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This Roman oil lamp of unclear provenance was made in the 1st Century CE. It portrays an Aethiopian slave, with barbarians like Africans and Celts being popular motifs in Roman art. The lamp has also been suggested to have erotic connotations, and its subject may well have been a sexual slave. This too is related to Roman artistic motifs, and both Hellenistic and Roman lamps frequently portrayed both explicitly and implicitly erotic themes. (National Archaeological Museum of Aquileia, Italy)
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Based on Wikipedia content that has been reviewed, edited, and republished.
Original image by Sailko. Uploaded by Arienne King, published on 09 March 2018. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon a work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.
Related Images
Hellenistic Bronze Statuette of an Aethiopian Youth
Roman Sarcophagus Fragment Portraying an Aethiopian & Maenad
Hellenistic Head of an Aethiopian
Diagram of the Stowage of Slaves on a Slave Ship
Roman Mosaic of an Aethiopian Fisherman
Roman Oil Lamp
Cite This Work
APA Style
Sailko. (2018, March 09). Bronze Oil Lamp in the Shape of an African Slave. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/image/8262/bronze-oil-lamp-in-the-shape-of-an-african-slave/
Chicago Style
Sailko. "Bronze Oil Lamp in the Shape of an African Slave." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified March 09, 2018. https://www.worldhistory.org/image/8262/bronze-oil-lamp-in-the-shape-of-an-african-slave/.
MLA Style
Sailko. "Bronze Oil Lamp in the Shape of an African Slave." World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 09 Mar 2018. Web. 30 Dec 2025.
