| Summary: | The present article aims to analyze the late antique lamps with discus bearing an arch or a niche laying on two columns. This architectural motif has been discussed for forty years for its meaning, regardless of its rendering or the type of lamps it adorned. We have identified four different types of lamps and two main renderings. The ovoid lamps adorned with an arch on columns, quantitatively the most frequent, are to be found mostly in Constantinople and near cities, the Black Sea coast and the Danubian sites, but also in Egypt (where they appear also in a late variant), Cyprus and Byblos. With a complete atlas comprising several unpublished lamps, all the evidences brought together allow to make some "order” within the past hypothesis and open another door to understanding the booming economy of the Pontic area as well as the recently rebuilt Danubian limes fortresses, during their apex, in the late 5th and 6th centuries AD.
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