This fourth and final volume of the Catalogue of the lamps in the British Museum includes lamps of metal and stone in the Departments of Egyptian , Greek and Roman, Medieval and Later, Prehistoric and Roman-British, and Western Asiatic Antiquities. The area covered is that related to the Greek and Roman civilizations of the Mediterranean world and beyond, and includes the Aegean Bronze Age, the Archaic to  Hellenistic Greek periods and material of Cypriote origin, and the Roman Empire until the Arab conquests of the mid-seventh century . The lamps of the Etruscans are admitted but not their candelabra: the lamps are few in number, reflecting the Etruscan preference for candles. Unlike the fired clay Greek and Hellenistic lamps in volume i and the Roman provincial lamps in volume iii, it is impossible in the present state of knowledge to arrange these lamps geographically by place of manufacture. How-ever , the Early Imperial lamps are in the great part from Italy , and many of them must be , although the provenience is often not given , from towns affected by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, particularly Pompeii , Oplontis and Herculaneum . Several iron , bronze and leaden open lamps of the first and second centuries come from Britain , but most of the lamps of the second to fourth centuries must come from Italy ; the majority of the Late Roman lamps have Egypt as their source , but others come from the Levant and as far away as Nineveh in Mesopotamia. The great majority of the lamps catalogued are of the Roman Imperial period.