Laurent Chrzanovski, ed. Greek, Roman and Byzantine Lamps from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. Acts of the 5th International Lychnological Congress. Monographies Instrumentum, 63. Éditions Mergoil, 2019.

From Éditions Mergoil

With nearly 25 articles - excluding prefaces and introduction -, this volume offers an impressive collection of researches dedicated to ancient lighting, but also texts devoted to previuous and posterous periods, as Bronze Age Komnos or, for the Medieval times, the decoration and illumination of Byzantine churches as well as the material from the recent urban excavations of Timisoara). Despite the fact that the congress, materialized by this volume, was held in the cultural "capital" of Transylvania, Sibiu, only two innovative researches come from the territory of present-day Romania: an analysis of imports and Greek copies from the 3rd century AD discovered in Tomis (now Constanța), as well as an inventory of the lamps from the castrum of Micia, in southern Transylvania. On the other hand, what a selection of new lamps from Italian sites, from Agrigento in Lucera, Pompeii and Cumas in Ostia and Musarna to the northern Mediolanum (Milan)! The Aegean world is also far from being neglected , with studies devoted to Nea Paphos, Rhodes, Corinth and Salonika, supplemented, for the Black Sea, by a study on Hellenistic imports found at Olbia. The Southern Mediterranean region is carrying out two highly interesting research projects, on Beit Natif and Antioch. Two French studies complete the picture: the publication of the complete corpus of the Musée de Saint-Omer as well as a typological study of the lamps discovered in Lyon. Finally, a comparison between Roman iconography and litterature of lighing devices in Roman times unveils not a few surprises. The importance of this volume is doubltless to offer so many unpublished materials from minor and poorly known sites or, on the contrary, of extremely famous ones, rarely treated under the aspect of lamps and other finds.