second Temple period. Using medical equipment, the scientists then looked at the inner surfaces. Samples of the lamp’s patina were taken from different locations, including “concealed” sites inside the nozzles. Minute samples from the menorah and other ornamentation were examined with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) equipped with an energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS). The scientists also investigated the element content and the structural features of the patina. A sample near the ear of wheat was examined for X-ray diffractometry.

Obviously, I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’m sufficiently impressed with the publication that I feel justified in presenting the lamp to our readers.

The authors pay particular attention to the lamp’s patina. It is formed from minerals in the lamp itself combined with airborne dust particles from the environment interacting with micro-organisms living on the stone’s surface. The result, we are told, is “biogeochemical activity [that] changes the morphological and mineralogical surface of the stone,” that is, producing patina.

Chemical analysis of the patina found “no trace of any modern elements, adhesive or bonding substance.”

A key finding is that the patina is the same on the lamp’s exterior, including the decoration, as on the interior, “concealed” sites. Morphological analysis of the patina indicates that it is “continuous and uninterrupted with some traces found on all sites, its underside, on the ornamentation, as well as on the outer rim and inside the lamp itself, including inaccessible sites such as inside the nozzles. The patina developed simultaneously over the entire oil lamp including the carvings … There is no indication that the surface of the stone lamp was cut, scratched or etched in recent times.”

The patina itself is multilayered, indicating it was produced “over an extended period of time … No modern substances or bonding material were found in the patina. Microscopic examination of the surface of the oil lamp and its patina layering indicates that the stone oil lamp and the ornamentation were produced during the same time period.”

The authors conclude that the lamp with its patina and including its ornamentation is “authentic.” It was made “during the Second Temple period (first century C.E.) in Jerusalem and represents a Jewish tradition related to Jewish purity laws.”

A highly respected retired geologist with the Geographical Survey of Israel who has written for BAR in the past, Aryeh Shimron, wrote me that he agreed with the article’s conclusions.

Not all agree, however. Professor Goren testified for the prosecution regarding the oil lamp in the forgery trial. He stated that he regarded the ornamentation with suspicion because it contained a grain of sodium silicate in the patina; sodium silicate is found in substances used to conserve antiquities. If that is not how it got here, it could be evidence of forgery. But on this basis, Goren could not say that the decoration on the lamp was a modern forgery; he regarded it with suspicion. The government prosecutor admitted to the court that he had not proved that the oil lamp was forged, only that it was suspicious.

Professor Goren declined to comment on the new article in Liber Annuus, saying only that it presented no “new results.” Nor would he state whether he believed the ornamentation on the oil lamp to be a modern forgery.

One other intriguing detail:

The defense in the forgery trial retained Frank Preusser, former chief scientist with the Doerner Institut in Munich and formerly a scientist with 063 the J. Paul Getty Trust, to examine the oil lamp. His findings were the same as the authors of the Liber Annuus article. He, too, noticed the layers or strata in the patina, indicating development over a long period of time. The lowest level of the patina is white; above this layer are soil deposits. Quoting an earlier study by some of the authors of the Liber Annuus article: “This type of [Rendzina] soil is only found under the Old City of Jerusalem and nowhere else in geographic Palestine or the State of Israel.” The Liber Annuus article modifies this a bit: It occurs “in or adjacent to Jerusalem.”

Could this lamp somehow have been connected to a ritual in the Jerusalem Temple before it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E.? A tantalizing possibility.

In 2001 or early 2002, we were asked, but declined, to publish an article about an unusual ancient oil lamp. The lamp has surfaced once again in the archaeological world. So I now describe it in the present tense: