This odd-looking lead device, which measures just over 1.75 feet long and weighs nearly 25 pounds, is a rare example of a Roman-era ship’s stove that allowed sailors to prepare cooked foods and have warm drinks while at sea. The stove (also known as a nautical brazier) was recovered in shallow waters just off the coast of Gaza.
To use the device, sailors placed fiery coals along the bottom of the stove’s rounded basin, or hearth. The hearth’s shallower end (at right) was used to grill meat directly over hot coals, while the deeper, curved end (in the center) has three shell-shaped protrusions used to support pots filled with stews or beverages that required slower, more gradual heating. The opposite end of the brazier (at left) features a large, decorated cylindrical funnel that allowed water to be poured into the stove’s double-walled hollow interior in order to regulate the heat produced by the coals.
About 20 such braziers have been recovered from ancient shipwrecks off the coast of Israel, all dating to the Roman period (first century B.C.–third century A.D.). Interestingly, the raised decorations adorning the stove’s cylindrical funnel—including motifs of leaping lions, plants, abstract symbols and rope patterns—appear often on lead coffins manufactured in Roman Palestine’s major coastal towns, including Caesarea and Ashkelon. The similarity suggests the stoves may have been created by coffin-makers specifically for the sailors who were responsible for supplying their workshops with lead imported from abroad.1
A. South Arabian incense shovel
B. Sassanian oil lamp
C. Roman-era ship’s stove
D. Model of a Phoenician ship
E. Ancient Egyptian furnace
056 Answer: (C) Roman-era ship’s stove
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Lawrence E. Stager, “Chariot Fittings from Philistine Ashkelon,” in Seymour Gitin, J. Edward Wright and J.P. Dessel, eds, Confronting the Past: Archaeological and Historical Essays on Ancient Israel in Honor of William G. Dever (Winona Lake, IN:Eisenbrauns, 2006), pp. 169–176. See also Trude Dothan and Alexandra S. Drenka, “Linchpins Revisited,” in J. David Schloen, ed., Exploring the Longue Durée: Essays in Honor of Lawrence E. Stager (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), pp. 97–101.
