HISTORY ETHNOGRAPHY NATURE WINE-MAKING SITE MAP
Selected and rare materials, excerpts and observations from ancient, medieval and contemporary authors, travelers and researchers about Cyprus.
 
 
 
 
 
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SALAMIS

SALAMIS IN THE ISLAND OF CYPRUS.
BY ALEXANDER PALMA DI CESNOLÀ, F.S.A.,
page 125

Another (fig. 302) shews a drunken actor—perhaps Silenus masked, reclining on an amphora, and pointing in anexplanatory and suggestive manner to his open mouth. Another(fig. 303) is the grinning head of a negress, with a gold ear-ring in the right ear, to which I have already drawn attention.1 Compare one in the Museum, the head of a negro, or Nubian, with open jaws, through which the wick was inserted (Birch, Hist, of Ancient Pottery, new edition, 536). Most of the lamps with fanciful shapes are attributed by Dr. Birch to a period between the age of Augustus and that of

Constantine. Some are in form of a human foot, or of a slipper. Many are , of phallic design. The earliest lamps have an open circular body, with a curved projecting rim (fig. 304), to prevent the oil from being spilled. They are found, not only in the ordinary terra-cotta, but also in the black glazed ware which we are accustomed to associate with the sepulchral fictilia found at Nola. Many of them have a projecting hollow pipe in the centre, placed there inorder to fasten them to a stick or upright peg upon the top of a candelabrum (fig. 305).

1 See page 41.

 

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