Liber ignium ad comburendos hostes
THE BOOK OF FIRES
fit to burn enemies
BY
Marcus Graecus
around 1230
Translated from the Latin by Albert Poisson
SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL (Revue Rose) Number 15 volume XLVII - April 11, 1891
This little treatise on pyrotechnics is the oldest known; it was Hoefer who first published the Latin text from two manuscripts in the National Library, one from the fourteenth century, the other from the fifteenth century. However, it was known before Hœfer, for Porta and Cardan cite Marcus Græcus from which they borrow various recipes. As for the author himself of the Book of Fires, it is hardly possible to say within a century of the period in which he lived. Marcus Graecus gives the recipe for Greek fire ; moreover, he uses Arabic terms ;on the other hand, Mésué, Arab doctor, quotes it. Mesue lived in the 11th century, Greek fire was invented in the 7th century: our author therefore lived around the 9th century of the Christian era.
The Book of Fires gives the composition of Greek fire, gunpowder, the preparation of saltpetre, the description of the firecracker and the rocket, the indication of means suitable for making itself incombustible, and finally the construction of a lamp at constant level. But alongside these really interesting data, there are recipes that are childish or whose effect is manifestly exaggerated.
The text of the Book of Fires is written in a barbaric Latin, where solecisms and barbarisms abound, thus spera for sphera, lichnum for lychnum, embolum for embolum. There are Arabic words like zambac, alkitran. It is likely that the original was written in Greek and was later translated into Latin.
Marcus Graecus cites only three authors : Aristotle, Hermes and Ptolemy , in connection with the recipes he attributes to them ; there were therefore before him treatises on incendiary compositions which have not come down to us.
Be that as it may, this treatise is very interesting, and several of its recipes are found barely changed in works of the 16th and 17th centuries.
The following translation was made from the Latin text that Hoefer published in his History of Chemistry (2 vol. in-8°, 1842) at the end of the first volume . Hœfer has translated several passages from the Book of Fires into this work, notably those dealing with gunpowder, the firecracker and the rocket.
BOOK OF FIRE BY MARCUS GR Æ CUS
1. Here begins the Book of Fires, the work of Marcus Græcus , in which marvelous means will be found to consume enemies both on land and at sea, of which this is the first.
2. Take pure sandarac and a solution of 3 sal ammoniac , each one pound.
Having mixed these materials together, you will put them in a glazed earthen vessel, carefully stopped with the lut of wisdom. Then, you will place it on the fire until the material begins to melt. The composition is good when it has the consistency of butter, which is ensured by inserting a wooden stick through the upper opening. You will then add four pounds of liquid pitch 4 . Because of the danger, this operation cannot be carried out in a house.
3. If you want to operate at sea with this composition, you will take a skin of goatskin and put two pounds of the composition into it. If the enemies are close enough, you will put less of them ; if, on the contrary, they are at a good distance, you will put more. You will then attach the other to an iron brooch and fashion a plank as long as the brooch. You will coat the lower part of the spindle with grease . You will light the plank of which we have spoken on the shore and you will place the skin on it. So the composition flowing down the spit on the burning board,the device will set in motion and consume everything it encounters.
4. There follows another kind of fire by means of which one can easily set fire to houses situated on hills or elsewhere.
Take : naphtha (5), one pound. Canna ferula marrow 6 , six pounds. Sulphur, one pound. Rendered mutton fat, one pound. And turpentine oil (7) or brick oil (8) or even dill oil.
Having mixed all these drugs, you will fill with the resulting composition arrows, the heads of which are divided into four. Then, having set it on fire, you will shoot each arrow into the air with the help of a bow. In the journey, the fat melts and, the composition igniting, it will consume whatever it falls on.
5. Alternate fire to burn enemies wherever they will be. Take
Balsam (9), Ethiopian Oil, P oice and Sulfur Oil (10).
Having put these materials in an earthen vase, you will bury it in the manure (11) for fifteen days. Having then removed it, you will coat the mixture with the javelins that you will throw into the enemy camp , in the middle of the tents. At sunrise, wherever the mixture has melted, it will catch fire. This is why we recommend always throwing the javelins before sunrise or after sunset ( 12).
6. Now this is how the oil of sulfur is made. Take four ounces of sulphur, grind them on a marble table, grind them to a powder, mix them with four ounces of juniper oil, and place them in a vessel until the mixture begins to distill.
7. Another way to prepare sulfur oil. Take four ounces of brilliant sulfur and fifty egg yolks crushed together ; heat over low heat in an iron skillet. As soon as the mixture catches fire, the pan is tilted, the part that flows is the desired sulfur oil.
8. Here is another kind of fire, with which one can, when one wishes, set fire to enemy houses in the vicinity. Take liquid pitch , good egg oil, crushed sulfur, each one ounce. Mix everything, stir and place on some hot coals. These ingredients having been well mixed, you will add to the whole about an ounce of virgin wax, to make a sort of plaster. When you want to use it, you will take an inflated beef bladder and, having made a hole in it, you will fill it with the mixture 13 , then you will seal it with wax . The bladder having been carefully anointed with oil, you will light a stick ofmarrabe, which is the most suitable for this purpose, and you will introduce it into the bladder through the hole.
The bladder, being stripped of the cloths which surrounded it 14 and lit, you will place it, one night when it will be windy, under the bed or the roof of your enemy.
9. Wherever the wind blows the flame, the fire will spread, and if water is thrown on it, dangerous flames will arise.
10. Under the pretext of negotiating peace, men will be sent to the enemies carrying hollow sticks filled with the following composition. They will spread this flammable material in the streets, the houses. As soon as the sun shines on it, a fire will devour everything. Take sandarac and good tartar 15 , each one pound. Melt into an earthen vase whose orifice will have been closed. These materials being melted, you will add half a pound of linseed oil and sulfur oil. The vase containing the mixture will then be placed in sheep's manure for three months, taking care to renew the manure three times a month.
11. Here is a fire invented by Aristotle while traveling with Alexander in dark regions, wanting to produce there in a month what the sun does there in a year, using a sphere of orichalcum. Take : red copper, one pound; tin, lead, iron filings, of each half a pound. Having melted these metals, we will form a wide and round plate in the shape of an astrolabe 16 . You will coat it with the following composition for ten days and let it dry ; you will start again twelve times in a row. The lit composition burns for an entire year without loss ;it may even last more than a year. You can coat any object with it and let it dry ; should a spark strike it, the mixture will burn for a long time, the water will not be able to extinguish it.
Here is the composition of this fire. Take pitch, rosin 17 , sulfur, saffron, sulfur oil prepared with widowers. You will grind sulfur on a marble table. This done, you will add the oil and the rest. We take any weight of this composition, smear the roofs with it.
12. There follows another kind of fire with which Aristotle says that one can destroy the houses built on the mountains and the ground itself. Take one pound of naphtha , five pounds of pitch, egg oil, and quicklime , from every ten pounds. Triturate the lime with the oil until it forms a thick mass. Smear this composition on the stones, the emerging grasses, during the heat wave; bury some under manure in the same place. If the autumn rain comes to fall, the composition ignites. With this fire, Aristotle destroys the land and the inhabitants. This composition, he says, can be kept for nine years 18 .
13. Here is an inextinguishable, easy to prepare and already experienced composition. Take live sulfur 19 , rosin, asphalt, tartar mixed with boaters' pitch, finally sheep or pigeon droppings. Finely pulverize these materials with naphtha, then put them in a hermetically stoppered glass vial, which you will leave buried for fifteen days in hot horse manure. You will then remove the flask and, having poured the oily composition it contains into a still, you will distill, placing the apparatus on fine, hot ashes over a slow fire. If you soak cottonin this composition and you set it on fire, all the objects on which it will have been launched using a ballista or a bow will be devoured by fire.
14. Note that any inextinguishable fire can be extinguished or smothered by four things which are : very acid vinegar, putrefied urine , sand. Finally, wool soaked three times in vinegar and dried as many times also extinguishes these fires (20).
15. Note the double way of making a flying fire:
To. Take one part rosin, as much sulfur, two parts saltpetre. Then, having well pulverized this composition and having soaked it in oil, you will mix it with linseed or deadnettle oil. The latter is better. Put the composition in a cane or a hollow stick, light it : suddenly it flies to the place you want and sets it on fire.
b. Another way to make a flying fire. Take one pound of pure sulphur, two pounds of willow or vine charcoal, six pounds of saltpetre (21). Grind these three substances in a marble mortar, to reduce them to dust as subtle as possible. We will take what we want of this powder and put it in an envelope intended to fly in the air or to produce a detonation. Note that if the envelope is intended to fly, it must be thin, long and that the powder it contains must be well packed 22 . The envelopeintended to produce a detonation must on the contrary be short and thick, the powder will fill it only halfway, its two extremities will be firmly bound by a good iron wire. This envelope must have a small hole through which you can light by inserting a wick. The wick should be thin at the ends, wide in the middle and full of powder. The envelope intended to rise in the air can have several towers. The one intended to produce a detonation will have the greatest number possible. You can make a double thunder or a double flying fire, by putting two of them in the same envelope.
16. Saltpeter is an earthy mineral ; it is found in rocks, on stones ; you will dissolve it as it is in boiling water, you will let the liquor rest, you will filter it and you will heat it for a whole day and night. You will find at the bottom of the vase the salt frozen in crystalline sheets ( 23)
.
17. Here is a composition which , once lit, will not go out; if you throw water on it, its flame will increase. We will make a sphere of Italian brass, then we will take: quicklime, one part, galbanum ( 24) and tortoise gall, each half part, then you will take as much as you want of cantharides from which you will have cut off the head and the wings, with an equal quantity of essential oil ; you will grind the whole and, having put it in an earthen vase, you will bury it for eleven days in horse manure, renewing the manure every five days. You will take the fetid and yellow spirit of the oil, andyou will coat the sphere with it ; when it is dry, you cover it with grease and set it on fire.
18. Here is another composition that will provide continual fire. Crush glowworms with essential oil (25), put them in a glass globe whose orifice has been carefully lute with Greek wax and toasted salt, you will bury it as above, in horse manure . Having then opened it, you will coat with this composition, with a feather, a sphere of Indian iron or orichal, which you will coat and dry twice in succession ; if then you light, the fire will never go out ; if rain falls on it, the flame becomes brighter.
18a. The following composition gives a long-lasting fire. Take glow worms when they start to fly ; having crushed them with an equal part of jasmine oil, you will put fourteen days in horse manure . You will then remove the composition and you will add a quarter part of turtle gall, six parts of weasel gall, half a part of ferret gall, put back as above in the manure. Then, in any vase or in a lamp of wood, brass, iron or brass, of any shape, pour this oil and you will have a flame which will last strong .a long time. Hermes and Ptolemy vouch for this prodigious and admirable secret.
19. There follows another kind of composition which, in an open or closed house, even in water, will not be extinguished. Take turtle gall , sea hare or otter gall (with which the tyriac is made) ( 26) .
Having mixed these drugs, you will add to them four times as many glowworms from which you will remove the head and the wings ; you will put the whole thing in a lead or glass vase, which you will bury in horse manure, as previously said. You will collect the oil formed. Then, mixing equal parts of the galls mentioned above and glowworms, you will bury the mixture in manure for eleven days, renewing the manure every day. Then you will make the oil already extracted, you will make a paste with the roots of grass named cyroga leonis 27 and glowworms, you will add half a part of this paste to the rest. If you prefer, you will mix all these drugs in a glass vase and operate as before . Throw this composition wherever you want and it will form a continuous fire 28 .
20. Here is a composition that when lit will make a house look as if it were made of silver. Take green or black lizards . Cut off their tails and dry them up, for in these tails you will find the quicksilver stone. You will dip a wick in it, and, having twisted it, you will place it in an iron or glass lamp , you will light it, and soon the house will take on the color of silver, and everything that will be in this house will appear silver ( 29) .
21. To make a house look green. Take the brains of a little bird, roll it up in a piece of cloth with a wick and a stick. You will put this paste in a green lamp 30 with fresh olive oil . Turn on.
22. To be able to handle fire without getting hurt. Dissolve lime in hot bean water, add a little Messina earth, then a little mallow and glue. Having mixed these drugs together, when you want to use them, anoint your hands and let them dry.
23. To make someone appear safe to burn. Mix mallow with egg white, coat your body with it and let it dry. Then cook egg yolks, mix by crushing on a piece of linen cloth. Throw powdered sulfur on it and light it (31).
24. Composition which will light up immediately if someone holds it with open hands and which will go out immediately if they are held closed. We can repeat this a thousand times if we want. Take a horse chestnut or chestnut, grind it with camphor water, coat your hands with it and the phenomenon will occur immediately.
25. To make a wine-like liquid that will ignite if water is thrown on it. Take quicklime, mix a little gum arabic, shining sulfur and oil in a vase . A sort of wine will be formed which will ignite if water is thrown on it. If you put this composition on a house and it comes to rain, the fire will consume the house.
26. You will put in your house the stone called saltpetre mixed with the stone called Albacarrimum 32 . It is a black and round stone, dotted with white spots, from which escapes, in the form of gently resplendent rays, a light similar to that of the sun. If you put this mixture in your houses, you will have a light that does not yield to the brightness of wax candles. It will shine all the better if it is placed on a high place and moistened with water.
27. You will make Greek fire this way. Take bright sulfur , tartar, sarcocolla, pitch, molten saltpeter, oil, naphtha, brick oil. Boil it all well together. Then dip tow in it and light it. You can put some on the spur of a ship as we said above. Tow coated with this composition can only be extinguished with urine, saltpetre or sand (33).
28. Thus you will make fiery water. Take old, dark, thick wine ; to a quart of this wine you will add two ounces of finely pulverized brilliant sulfur , two pounds of tartar from a good white wine, two ounces of common salt ; put this mixture in a well leaded cucurbit and, having added the capital, you will distill a fiery water which you must keep in a glass vase well
clogged ( 34).
.
29. Admirable secret by which a man can pass through flames without danger or even carry fire or a hot iron in his hand. You will take double mallow juice, egg white, poison ivy seed, lime. Spray it all. Add egg white, horseradish juice. Mix. You will anoint your body and your hands with this mixture , let it dry, anoint yourself again and then you can safely face the flames. If you want to appear to be burning, you will light sulfur on yourself and it will not harm you.
30. Here is a composition that gives such a flame that it consumes the hair and clothes of those who hold it. Take turpentine, distill it in a still, and you will get fiery water that burns on wine when ignited with a candle. Take finely ground pitch and rosin and throw it into the fire or the flame of a candle (35).
31. There are three ways to make a fire flying in the air, 1st way : we take saltpeter, sulphur, linseed oil, we grind everything and we put it in a hollow reed. We light up. The ring will be able to rise in the air.
32. You will make a flying fire in the following way : take saltpetre, brilliant sulfur, charcoal of vine shoots or willow. Mix it up and put it all in a papyrus wrapper, light it up and soon you will see it rising into the air. Notice that, with respect to sulfur, there must be three parts of coal, and with respect to coal, three parts of saltpetre (36).
33. To make a luminous carbuncle. Take as many of the glow worms as possible, crush them in a glass vial, bury them in horse manure, let it stay for a fortnight . Then, having removed the paste, you will distill it in the still, and the liquid that will have distilled will be poured into a crystal cup.
Here is an ingenious way to make a long burning lamp. We will make a chest of lead or brass filled with oil. From the bottom of this chest will leave a small pipe which will lead the oil to a candelabrum, and the light will last as long as there is oil in the chest ( 37) .
Here ends the Book of Fires.
ALBERT FISH
1. Completely translated into French for the first time, with commentary by M. Albert Poisson.
2. Sandarac. It is not resin that is to be understood here, but red arsenic , realgar or arsenic disulphide. Pliny speaks of it in these terms : “The sandarac is found in gold and silver mines ; the best is red, fragrant, shiny, crumbly. ( Natural History, book XXXIV, chap. xviii .) The term sandarac designated, until the last century, the realgar ; in Pernety's Mytho-Hermetic Dictionary we find: " Sandaracha grcrcorum : burnt arsenic or red stonecropand reduced to powder. »
3. Dioscorides says a few words about a natural product he calls ammonia, but what he says about it is not enough to assert that the ancients knew about sal ammoniac. On the contrary, it is described very explicitly in the works of Geber.
4. There is in the text : alkitran, resin, pitch in Arabic. “Alchitram, the same as Alchieram. We find this name in some chemists to signify juniper oil , liquid pitch...” (Pernety, Mytho-Hermetic Dictionary.) We find this word, without the article ai, in Natural Magic, by Porta “ Resin pitch, liquid pitch , which everyone calls kitra. ( Porta, la Magie naturelle, abridged French transl .; Lyons, 1678.) Here this word therefore has the meaning of pitch.Later it was diverted from its original meaning, and by alchitram or alcitram was understood the oil of juniper and certain preparations of arsenic. Thus Planiscampi, who lived in the seventeenth century, explains alchitram by : prepared arsenic .
5. The text is petroleum. The Romans were familiar with the different bitumens: solid bitumens or asphalts, liquid bitumens, pissasphalt, naphthas, petroleum. Pliny, in book XXXV, ch. xv, teaches us that solid bitumen was drawn from the Dead Sea and Syria. The liquid bitumen came from Sicily, the island of Zanthus and Babylon. Vitruvius also speaks of the liquid bitumen of Babylon : “At Bab ylone , there is a very large lake called Lymné Asphaltis, on which swims a liquid bitumen which Semiramis used to join the bricks with which she built the walls of the city. (Vitruvius, On Architecture, Book VIII,c. iii.) Gimbal p renders, as synonyms, bitumen and petroleum. “And the fire which is excited and kindled by water is composed of ship's and Greek pitch, of sulphur, of wine lees which they call tartar, of sarcocola, of halinitrum, which is a kind of bitumen which they call petroleum ; this was brought to Marcus Grxchus. (Cardan, the Books of Hierosme Cardanus, Milanese physician, titled : On Subtlety . Translated from Latin into French, by Richard le Blanc; Rouen, 1642.)
6. Ferula. Plant cited in Pliny, book. XIII, ch.xxii. According to what he says, the ferula is a plant close to the thapsia and rich in resin, so that it ignites easily and burns for a long time.
lf 7. Oil or essence of turpentine. Further on, Marcus Græcus calls it fiery water , a generic term applicable to all flammable liquids. The Romans and the Greeks knew the oil or essence of turpentine. To prepare it, we put resin in a metal vessel, we closed the orifice with woolen cloths and heated strongly, the essence condensed in the groin, and, to collect it, it only remained to strongly squeeze the cloths. But at the time of Marcus Græcus , we knew the distilling apparatus, and we no longer had recourse to this primitive process .
8. Brick oil. This preparation was honored for a very long time in the Middle Ages and until the eighteenth century. According to Nicolas Lefebvre, it is prepared by extinguishing fragments of red-hot bricks in oil = Leave to stand for several days and distill ; the liquid that is collected constitutes the brick oil. (See: Chymie de Nicolas Lefebvre, fifth edition, 1751.) Hanzelet (1630) and Frezier (1747), in their Treatises on pyrotechnics, also speak of brick oil, which mainly entered intocompositions intended to burn in water or ignite by water. Brick oil was also used as a remedy.
9. Synonym of petroleum, liquid bitumen.
10. Like brick oil, we find it in treatises on pyrotechnics prior to the nineteenth century. Frezier, in his Treatise on Fireworks for the Spectacle, gives a process analogous to that which Marcus Græcus is going to show us . Only juniper oil can be replaced with turpentine or walnut oil. One obtains, after hot digestion of the sulfur in these liquids, a red oil serving more or less the same pyrotechnic uses as brick oil.
11. Horse manure. It was a means that the alchemists used each time they wanted to obtain, for several days, a gentle and constant heat. Today, manure is still used to provide a temperature rise in the preparation of white lead by the Dutch process.
12. Porta gives a similar recipe in her Natural Magic . Porta probably knew the Book of Fires. In book XII, ch. x , he says, speaking of an incendiary composition : " The invention is attributed to Marcus Graecus ." Many of his recipes are identical to those of this author. (See : Porta, Magne naturalis libri viginti; Francofurti, 1597.)
13. The phrase in parentheses is not in the text.
14. So we had to keep the bladder in cloths before using it. Mr Græcus said nothing about it . Obviously, there is something wrong with this recipe.
15. It is tartar, in the ordinary sense, in question here ; further on, it says Take some tartar of good white wine (see no. 28). Tartar also entered into the composition of the Greek fire.
16. Astronomical instrument invented by Hipparchus, two centuries before the Christian era. Later, an astrolabe was understood to be a simple graduated disk bearing one or two rulers with pinnules, movable on a pivot.
17. This term currently designates the residue from the preparation of turpentine . The Byzantines certainly knew about this product.
18. This composition ignites in the rain, because the quicklime, when hydrated, gives off sufficient heat to ignite the mixture.
19. Live Sulphur. It is native sulfur, which was pure enough not to need purification. The Ancients drew sulfur mainly from Sicily.
20. This is also the opinion of all former strategists. AEncas, the tactician, recommends extinguishing the fire, when he takes to the machines of war, with vinegar ; it will die out immediately, he says, and will only resume with great difficulty. Similarly , later, the Venetians in their wars against Byzantium, to protect themselves from Greek fire, lined their vessels with tow soaked in vinegar. The incendiary materials, unable to attach themselves to them, fell back into the water where they burned without danger to the ship.
21. The actual gunpowder which comes closest in composition to the gunpowder of Marcus Græcus , is the gunpowder which has for composition pure saltpeter, 76.9; pulverized charcoal, 13.5; divided sulfur, 9.6. That of Marcus Græcus , represents in hundredths: saltpetre , 66 ; willow charcoal, 22; sulphur, 12.
22. This is the rocket ; the envelope intended to produce a detonation corresponds to the firecracker. Marcus Græcus , further calls them flying fire and thunder .
23. The ancients knew about saltpetre, but they did not distinguish it from carbonate of potash. The term nitrum, in Pliny, designates sometimes one, sometimes the other. One must go back to the Arabs to find the distinction clearly established. Geber artificially prepared the saltpetre, by dissolving the carbonate of potash in strong water and causing it to crystallize. (See Liber investigationis perfecti magisterii, printed in the Bibliotheca chemica Mangeti; Geneva, 1702, 2 vol. in-folio.)
24. Resin. It is quoted in Dioscorides.
25. There is in the text zambac, an Arabic term which means essential oil, in general, and jasmine oil, in particular.
26. Tyriac or Theriac, antidote invented by Andromache, of Crete, physician to the Emperor Nero.
27. Cyroga leonis. Unknown plant ; is not cited in either Pliny or Theophrastus. Maybe it should read syringa.
28. Notice that Marcus Græcus , does not say to light the composition . It provides a fire or rather a clarity of itself. There is a phenomenon of phosphorescence due to glowworms and decomposing organic matter (galls).
29. Porta , who sometimes slavishly copies Marcus Graecus , was careful not to forget such a beautiful secret . “To see a silver and bright house, you will overcome it in this way. Cut off the tails of several black lizards, and collect the drops of illuminating liquor that will flow from them. You will join and unite several of them and wet a piece of paper or a small branch of broom with them, and, if possible, you will mix oil in it and you will see everything dyed with an silvery color. ( Natural Magic , French edition of 1678. )
30. Green, that is verdigris. Phenomenon of colored flames.
31. This recipe, as well as the following and a few others, is more or less reproduced in the treatise : De mirabilibus mundi, d'Otho de Saxe, disciple d'Albert le Grand. Alum is added as a protective product.
32. Albacarrimum. Phosphorescent mineral unknown. Perhaps also there is a fault in the primitive text, and it is a species of garnet, named carbunculus pyropus or garamantinum by the Ancients. "This stone," says Baccius, "glows in the darkness, so that one can see into the smallest recesses of a room as if it were daylight." ( De gemmis et lapidibus preciosis; Francofurti, 1603.)
33. Greek fire was invented in the seventh century by Callinique, a Syrian engineer, who sold the secret to the emperors of Byzantium. It is probable that its composition varied enough ; that given by Marcus Græcus was to provide a very violent fire, which could even burn in water because of the nitre which supplied the necessary oxygen and the oily compounds which preserved the mass from immediate contact with water . The Greek fire offered real advantages only at sea, and in the sieges, to burn the wooden works which the besiegers approached the walls.
34. The product of this distillation is alcohol. Sulfur and salt are useless in this experiment. It follows that alcohol was known before Arnauld de Villeneuve, to whom its discovery is generally attributed.
35. Turpentine, or pine resin, was used by the Romans to give a special taste to wine; we have already found rosin, the residue of the distillation of turpentine, cited several times in the Book of Fires.
36. This powder represents approximately, in hundredths: saltpetre, 67; coal, 24; sulfur, 8.
37. It is a true constant level lamp, application of the principle of communicating vessels. The description is brief, but clear; the container and the lamp communicate by a small pipe, so that it does not contain too much oil which would be lost. It is likely that the container or chest was not in the same room as the lamp, so that the curious could not find the reason for the phenomenon.