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The 12th of August on the Julian calendar corresponds to the 19th of Mesore on the Alexandrian calendar. On or around the 18th of Mesore, the Egyptians held a Nile festival named variously as Wafa El-Nil, Jabr El-Khalig, or Fath El-Khalig ("The Marriage of the Nile" in European scholarship), a nocturnally illuminated celebration when a clay statue called the Bride of the Nile (Arousat El-Nil) was deposited in the river.Salem, "The Lychnapsia Philocaliana", pp. 165–166. Salem states that "the feast of Wafa El-Nil cannot be called a 'lychnapsia' in any sense of the word".
The Calendar of Philocalus (354 AD) places the Roman Lychnapsia pridie Idus Augustas, the day before the Ides of August, a month when the Ides fell on the 13th. It began to be celebrated after the mid-1st century AD.Salzman, On Roman Time, pp. 125, 170, 175. Theodor Mommsen conjectured that it was introduced around 36–39 AD along with the longer Roman Isiac festival held October 28 through November 3. During this period, the fourth epagomenal day would have coincided with August 12 on the Roman calendar. According to this theory, the Lychnapsia would have been a Roman celebration of the dies natalis ("birthday") of Isis.Salem, "The Lychnapsia Philocaliana", pp. 166–167.
The birthday of Horus also was celebrated with a lamp festival, according to a decree that marked the Battle of Raphia in 217 BC. A major festival of lights occurred for the rites of Osiris on the 22nd day of the month of Koiak (December), when 365 lamps were lit.J. Gwyn Griffins, Apuleius of Madauros: The Isis Book (Metamorphoses, Book XI) (Brill, 1975), p. 183.
Lamps or candelabra could be votive offerings, and temple buildings were illuminated with chandeliers or lamp trees.Fishwick, Imperial Cult, pp. 566–568. At Tarentum in southern Italy (Magna Graecia), the Sicilian tyrannos Dionysus II dedicated a lampstand that held one light for each day of the year.Georgiadou and Larmour, Lucian's Science Fiction Novel, p. 150. Doorways were lit by lamps for both private celebrations and public holidays.McCormick, Eternal Victory, p. 109.
The general practice of lychnapsia was part of rites for the care of the dead, in which context the lamp flames might be considered "ensouled", embodying or perpetuating the soul and vulnerable to extinguishing.Georgiadou and Larmour, Lucian's Science Fiction Novel, p. 150, note to True Histories 1.29, and citing Athen. 701B; P.Oxy 1453.4; Amherst Papyrus 2.70.11. The lights of the Egyptian epagomenal days were placed for the dead in tombs.Griffins, Apuleius: The Isis Book, p. 184. Candles or lamps were particularly associated with Roman household and ancestor cult (Lares, Penates, the Genius), as well as with Jupiter, Tutela, Saturn, Mercury, and Aesculapius.Fishwick, Imperial Cult, pp. 567–568. Lamps were an integral part of Imperial cult. At a joint temple of Tiberius and Dionysus in Teos, hymns were sung to the god, and a priest of Tiberius offered incense and and lit lamps at the opening and closing of daily rites. CIG 3062; Fishwick, Imperial Cult, p. 567. According to Aristophanes, Dionysus was called "light-bringing star" (phosphoros aster): Baracchi, Of Myth, Life, and War, p. 57.
The Lychnapsia of August 12 may have resembled rites held at the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus at Arsinoe in Egypt.Fishwick, Imperial Cult, p. 568. A papyri that records the festival budget includes oil for lighting the lamps, along with line items for polishing and garlanding statues and other expenses for the procession and temple maintenance.Ramsay MacMullen and Eugene N. Lane, Paganism and Christianity, 100–425 C.E.: A Sourcebook (Augsburg Fortress, 1992), pp. 36–37. In the Imperial era, nocturnal sacrifices for the birthday of Isis were attended by Greek men of the highest social status, as mentioned in a letter from the senator Herodes Atticus (101–177 AD) to the Alexandrian grammarian Apollonius Dyscolus.Salem, "The Lychnapsia Philocaliana", p. 166, note 17.
Lychnapsia as a ritualized lighting of lamps was an "essential feature" of cult surrounding the Hypsistarians ("Highest God"), which exhibited strongly monotheism tendencies among gentiles influenced by the concept of God in Judaism. Numerous bronze lamp-hangers from the Roman East, dating to the 3rd century AD, have been identified as belonging to the cult of Theos Hypsistos, for whom the traditional Greco-Roman gods such as Apollo acted as angeloi (messengers).Angelos Chaniotis, "Dynamics of Rituals in the Roman Empire", in Ritual Dynamics and Religious Change in the Roman Empire: Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Heidelberg, July 5–7, 2007) (Brill, 2009), pp. 14–15
By the 5th century, ritualistic lamp- and candle-lighting had been adopted as Christian practices. Lamps were burned at the statue of Constantine, the first emperor to convert to Christianity, and the emperor's image is framed by lighted candles in the 5th-century Notitia Dignitatum.Fishwick, Imperial Cult, pp. 567–568. Because Arians met by night, mainstream Christians who regarded Arianism as heresy distinguished themselves by illumination. The empress Aelia Eudoxia sponsored processions and distributed silver cruciform candleholders to participants.McCormick, Eternal Victory, p. 110. The condemnation and deposal of Nestorius was celebrated at Ephesus with organized rejoicing explicitly called a lychnapsia: the bishops were accompanied by a procession of citizens carrying lights, and women swinging led the way.Cyril of Alexandria, Ep. 25; McCormick, Eternal Victory, p. 109. When the Visigoths king Athaulf was killed, celebrations at Constantinople included a lychnapsia, followed the next day by ludi circenses.McCormick, Eternal Victory, p. 109, citing the Paschal Chronicle.
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