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Several vendors on fleabay and elsewhere offer cheap reproductions of the ceramic oil lamps used thousands of years ago.
Edited to remove rotted link. Simply search on ebay for "biblical oil lamp"
Cheap and very simple. I would advise against use of modern lamp oil/kerosene/paraffin in this style of lamp. The flame is very close to the oil which might become heated to a dangerous degree.
Vegetable oil is the proper fuel. The wick is consumed relatively rapidly, but a large stock may be held at little expense.

Use with great care, preferably on a shallow metal tray filled with sand.

If you have a reserve of cooking oil that has gone rancid then it may be used thus rather than wasted. Vegetable oil can be stored and used for food or as a light source, whichever need is greater.

I recall it saying in the bible about trimming their wicks.

I guess you would have to keep pulling out the wick with a pair of tweezers as it burnt down.

As a further preparation I recommend everyone gets their hands on a fairly large Fresnel lens larger than 30cm x 30cm to use as an ignition source. It was very easy to get cardboard to set on fire with this size. The smaller ones just seem to scorch it rather than ignite it. The harsh Australian sun does help too.

I bought one online from Sri Lanka and it works well. I used waste olive oil and after soaking the wick pulled it out by about a centimetre then lit it with a strange non-gas filled USB powered lighter I found today in the supermarket that strikes a small arc/spark to light candles, pieces of paper and similar things including, it seems, oil lamps (I never knew such things existed). I found it burnt down with a large flame to about level with the outlet of the lamp and stabilised with a smaller flame and burnt for about two hours until the wife put it out. There seemed to be negligible oil consumption.

Then there are reed lights ....

AFAIK, rush lights/reed lights are no longer available. One could make ones own but it seems very tedious.
Rushlights were in general rendered obsolete by the availability of cheap and better quality candles, but they returned during the last war when candles and lamp oil were in short supply.

The main merits of the ancient style of oil lamp are that they can burn without attention for many hours, and old or rancid cooking oil may be used as fuel.

I’ll stick with the oil lamp. Apparently they are used for some form of Indian religious ceremony. I might get a few more to help the Sri Lankan economy as they probably still need it.

I think the UK has signed up to fairly unlimited Loss and Damages for the Third World countries so maybe you need to get a few more for when the money runs out. Or more correctly the credit.

Through the re-enactment I do I've made both oil lamps and rush lights. The rush lights are simple to make and use fat such as lard which is melted and then the rush soaked in it. Simple to make , not the brightest in the world and some say they smell of burnt fat although I've never found them offensive , not long lasting but on the positive side easy to carry. Oil lamps are also easy to make and we have found a traditional mop head provides an abundant amount of wicks. Their one disadvantage is that they can be difficult to transport in that they get very messy if tipped over although we found a mix of oil and lard can solve that. To be fair we don't use lamps very often as re'enactment tends to take place in the daytime but sometimes someone will have one burning away. If nothing else it has caused a bit of shock and humour when a re-enactor has in front of a crowd casually dipped a piece of bread in the lamp and ate it.

BritDownUnder wrote: ↑16 Oct 2022, 20:04 I recall it saying in the bible about trimming their wicks.

I guess you would have to keep pulling out the wick with a pair of tweezers as it burnt down.

As a further preparation I recommend everyone gets their hands on a fairly large Fresnel lens larger than 30cm x 30cm to use as an ignition source. It was very easy to get cardboard to set on fire with this size. The smaller ones just seem to scorch it rather than ignite it. The harsh Australian sun does help too.

I thought that the story in the Bible referred to wise virgins and foolish virgins, who both desired to stay awake all night.
The foolish virgins each had a small oil lamp, these ran out of oil and the foolish virgins then slept and missed the festivities.
The wise virgins each had a similar lamp but also a small jar of oil to replenish the lamps such that they burnt all night.
See I did learn something at sunday school !
These days of course battery lamps would be used, and the foolish virgins would use pound shop batteries that fail to last the night.
The wise virgins would use Duracells that would run all night.