220 BULLETIN 139_, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



the Cashmere copper lamps and the bending in of the edge of the 

 pottery saucers from ancient sites in Syria, North Africa, and other 

 locahties, modifying features suggesting the beginning of the wick 

 spout (pi. 40, fig. 5, 8). The Eskimo stone lamp devotes a portion of 

 the edge for the lip on which the wick is laid, necessitating the 

 change of the form of the lamp to oval or eUiptic. The Eskimo 

 pottery dish lamp remains primitive with no definite placing of the 

 wick. 



LAMP WITH BEAK 



The next step is in the measures taken to install the wick. By 

 this step the lamp assumed the shape which it retained for thousands 

 of years. This shape is familiar in the classic lamp, which has a 

 circular reservoir and projecting beak for the wick. 



The beak also arises in another manner that is germane to the 

 construction of the lamp. The acute triangle form lamp cut from 

 soapstone by the Kashmiri and secured by Dr. W. L. Abbott has 

 the trough continued from the reservoir to the apex of the triangle 

 and related to the shape of the excavation in the vessel. This intro- 

 duces the pottery lamp in the form of a foot with open wick trough 

 extended as a clumsy spout or beak. The reservoir is closed over, 

 and through the top as through the neck of a bottle oil was poured 

 in. This form is ancient, being sculptured on a stone zodiacal slab 

 of Nazi Maradah, son of Kurigalzar II, about the middle of the fom*- 

 teenth century B. C. It is also shown on the cap of a kudurru or 

 boundary stone bearing the star emblems representing Babylonian 

 deities.^^ Identical lamps are still in use in Turkestan and Kashmir, 

 and have been found in Mohammedan stations in Egypt, Asiatic 

 Turkey, and Spain. A blue glazed Saracenic specimen of the tenth 

 century from Turkey in Asia is in the National Museum. It is 

 worthy of inquiry whether this form of lamp was introduced into 

 Babylon by the Turanian Cassites, who usurped the government of 

 Tiglathpilesar and who may represent one of the incursions from 

 high Asia. The persistence of this form is truly remarkable (pi. 40, 

 fig. 4). 



There is a large class of lamps which appear to trace back to the 

 later Iron Age and which persisted in Europe far into the nineteenth 

 centm-y. The simpler forms are of iron, of long triangular outline 

 with little or no differentiation of reservoir and spout, as in the Kash- 

 mir stone lamp. These lamps always have an upright curved iron 

 strap fastened at the back by which the lamp may be lifted or hung 

 up. This lamp is an excellent example of the midtiplicit}^ of minor 

 improvements which were applied to a primitive lamp and which at 

 the end still remained a primitive lamp. In the less-modified forms 



»' Paul Carus. Chinese Thought, Chicago, 1907, pp. 92-93 



