Forgotten Ages Research

Harnessing the Heavenly Fires—Elements of Ancient Lightning Rods and Electric Illumination

Report Topics:

• The presence of lightning rods in ancient Crete, India, Egypt and Israel
• Ability to call down lightning and ignite altar fires
• Traditions of the use of electricity among the ancient and medieval Jews
• Was the Pharos lighthouse of Alexandria lit with electric illumination?
• ”Inextinguishable lamps” found in ancient temples, churches and tombs
• ”Radiant lights” used in India, Mesopotamia, the East Indies, Amazonian Brazil, among the Maya and in ancient Egypt
• Report Update—Were Oil Lamps Used to Illuminate the Egyptian Tombs Afterall?

Full Report:

Nowhere in Hebrew history is it once mentioned that lightning ever struck Solomon’s Temple, in the many centuries of its existence. The reason for this, the chronicler Josephus tells us, is that a forest of points made of gold covered the roof of the Temple, which in turn were linked with gilded connectors on the sides of the Temple, leading into the ground.

Greek archaeologist Chryssoula Kardara, in her examination of Minoan art images of mountaintop temple sites on Crete—many of which date back to the sixteenth century B.C.E.— believes that they all had lightning rods. These sanctuaries were related to the worship of thunder, and Minoan texts spoke of the priestesses’ ability by means of the rods of bringing not only discharges down from heaven, but also rain. The rods themselves were pictured as long pointed spear-like evenly spaced masts extending into the sky high over the sacred precincts, and were said to have been made of copper. Minoan traditions attributed these masts as having first been designed by a mysterious race of metal-working gods of old called the Telchines. What forgotten prehistoric civilization had they represented?

Along the Nile river, flagstaffs sheathed in copper were usually placed in front of the pylons of the temples, some staffs reaching heights of one hundred feet. Inscriptions dating to the third century B.C.E. describe the staffs at the Ptolemaic temple of Edfu in southern Egypt, dedicated to the god Horus, this way:

“This is the high gate of the falcon god of Edfu, the throne of Horus the lightning-bringer. Masts are arranged in pairs in order to cleave the thunderstorm in the heights of the heavens.”

The Greek Ktesias, writing circa 400 B.C.E., recounted concerning a similar practice in India:

“Iron placed at the bottom of a fountain of water and made into the form of a sword, with point upward, possessed, as soon as it was thus fixed into the ground, the property of averting storms and lightnings.”

It is clear such lightning rods from antiquity were not the result of chance discovery or superstitious fear, but were the end-product of careful scientific research. We sense this especially when we read these words, from an ancient Hindu work of unknown origins, the Oupnek-hat:

“To know the nature of fire, the light of the sun and moon, and the energy of lightning—this is three-quarters of knowledge, and the science of God.”

The Ancients appear to have gone one step beyond Benjamin Franklin, inventor of the modern lightning rod in 1752, for there is evidence that they not only understood lightning, but even controlled it for their own purposes. A leading scholar of esoteric studies, Eduard Schure, reported evidence that the Magi or men of wisdom in Babylonia and Persia could control what they called “pantomorphic fire” and “astral light” in the air. Their temples were lit day and night with a mysterious “radiance of the gods,” accompanied by rumblings of thunder. Schure observed:

“The Magi could generate, condense and dispense electricity at will and could direct electric currents of the atmosphere and magnetic currents of the Earth like arrows.”

In similar fashion, one of the early kings of Rome, Numa Pompilius, was well-learned in the mystic sciences of the Etruscans, an enigmatic people whose origins are lost in antiquity. The historian Pliny revealed that Numa knew the secret of forcing Jupiter the Thunderer to descend to earth, and indicated that two processes were involved. The first obtained thunder (impetrare), and the second the desired lightning (cogere). It would seem that the Roman king knew of some method of concentrating atmospheric electricity over a distance (the thunder indicating the approach of concentration), and once a saturation point was reached, he created the cathode that brought the heavenly spark into being and directed it to a specific point.

That Numa’s work is to be taken seriously can be seen in a tragedy related by both Pliny and Livy. Tullus Hostilius, a later prince of Rome, rediscovered the “Book of Numa” after the old monarch had died, and decided to follow its instructions to bring down the “heavenly guest.” But he performed the rites imperfectly, with the result that he was struck dead by the flash, and his palace was completely consumed.

The Ancients’ practice of concentrating and accurately directing atmospheric energies is most disturbing in the light of modern science’s inability to duplicate the same feat. Where did such knowledge come from? Ammianus Marcellinus (fourth century A.D.) recorded that, long before the Etruscans:

“The Magi preserved perpetually in their furnaces fire that they miraculously got from heaven.”

The Roman Servius revealed further:

“The first inhabitants of earth never carried fire to their altars, but through prayer brought down the heavenly fire.”

Thus, the focusing of some form of psychic energies was involved in the process. According to the legend which Servius preserved, it was Prometheus—the last of the Titans, the earliest race to inhabit the Earth according to the Greeks—who “discovered and revealed to man the art of bringing down fire from above.”

Other legends also suggest that the knowledge and use of atmospheric electricity originated with an unknown civilization that existed before any of the known ancient cultures—from a primordial Golden Age long passed.

Among the Hebrews are many traditions of the use of electricity in a remote age. The Aggadah indicates that the generation of Enos—a grandson of Adam, the founder of the Antediluvian civilization—was the first to “control heavenly forces,” the manipulation of lightning and atmospheric energies.

According to the historian Goriandes, Alexander the Great wrote to his teacher during his conquest of Persia that an island located off the coast of India was inhabited by men who believed that at one time Cainan, the great-grandson of Adam, had been entombed on their island. Prior to the Flood, their tradition went, a high tower was situated over the sepulcher, protecting it in a remarkable way. Anyone who approached the tomb was struck dead by a flash of lightning that was discharged from the top of the tower. The tomb had long been destroyed by the Flood, but the story of its miraculous tower had been perpetuated by every generation inhabiting the island since the great catastrophe.

Elsewhere, in the account of the Book of Genesis, we find two references to a “window” in the Ark of Noah, the patriarch who escaped the Flood. The second reference is in Genesis 8:6, and the Hebrew word used there is challon, or “opening,” out of which Noah released his birds. The first reference, however, in Genesis 6:16, utilizes a different word—tsohar—which does not mean window at all. Where it is used on twenty-two other occasions in the Old Testament, it is given the meaning, “a brightness, a brilliance, the light of the noonday sun.” Its cognates have the word refer to something that, “glistens, glitters or shines.” Many Jewish scholars of the traditional school identify the Tsohar as, “a light which has its origin in a shining crystal.” Hebrew esoteric tradition for centuries has described the Tsohar as a gem or pearl that Noah hung from the roof of the Ark, and by power contained within itself, lighted the entire vessel.

The light source of Noah seems to have been preserved in history until quite late, for we find indications that Solomon of Israel may have possessed it in 1000 B.C.E. A Jewish book of tradition entitled The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelek, contains this statement:

“Now the house of Solomon the King was illumined as by day, for in his wisdom he had made shining pearls (tsohar) which were like unto the sun, the moon and the stars in the roof of his house.”

Solomon was well aware of the existence of a former advanced technology, and that the knowledge of that technology was slowly being lost through succeeding ages, for he wrote, in Ecclesiastes 1:9-11:

“There is no new thing under the sun. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It has been already of old times, which was before you. There is no remembrance of former times, neither shall there be a remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.”

In later ages still, we know from historical records that such Hebrew secret societies as the Kabbalists preserved knowledge of electricity as late as the medieval period.

Eliphas Levi recorded the story of the mysterious French Rabbi Jechiele, who was an advisor in the thirteenth century court of Louis IX. Jechiele, his contemporaries wrote, often astounded the king with his “dazzling lamp that lighted itself.” The lamp possessed no oil or wick, and Jechiele placed it in front of his house for all to see. What the lamp’s secret source of power was, however, the Rabbi never revealed.

Another device, which Jechiele used to protect himself, was a doorknocker which literally shocked his enemies. The thirteenth century chroniclers told how:

“He touched a nail driven into the wall of his study, and a crackling, bluish spark immediately leapt forth. Woe to anyone who touched the iron knocker at that moment. He would bend double, scream as if he had been burnt, then he would run away as fast as his legs could carry him.”

It would appear that Jechiele pushed a discharge button which sent an electric current into the iron knocker of the door, slightly electrocuting any unwanted visitor.

A number of modern scholars, from a detailed study of classical Greek and Roman authorities, believe that the famed Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria did not possess an ordinary fire as its beacon, but that instead it was equipped with some form of powerful electrical source of illumination. First century historian Josephus recorded that the Pharos light was so brilliant that it could be seen by sailors three hundred furlongs away—in modern measurement, a distance of over 32 miles—something that could not have been achieved just by an ordinary fire burning on top of a high tower. Both Tatius and Chacreas depicted the light of the Pharos as “the rising of a second sun to be a guide for ships.” According to Libanius, the light was said to be “as bright as the Sun, such that one could not look directly into it. It is far superior to the everyday oil lamps lighted by the Egyptians.”

Nor can an ordinary fire be projected as one or more streams of light as the Pharos was said to accomplish. The Roman historian Marcellinus wrote about the Lighthouse being the source of several “shining beacons” that emitted rotating searchlight patterns upon shallow waters far distant from the harbor. In the fifteenth century Italian scholar Leon Battista Alberti preserved the story that the Pharos lights “were hung in continual Vibration (?), and kept always moving about from place to place.”

The Alexandrian Lighthouse does not appear to have been unique, however. Ancient Sicilian silver denari coins, minted between 42 and 40 B.C.E., portray another lighthouse which once guarded the harbor of Messina, and shows a statue of Neptune at its apex holding not a fire or torch, but a smokeless beam of light.

Even earlier, the Greek playwright Aeschylus in the fifth century B.C.E. described how in the days preceding the Trojan War the ancient Mycenaeans had utilized signal towers atop mountain peaks throughout the Aegean region which were utilized for “transmitting messages on their golden-beamed flames, as if by another and stranger sun.”

Not only was the Pharos lit with electricity, but so it appears were portions of the city of Alexandria itself. The Greek writer Achilles Tatius described how in the evening the city was so illuminated, “there was no sign of night.” He remarked that the metropolis was filled with “countless rows of columns” each with its own unusual light source, and that because of them, “it was as though another sun had arisen that spread it rays in every direction. There I saw a city whose beauty rivaled that of the heavens by day.”

Stories of “flameless lights” and other ancient electrical gadgetry persist in historical accounts the world over. Numa Pompilius, the Roman king who could bring down lightning from the sky, was also said to have possessed a “perpetual lamp” that burned in the sanctuary he dedicated to Jupiter the Thunderer. Interestingly enough, similar lamps were associated with other Jovian temples. The sacred site of Hadad at Baalbek boasted the wonder of “luminous stones” that were lighted by “thunderbolts.” And at the famed sanctuary of Jupiter-Ammon in Egypt, Plutarch reported the existence of a lamp which had burned a non-flickering light continuously for several centuries. Likewise, Pausanius described a similar “gold lamp” in the Temple of Minerva which also produced a light for considerable periods.

St. Augustine, in the fourth century, observed that in Egypt, “There was, and still is, a temple of Venus, in which a lamp burns so strongly in the open air that no storm or rain extinguishes it.” As to where such an unexplainable wonder came from, the early Christian father wrote further:

“We add to that inextinguishable lamp a host of other marvels of human and or magical origin. If we choose to deny the reality of them, we shall ourselves be in conflict with the truth of the sacred books in which we believe. Thus either human ingenuity has devised in that inextinguishable lamp some contrivance based on ancient knowledge or else it was contrived by magic to give men something to marvel at in that shrine.”

As late as the sixth century, in the reign of Justinian, a “fireless lamp” was reported in Antioch which had not gone out for five centuries. Later still, when the sepulcher of Pallas was opened near Rome in the early 1400’s, it was found to be lighted by a mysterious lantern which had kept the inside of the tomb illuminated for more than two thousand years.

The Venerable Bede related the story of the pilgrimage of his English compatriot Arculfus to the Holy Land in the year 670, and on his visit to the Church of the Mount of Olives (later destroyed in the eleventh century) he told of its wondrous source of lighting. Rev. James R. MacPherson in 1895 offered this translation:

“The brightness of these lamps is so great that, as their light is copiously poured through the eight glass windows from the summit of the Mountain of Olivet, not only is the part of the mountain nearest the round basilica to the west illuminated, but also the lofty path which rises by steps up to the city of Jerusalem from the Valley of Josaphat, is clearly illuminated in a wonderful manner, even on dark nights; while the greater part of the city that lies nearest at hand on the opposite side is similarly illuminated by the same brightness.”

The early pilgrim also added:

“In that round church, besides the usual light of the eight lamps mentioned above as shining within the church by night, there are usually added on the night of the Lord’s Ascension almost innumerable other lamps, which by their terrible and admirable brightness, poured abundantly through the glass of the windows, not only illuminate the Mount of Olivet, but make it seem to be wholly on fire; while the whole city and the places in the neighborhood are also lit up.”

The Greek mystic Apollonius of Tyana, in his travels to India in the first century, wondered concerning “this fabulous country full of marvels” including “pillars of light which projected upward like searchlights” and “radiant stones that illuminated the town and turned light into day.” He likewise spoke of “fire that is seen raised aloft in the air and dances in the ether” by which “at night they entreat the ray of light not to take the night amiss, but to stay with them just as they have brought it down.”

The Chinese traveler Yuan-chwang, who journeyed the length of India in the seventh century, recounted concerning a number of religious sanctuaries in the sub-continent and how they had been illuminated:

“In the southwest of the country was a monastery in a mountain; the stone tope (stupa) of this monastery exhibited supernatural lights and other miracles; sunshades placed by worshippers on it between the dome and the amalaka remained there like needles held by a magnet. To the northeast of this hill-monastery was another with a tope-stupa like the preceding in its marvels. Far away in the south was the (Ceylon) country, and from this place on calm nights one could see the brilliant light from the pearl on the top of the tope-stupa over the Buddha’s relic in that region.”

In 1886, Scottish archaeologist James Burgess wrote concerning the location and details of artifacts unearthed from the ruins of a third century B.C.E. Buddhist stupa called Amaravati. The stupa was located on the south bank of the Krishna River near its junction with the Moony Air River, about half a mile east of ancient Dharanikotta—which means “Magic City.” Here in 1796 a British officer named Colonel Mackenzie had begun exploration of a mound locally known as Dipaldinne, which has the connotations, “Hill of Lights” or “Hill of Lamps.” In 1816 Mackenzie returned with a large expedition of experts to both Dipaldinne and also Amaravati, and it was in the latter location he discovered a number of intricately carved stones portraying various pillars topped with great glowing discs. In several instances the discs are seen being powered by two serpents denoting two polarities. Around each shining pillar are numerous worshippers with arms and hands upraised.

Author-researcher Larry Brian Radka offers a technical description of one of the stone images:

“The spiral radiation emanating from the searchlight and the lotus flower upon which it rests are ancient Indian symbols representing the Sun, which are appropriate representations for the bright beams of light emitted by the arcing fire from the light. The flower’s spreading pedals mirror the atmospheric dispersion of its light beams. The arc light’s large, high current, electric cables are properly looped to allow slack for rotating the electric mirror, and then they are sent down through the swivel mount to its heavy-duty battery in a cage that comfortably rests on sturdy legs. The serpent’s decorated collars indicate he is under control as he spits out his electrical fire while preparing to inject (switch on) his lethal electric venom into the cable hanging out of his mouth. All the priestly technicians—except the cable-laden bearers—clasp their hands upward in thanksgiving for the wonderful benefit’s the electric serpent spews forth. This artifact measures 2 feet 8 inches by 3 feet 10 inches, and it is located in the National Museum of India, in New Delhi.”

In 1881, Assyriologist Hormuzd Rassam unearthed at ancient Sippara—now Abu Habba in Iraq—the remains of a shrine which bore the name Ebabbara, meaning, “the Shining House.” Within the shrine he found a large marble cuneiform tablet dedicated by King Nabu-apal-iddina (circa 850 B.C.E.) to the god Shamash. The god is portrayed seated on a throne and surrounded by a structure with a serpent roof whose head rests atop a column. Protruding from the mouth of the serpent is the upper portion of another representation of Shamash, who holds two cables that are attached to what the texts call the “golden image”—a disc of the sun that radiates with rays in all directions, situated on a box-like altar.

The texts further identify Shamash as the “searchlight god” and the sun disc which he faces and manipulates is depicted as “covering the heaven and earth with luster.” Before the golden disc come three priest-worshippers with hands uplifted in its adoration and in protection from its brilliance.

Other inscriptions appear to refer to the specific configuration of certain deities in certain locations. One reads: “Sin, Shamash, Ishtar are to be placed opposite each other like a flowing ocean current between the serpent and the column.” If Sin as the moon god represents a negative polarity and Ishtar as the Venus goddess is a positive polarity, and Shamash symbolizes the joining of the two in an alternate current, then the injection of electrical energy “between the serpent and column” in the power device surrounding Shamash may be what powers the “golden image” so that it became “a second sun.” Another text states, “I made the golden tiara-disc of Shamash to glow anew and made it bright as day.”

Oxford professor of ancient history George Rawlinson found evidence that electric lighting may have survived in the ancient world as late as the seventh century. The White Palace of Ctesiphon, the capital of the Sassanian dynasty of Persian kings, had a most unusual system of illumination. As Rawlinson described it from Persian sources: “The vaulted roof presented to the eye representations of the heavenly bodies, the sun, moon, and the stars, while globes, probably of crystal and burnished metal, hung suspended from it at various heights, lighting up the dark space as with a thousand lusters.”

In the East Indies, modern-day stories of bright lights left from a lost culture persist. The Torres Strait islanders were known up until the nineteenth century to have possessed strange ever-glowing stone balls called booyas, which emitted a blue-green brilliance. In New Guinea, near Mount Wilhelmia, South African engineer C. S. Downey reported finding indigenous peoples worshipping great stone balls twelve feet in diameter placed atop columns, which lighted up portions of the rain forest like modern neon lighting. Downey believed that these peoples, “had inherited the incandescent spheres from a civilization of which there is no record in our histories.”

The ancient peoples of the New World also had their share of mysterious “perpetual lights” and other wonders. Colonel Percy H. Fawcett, who led many expeditions into the jungles of Brazil in search of lost cities, was told by one indigenous Brazilian that in a remote region through which the Amazon flows, he had seen the ruins of gigantic buildings, many of which were, “lit up by a great square crystal that sits on a platform in the center of the room.” The Brazilian claimed that one could not look directly at the lights, so bright are they, yet they have always been there, for even his forefathers had spoken of the lights’ existence. Some unknown civilization had died ages ago, but the power that had illumined their cities was still alive. Fawcett, writing to British author Lewis Spence, expressed his opinion:

“These people had a source of illumination which is strange to us. In fact they were a remnant of a civilization which has gone and which retained the old knowledge.”

In another instance, Fawcett was told by the chief of the Nafaqua tribe—from the area between the Xingu and Tabalatinga Rivers—that he claimed to know the whereabouts of a lost city with many strange temples which possessed “stars to light them, which never went out.” Fawcett later wrote a most revealing comment:

“This was not the last time I heard of these permanent lights found occasionally in the ancient houses of worship built by a forgotten civilization of old. There was some secret means of illumination known to the ancients that remains to be rediscovered by the scientists of today—some method of harnessing forces unknown to us.”

Years later Fawcett’s son, Brian, added this footnote to his father’s words:

“In view of recent (technological) developments, there is no reason to dismiss the ‘lamps that never go out’ as myth. The world has been plunged into a state of barbarism by terrible cataclysms. Continents subsided into the oceans and others emerged. Peoples were destroyed and the few survivors who escaped were able to exist only in a state of savagery.

“The ancient arts were all but forgotten and it is not for us in our ignorance to say that the science of antediluvian days had not advanced beyond the level we have now reached.”

Three centuries earlier, in 1601, the Portuguese chronicler Barco Centera described a lost city called Gran Moxo, situated on an island lake in the Matto Grasso near the source of the Paraguay River, as also having an enigmatic source of light. He wrote:

“On the summit of a pillar, twenty-five feet high, was a great ‘moon.’ It illuminated all the lake dispelling darkness and shadows by night and day, so that all appeared very bright.”

Legends of continually shining lights, with the added mystery of windowless buildings, are extant among the ancient Central American cultures. R. Mooney, an author of anomalous history, pointed out:

“When the Spaniards first arrived in the Americas they were told of bright cities, lit by stars, hung from the roofs, that never went out. The description reminds us of some form of electrical illumination which was of course unknown in Europe at this time.”

No trace of such illumination was found by the conquering conquistadors, the light sources having been removed and hidden by the escaping civilized indigenous peoples. But among the ruins of the Maya, one may visit today many large buildings which are completely windowless but show no signs of blackening by fire or oil lamps or torches. Some other method of lighting had to have been employed to see in these ancient rooms.

The enigma of smokeless lighting is one which finds many parallels in the land of the Nile as well. Nineteenth century Orientalist Madame Helena P. Blavatsky, in her monumental work Isis Unveiled, observed:

“It is genrerally asserted that neither the early inhabitants of the Mosaic times, nor even the more civilized nations of the Ptolemaic period were acquainted with electricity. If we remain undisturbed in this opinion, it is not for the lack of proofs to the contrary.”

In 1894, British astronomer Sir J. Norman Lockyer, in his detailed survey of ancient Egyptian temples and tombs, made these observations:

“In all freshly-opened tombs there are no traces whatsoever of any kind of combustion having taken place (i,e., from fire, torches, candles or oil lamps). So strikingly evident is this that my friend, M. Bouriant, while we were discussing this matter at Thebes, laughingly suggested the possibility that the electric light was known to the ancient Egyptians.”

Yet today modern researchers are no longer considering this as a joke.

As good examples, no trace of smoke was ever found in the Great Pyramid of Giza in its upper chambers, or in the subterranean tombs of the Pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings. In fact, in none of the over four hundred documented and elaborately decorated underground systems found throughout the Nile Valley is there any trace of original smoke residue, from the periods when the ornamentations were made. What soot marks appear today were from the tomb robbers, explorers and tourists who entered in much later periods. What is more, none of the tomb paintings or engravings themselves portray any type of torch or lamp being used for everyday purposes, and only in rare instances when utilized in religious rituals—and then for purely ceremonial purposes.

It has been thought that perhaps the Egyptians used some complicated system of mirrors to bring sunlight into the burial chambers, but no remains of any such system have ever been found. Besides, from the many Egyptian mirrors that have survived, we know that their reflection efficiency was less than twenty-five percent. A series of such mirrors necessary to reach into the deepest portions of the tombs would have been able to transfer very little or no light at all.

The only alternative is that the Egyptians had smokeless light sources. Since the Egyptians, as we have already seen, appear to have possessed electricity for electro-plating gold jewelry, they may have possessed electric lamps to illuminate their tombs during construction and decoration. The source of that electricity may have been either by batteries, or atmospheric, or from the earth itself, as many of the ancient tombs and temples along the Nile were constructed on earth energy centers and lines of current.

Report Update—Were Oil Lamps Used to Illuminate the Egyptian Tombs After All?

The idea that any form of lighting using fire from burning oil would not have worked during the time when the ancient Egyptians wer decorating their tombs—because it would have produced too much soot—has been challenged by a number of skeptics.

Actual experiments utilizing small trays filled with olive oil with an oil-soaked cotton wick lit on the tray rim will produce a relatively smokeless flame. A pinch of salt added to the oil reduces the soot content further, plus the placement of some form of covering over the flame prevents what little carbon debris there is from reaching the ceiling.

In addition, some of the tomb inscriptions in the Valley of the Kings give instructions to the artisans concerning how much oil and wicks they were appropriated each day for their work, so we do know that, at least in the later-dated tombs, some form of oil lamps was indeed employed.

However, when we look more deeply for evidence about what kind of lighting source was used, some intriguing questions remain.

I have personally visited and examined the mortuary art in most the tombs in the New Kingdom Valleys of the Kings, Queens and Nobles, as well as the Old Kingdom royal tombs at Saqqara. What always amazes me is that, especially in the earliest artwork, there is greater attention to detail of design, form and color that could not have been executed with just a few sputtering oil lamps. In fact, what becomes very apparent is that it is the earlier tombs that possess the most detailed work, while in the later mortuary examples the art is more generalized, even cruder by comparison.

What this suggests is that the first tomb artisans must have had at their disposal a far better and brighter source of illumination by which they made their amazing creations, while their later descendants had to deal with much less ideal lighting methods—mainly, oil lamps. In the interim, the access to a higher technology which could produce a constant and reliable lighting in the tombs was lost.

The crux of the problem is not how much the oil lamps made soot, but that their combined fires also created significant heat. When several lamps were used in a tomb, the accumulated heat they generated would have risen to the ceiling and would have permanently changed the chemical composition of its paint covering in a slight but detectable way. Not only in this location, but also wherever detailed work was attempted, requiring many lamps to be brought into closer proximity to the artwork, here too the paint would have been almost imperceptibly altered. And, true to form, modern chemical analysis in many of the later tombs show just such a slight disfiguration in the various pigments utilized in these exact locations.

And yet—and here is the significant point—in the earliest tombs, especially among the Old Kingdom examples, no such chemical decomposition caused by heat is present. Neither on the ceilings nor especially in those areas where the most intricately detailed artwork occurs, the tell-tale signs of the use of heat-producing oil lamps are not there.

From this evidence, it is obvious that something else was employed, something that did not give off excessive heat and caused no changes in the surrounding paint. Could this source have been some undiscovered electric illumination that was also a significant low-level heat producer?

Of course we will not know the full answer to this mystery until the actual remains of an ancient electric lamp are finally found.

[Copyright 20009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]