Ever-Burning Lamps

The Ever Burning Lamps – Wind/Rain Unable to Put it Off

The Ever Burning Lamps have been documented by writers from several parts of the world at different point of time and in the ancient world, writer Plutarch had made a mention in his work - `De Defectu Oraculorum’ about a lamp which burned over the door of Jupiter’s temple, Ammon in Egypt. According to him the priest of the temple claimed that the lamp stood in the open area and no wind or rain could put it out. There are also similar accounts of the same for the altar of the Temple of Apollo Carneus at Cyrene as well as the great Temple of Aderbain in Armenia.

In ancient times before electricity was introduced, oil lamps were used to illuminate the night and the dark areas where a never ending supply of oil was essential in order to keep the lamp glowing though mysteriously there are incidents of lamps which burned without the need of oil. The miracle of lamps with a day’s worth of oil burning for eight days is celebrated by the Jewish festival of Hanukkah with various stories coming from different areas of the world like Asia, South America, North America, Greece, Italy, Great Britain and France.

Liquid in the Lamp/Unable to Identify 

These ever burning lamps were discovered when a tomb or other enclosed place had been opened and the lamp was found burning though the enclosure had been sealed for several years. Several writers have reported about such lamps for instance in 140 CE a tomb of Pallas, the son of a local Italian king was opened and a lamp had been found burning near the corpse.

Out of fear, the people had made attempts to blow off the lamp but found out that neither water nor blowing off the lamp could extinguish the flame. The lamp was only blown off when the liquid in the base of the lamp which did not seem to be regular oil and unable to identify, had to be completely removed from the basin of the lamp. One will find various other chronicles of similar phenomena elsewhere. During the time of emperor Justinian, some soldiers came upon a lamp and according to its inscription, were lit almost 550 years ago and they could not figure it out how this could take place.

Mechanics of the Lamps -Unsolved Mystery

Another incident relates that in England, after the separation from the Roman Catholic Church, Kind Henry VIII, established the Church of England and demanded that the Catholic churches together with the communities be incorporated or destroyed in his new church. In a particular incident, the tomb of a wealthy man was opened, who had died around the year 300 CE and it was found to have the lamp which continued to burn. In France, in 1600, a written chronicle of a solider from Switzerland had discovered a long hidden tomb where a single burning lamp was found in it.

He removed the lamp, though it continued to burn without any fuel for several months till it was accidentally broken and the flame extinguished. One of the most mysterious figures of the history of these baffling lamps is a 13th century rabbi, Jechiele where written reports of the time indicate that there was a lamp outside his house which kept burning continuously without any supply of oil in it. When the rabbi was questioned on the working of the lamp, he refrained from disclosing the mechanics of the lamp and thus the history of the lamps continues to remain a mystery.