Oil Lamp with Green Glaze

Oil Lamp with Green Glaze

A Fatimid Islamic oil lamp with a pale green glaze. The lip is flared and tapers to the base of the neck. Over half of the lip is missing, showing a buff to cream fabric. There is a torus at the join with the body. The body is shaped like an oblate flattened sphere with a simple base attached, slightly concave. The lamp is glazed inside and out, except for the underside of the base. The handle is a ring attached to the middle of the neck and top of the body with a seperate pad of ceramic. Across the top of the handle is a flaring triangle of ceramic. The single spout is attached opposite the handle and is wedge shaped in profile and rectangular from the top. It tapers very slightly to a rounded end. There is some minor chipping to the end of the spout. The glaze is transparent with patches of paler white showing through. The fabric on the base is buff to white.

The lamp should be dated to the Fatimid period and is consistent with Kubaik's Type G lamps (11th to early 12th century AD) or Mason and Tugwell's Types 2-4 tall-necked lamps (AD 1025 to AD 1175). The form is similar to an example in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the glaze and form are paralleled by two examples in the British Museum, all dating to the 11th or 12th centuries AD.

The lamp is from Ali Bey Bahgat's early operations at Fustat (Old Cairo). It was acquired from the Museum of Arab Art in Cairo, where Bahgat was curator, by Comte Corporal Gontran Louis Henri Marie Philippe de Tournouër in 1915 or 1916. De Tournouer acquired six other early Islamic antiquities from Bahgat and all are said to come from a house excavated at Fustat at a depth of 50 feet. These excavations, started in 1912, were little more than recovery operations until Bahgat secured funding to excavate more formally in 1918. The precise archaeological context for the discovery of the lamp is therefore unknown and the sale of duplicate artefacts from the Museum collections was a common practice at the time. De Tournouer donated his collection to the Queensland Museum in 1917 after being invalided home from the First World War.

AD 1025 - AD 1175

Height: 95 mm

Width: 80 mm

Depth: 80 mm

C.008.002

QM E920

© Queensland Museum, Peter Waddington.

Recovered from a House at Fustat, Cairo, Egypt, c. 1912-1915.
Part of the Museum of Arab Art Collection, Cairo, Egypt, until c. 1915-1916.
Transferred by Ali Bey Baghat, Curator, Museum of Arab Art, Cairo, Egypt, to Comte Cpl. Gontran de Tournouer, c. 1915-1916.
Donated by Comte Cpl. Gontran de Tournouer, Brisbane, to the Queensland Museum, Brisbane, 1922.

Queensland Museum, Brisbane

Reid, D. M. (2019). Contesting antiquity in Egypt : archaeologies, museums & the struggle for identities from World War I to Nasser. American University in Cairo Press

Kubiak, W. (1970). Medieval Ceramic Oil Lamps from Fustat. Ars Orientalis, 8, 1-18. www.jstor.org/stable/4629250

Mason, R., & Tugwell, J. (2011). Fatimid Tall-Necked Lamps and Their Associates: A Typology. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 47, 335-353. www.jstor.org/stable/24555402

Lamp. (10th - 12th century). [Earthenware, with a turquoise glaze]. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. EA1984.9=https://collections.ashmolean.org/collection/search/per_page/25/offset/0/sort_by/relevance/object/28070

Lamp. (Fatimid dynasty). [Lamp. Made of green glazed pottery (beige).]. British Museum, London. 1921,0301.48=https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1921-0301-48

Oil-lamp. (Fatimid dynasty). [Glazed pottery oil lampl wheel-made; light grey clay fabric]. British Museum, London. 2012,6072.14=https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_2012-6072-14

Queensland Museum Donor Schedule #17/159 (1917).

Queensland Museum Outward Correspondence #00138 (1917).

Queensland Museum Inwards Correspondence #00509 (1917)

P.008

Mr James Donaldson