On a hiking trail with his classmates in the Aravah desert, near the ominously named Scorpions Pass, an Israeli teenager recently came across an item that archaeologists identified as an ancient oil lamp. Gavriel Fiske writes:
The trail was once an ancient trade route connected to the copper mines in the region and was patrolled and secured by Roman soldiers, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said in a press release, and noted that an identical oil lamp was found in the same location 90 years before.
The oil lamp was produced in the ancient Nabatean city of Petra, in Jordan, in the 4th or 5th century CE, and similar lamps have been found in other sites in the area, the IAA senior researcher Tali Erickson-Gini said.
A line of forts was built along the route, garrisoned by Roman soldiers who patrolled the road on horseback, securing the important shipments of copper from the mines. “It is easy to imagine the lamp lighting up the darkness in the lonely, isolated fort manned by Roman soldiers,” Erickson-Gini explained.
Read more on Times of Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/teen-hiker-stumbles-on-1600-year-old-roman-oil-lamp/