2,300-Year-Old Olive Oil Lamp Unearthed in the West Bank

A clay olive oil lamp dat­ing back at least 2,300 years has been found among the ruins of an exca­va­tion site in the West Bank.

The lamp was recov­ered intact close to a Samaritan stone bath found at Mount Gerizim National Park, a loca­tion of inter­est for arche­ol­o­gists.

According to the Jerusalem Post, local experts were sur­prised by the find­ing, which report­edly hap­pened by chance while work­ers were hand-clean­ing the site.

“It is great to find some­thing even after all those years of exca­va­tion,” said Netanel Elimelech, direc­tor of the park.

“We found a lot of clay sherds lying around, but to find some­thing com­plete with signs of its use is pretty nice,” he added. ​“You can still see the black marks of burn­ing from when the lamp was used. It throws you back [in time].”

Mount Gerizim is viewed as a sacred loca­tion by the Samaritans. This small reli­gious com­mu­nity still inhab­its a vil­lage there, where the house of their high priest is also located.

Their tra­di­tion dates back to the 8^th cen­tury BCE, and arche­ol­o­gists have found the remains of an ancient city with its walls, tem­ples and res­i­den­tial areas there.

Previously, researchers had also found traces of an olive press at the site, which is located just south of Nablus, a promi­nent cen­ter of olive oil soap pro­duc­tion.

Local experts believe that the Samaritans used the lamp for purifi­ca­tion pur­poses. Olive oil has been used for lamps through­out the Mediterranean basin for cen­turies. In addi­tion, olive oil for fuel­ing indoor light­ing devices has often been asso­ci­ated with reli­gious rit­u­als.

For exam­ple, archae­ol­o­gists in south­ern Italy are inves­ti­gat­ing the con­nec­tion between the so-called ​“white olive trees” of the Leucocarpa cul­ti­var and the ancient tra­di­tion that saw the Leucocarpa olive oil used for indoor light­ing in local churches.

According to the Liberty Biblical Museum, olive oil lamp tech­nol­ogy and shape evolved through the Bronze Age, a period of human his­tory stretch­ing approx­i­mately from 3300 to 1200 BCE.

The early lamps were mostly a bowl ​“filled with olive oil with a wick laid on the side of the rim and then devel­oped by the Middle Bronze Age to the form of a pinched bowl and then in the Late Bronze-Iron Ages to the form of a saucer with a pinched part to hold the wick (whether sin­gle or mul­ti­ple).”

Olive oil lamps were com­monly made of clay, but bronze increas­ingly was used over time and, later, brown glass.

Still, anthro­pol­o­gists at the Milwaukee Public Museum found that olive oil lamps ​“began to show signs of exper­i­men­ta­tion with changes in over­all body shape and the addi­tion of mul­ti­ple noz­zles, a han­dle and clay slips, a coat­ing that was applied to the out­side of clay lamps dur­ing pro­duc­tion in an effort to pre­vent oil from seep­ing through the porous clay,” in ear­lier ages.

“These tech­no­log­i­cal advances have been accred­ited to the Greeks, whose lamps were exported all over the Mediterranean between the sixth and fourth cen­turies BCE due to their high qual­ity of crafts­man­ship,” the researchers added.

Olive oil has been at the full dis­posal of many civ­i­liza­tions. Studies have shown that the first cul­ti­va­tions of olive trees date back as much as 3,500 years ago, but wild olive trees grew through­out the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean way before, often rep­re­sent­ing a source of fuel for human set­tle­ments.

According to a recent study on olive oil his­tory pub­lished by the Turkish researchers at Balikesir University, the ​“major­ity of trees and shrubs that con­sti­tute the flora of the Mediterranean basin appeared in the qua­ter­nary (the last 200 mil­lion-year period).”

“It is very nat­ural for wild olive trees to exist in Anatolia for the last 50,000 years,” they added. ​“Wild olive groves are com­mon along the coasts of the Aegean and the Mediterranean regions. Studies under­taken on the pollen and fos­sils have shown that wild olives exist in Anatolia for tens of thou­sands of years.”

• The Jerusalem Post
• Liberty Biblical Museum
• Milwaukee Public Museum