Most antiquities are clues to ancient lives and experience, and it is up to the modern imagination to fill in the blanks created by the passage of centuries. This mold was used to manufacture one of the most common household objects in the Roman Empire: the clay oil lamp. Very probably it was carved in Tunisia (a famous source for such lamps, and exported to a workshop in ancient Judea so that local craftsmen could turn out lamps of similar quality. In the modern world we are used to the workings of international trade, but how and why this unusual object came to be here remains a tantalizing mystery.