Terracotta oil lamp

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hayes Type 2. Mold-made, with unpierced handle. Discus: chi-rho, with top at back, decorated with lines of dots, and other symbols with the P and below the two horizontal arms; two filling holes at either side; discus surrounded by a raised line that extends forward at the front, forming a broad channel to large wick hole. Shoulder: pattern of raised symbols arranged in squares and triangles. Flat oval base, with a central cross, decorated with a vertical line; two raised lines around edge of base, joining with two other lines that extend towards the back of the handle, and two other sets of lines flanking the nozzle; a row of raised dots around bottom of body. Intact. On the discus is the Christian chi-rho monogram. The shape and decoration of this lamp, made somewhere in the Greek East, are related to and probably copied from those of African red-slip ware lamps.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art