Courtesy Gideon Avni and Zvi Greenhut

Once brightening narrow tombs, oil lamps found in the three Akeldama caves now shed light on six centuries of burials. These Roman lamps from the second to the fourth centuries show clear differences in design from a double-nozzled lamp from the Second Temple period and a Byzantine lamp. These differences enable scholars to differentiate among them, though the basic shape remained largely the same.