Forgotten Ages Research

Advanced Electrics in Ancient Egypt—The Strange Case of the Dendera Temple “Tubes”

Product ID: OPA3

Report Topics:

• Location and historical context of the Dendera Temple wall engravings
• Interpretations of the “tubes” by various modern engineers and researchers as being electrical in nature
• The author’s personal descriptions and experiences among the well-preserved engravings in the Dendera crypt rooms
• Answering skeptics’ criticisms regarding the meaning and purpose of the Dendera “tubes”
• Translation and alternate interpretations of the surrounding hieroglyph texts
• Other wall images—other electrical devices?
• Report Update—Are There Geometric Keys to Hidden Chambers Surrounding the Dendera Tube Crypt?

Full Report:

In all my trips to Egypt since 1981, I have been fortunate to visit the Temple of Dendera eighteen times, both with tour groups and on my own. For myself and for many who have accompanied me, one of the chief highlights of Dendera is to descend the narrow steps located toward the back of the main sanctuary and enter the rather cramped quarters of the so-called “crypt” rooms down below. I have learned from experience to take no more than five or six people with me below at a time, and certainly no one who is claustrophobic. Reaching the bottom step, the room to the right contains a few standardized religious images and texts from the Ptolemaic era. But it is the left-hand room that possesses the extraordinary Dendera “tube” pictographs that really excite the imagination.

Unlike the similar “tube” engravings found upstairs in Chamber Number Seventeen just to the left off the main sanctuary axis—which are situated high up on the wall and are hard to see because they are heavily damaged—the images in the subterranean room are very well preserved. Because of the narrowness of the passage, which only allows breadth space for two people, the wall pictures here are very up close and personal. Since the figures are large and extend over good lengths, in the light of a candle or flashlight it is sometimes hard at first glance to take in the full perspective of the scenes being portrayed. While one appreciates the detail of artistic workmanship within the immediate sight-range, the tight space forces the viewer to move up and down the corridor to be able to see everything. Later on after the tour, when viewing full panel drawings and photographs, these have helped to further reveal the deeper nature of the subject matter.

When I have been accompanied by our Egyptian tour guides—who have usually been either accredited local archaeologists or archaeology students from Cairo University—their textbook explanations of the Dendera wall engravings usually fall far short of explaining the enigmas we are all seeing in front of us, and usually admit in the end they cannot understand what is really being portrayed here. It becomes painfully obvious, at times to the point of embarrassment, that the standard explanation that these images are merely “highly symbolic religious figures” does not do justice to them at all.

I have found that, even the average everyday American or European tourist, who possesses only the slightest degree of technological savvy, nevertheless has the ability to plainly recognize that these pictures look more like technical diagrams containing complex information about some form of energy transference. Without any prompting from me, the vast majority of tour participants are visibly startled once they take in all the scenes and grasp the energy interactions going on among the figures depicted. The realization that there is something very mysterious going on here usually results in a spontaneous gasp or verbal expression of wonder and surprise.

As a welcomed verification, I have also been fortunate on occasions to have with me a number of tourists who also happen to be professional engineers, electricians, science teachers, college physics students, as well as others from the private sector who use a lot of scientific and technological information in their businesses. Their response to the wall images is invariably one of being immediately awestruck. At this point it is usually useless for me to do any lecturing, because I can no longer get a word in edge-wise. Somewhat animated, these people instantly begin to point out all the technical details they suddenly recognize, as if reading modern blueprints, and try to explain it to the rest of us, though in many cases it is way over our heads. Their growing excitement, however, is always contagious, as revelation follows revelation, and everyone begins to grasp the extent of the advanced complexities being portrayed.

Our Egyptian tour guides—who are always somewhat surprised by this sudden show of enthusiasm for anything ancient on the part of tourists—are suddenly overwhelmed with questions about the deeper meanings of the hieroglyphs surrounding the pictures, and often they come up with new interpretations that fit the more technological model. At times the conversations and spirited exchanges become so intense and prolonged that we miss seeing the rest of the Temple.

The many memories I have of these occasions and the oft-repeated inspired emotions that are generated by these events still linger with me. Now, every time I view the “tube” images from Dendera Temple, either in diagrammatic form of from my own photographs I took while down below in the “crypt” room, they still bring back to me that sense of wonder and revelation shared among so many of the tour participants. The mystery of the truly “out-of-place” nature of the Dendera “tubes” will always be for me very much alive, as I am sure it continues to be for today’s new tourists who view the wall engravings for the first time.

In two different locations within the Late Ptolemaic Temple of Hathor at Dendera in southern Egypt—in Room No. 17 among the upper chambers, and in one of the so-called “crypts” directly below the Holy of Holies—are curious wall engravings which Egyptologists cannot explain in traditional religio-mythic terms, but about which electrical engineers are finding very modern interpretations.

In the upper chamber, the topmost panel depicts Egyptian priests operating what look like oblong tubes, performing various specific tasks. Each tube has a serpent extending its full length inside.

In 1990, Oxford scientist Dr. John Harris, after a careful study of the Dendera inscriptions, concluded that they contain highly technical information. He is in agreement with Austrian electrical engineer Walter Garn, who believes the information preserved gives directions on how to produce electricity. He interprets the “serpents” inside the Dendera tubes to be electric arcs. This also parallels the research of Hugh Crosthwaite, a Birmingham, England professor of classical literature, who likewise identified that in ancient Egypt, “the snake was a symbol for electricity.”

Swedish engineer Henry Kjellson, a researcher on vanished technology, noted that in the hieroglyphs, these serpents are translated as seref, which means “to glow,” and believes it refers to some form of electrical current. A second Swedish researcher-writer, Ivan Troeng, was of the opinion that the Dendera tubes were some form of electric lamps.

German electrical technologist Professor Rainier Ose is of the opinion that the tubes were employed during religious ceremonies to dazzle worshippers coming into the Temple, that the spectacle of a moving, flickering serpent-like discharge inside a glass casing would have been an impressive special effect and priestly display of power. He suggests that just before the ceremony, a static charge was built up by means of friction and stored inside a condensor. At the climactic moment, the electrical potential was then released, and the brilliant “serpent” danced within its tube to the awe and wonder of the onlookers.

In one particular Dendera wall engraving scene, to the extreme right appears a box on top of which sits an image of the Egyptian god Atum-Ra, “Ra the Supreme.” On his head is his symbol—which is also the symbol for the emanation of divine energy—a disc of the sun. This identifies the box as the energy source. Attached to the box is a braided cable which electromagnetics engineer Alfred D. Bielek noted is virtually an exact copy of engineering illustrations used today for representing a bundle of conducting electrical wires. The cable runs from the box the full length of the floor of the picture, and terminates at both the ends and at the bases of the tube objects.

These objects each rest on a pillar called a djed, which Bielek identified as high voltage insulators. Each object is being operated by two Egyptian priests, who appear to be wearing some form of shielding.

The tube objects look very much like TV picture tubes, an impression which is not far from wrong, for electronics technician Ned Zecharius has identified the objects as Crookes or electron tubes, the forerunner of the modern television tube. They also bear an uncanny resemblance to Roentgen’s nineteenth century X-ray tubes.

In simplified terms, an electron tube consists of a glass encasement within which a florescent ray of electrons can be produced. When the tube is in operation, the ray originates where the cathode electrical wire enters the tube, and from here the ray extends through the length of the tube to the opposite end. In the temple picture, the electron beam is represented as the outstretched serpent. The tail of the serpent begins where a cable from the energy box enters the tube, and the serpent’s head touches the opposite end.

On the opposite wall to the first is another scene showing two tubes. The tube on the extreme left of the picture seems to be working under normal conditions. But with the second tube, situated closest to another depicted energy box, an interesting experiment has been portrayed.

Michael R. Freedman, an electric and electromagnetics engineer, believes that the solar disc on Atum-Ra’s head is a Van de Graaf generator, an apparatus which collects and discharges static electricity. A baboon is portrayed holding a metal knife between the Van de Graaf solar disc and the second tube.

Under actual conditions, the static charge built up on the knife from the generator would cause the electron beam inside the electron tube to be diverted from its normal path, because the negatively charged knife and the negative beam would repel each other. In the temple picture, the serpent’s head in the second tube is turned away from the end of the tube, repulsed by the knife in the baboon’s hand.

Looking at the Temple picture as a whole, every aspect represents an important feature of a serious scientific experiment. The one tube with the straight serpent is the control, or the tube operating under normal conditions for comparison. And the other with the repelled serpent is the experimental tube, or the tube upon which new conditions have been imposed. Even the use of a baboon to hold the knife shows that the ancient Egyptians were well aware of the powerful energies they were dealing with, and took no chances in participating directly in the experiment themselves.

Though the upper chamber scenes have been damaged by vandals from a later age, the pictures inside the “crypt” below the Holy of Holies are almost perfectly preserved—and their portrayal deepens the mystery of the strange electron tubes even further. Here, not only are the tubes shown in full operation—complete with two tubes this time pointed at each other, and both serpents’ heads being repulsed—but something else has been added which may suggest the ultimate purpose for the tubes themselves.

Physicist and electronics engineer Jon Jefferson noted that since the temple of Dendera was known to be a healing sanctuary, he believes that the portrayed electron tubes within may have been used to produce electrical energy fields as radiation treatments. He pointed out:

“In one crypt scene, it clearly shows energy rays being transferred from the tube bottom to the top of the heads of two people sitting directly underneath. In fact, I believe the whole purpose of the djeds underneath the tubes was not so much for support, or even insulation, but was used to directly receive and store the energy being generated from the tubes.”

More specifically, both men and women are show sitting underneath the tubes, hands held out and cupped, which meant they were in a receptive mode. In one instance, energy can be seen being transferred from the tube surface to the top of the head. In another, a man with his hand on the tube is portrayed as passing the energy on through his fingertips to a second man kneeling before him. What kind of “radiation treatment” is being performed here?

Among the various engraved tubes are also portrayed several images of the hawk-god Horus and his earth-goddess wife, Hathor, while the serpents within the tubes were identified as their son, Harsomtus. The accompanying texts suggest that the ancient Egyptians understood that it was a combination of a positive force (Horus) with a negative force (Hathor) which gave birth to electrical current (the serpent power of Harsomtus) as made visible inside the tubes.

Nearby to these tubes is the picture of what at first looks like a stylized necklace, with various chains and posts, between two of which appears to be a glowing light source with a jagged edge, that electrical engineer Dennis Hoffman believes may be an arc lamp. He observed that the necklace itself could be a piezoelectric transducer that converts sound energy into electrical energy. In the proposed model, a box on the left is a transformer, and the circle on the right is the spark gap. An insulator appears just below the two posts, exactly where one would expect. Otherwise the energy would simply be shorted back into the necklace power source, which would be a ground potential.

Elsewhere, yet another fascinating wall picture once again depicts baboons helping in the operation of a similar curious device that appears to be electrical in nature. The device, like the electron tubes, rests on a djed column, or insulator.

These djed pillars are found throughout ancient Egyptian art as sacred objects, and were protective in nature. There was a connection between the djeds and the sacred rods that protected the Egyptian temples from lightning.

It is noteworthy also that the djed was called the “spine of Osiris”—Osiris being the god of the underworld. In other words, he ruled below the earth, and thus the “death” of electrical current by the insulating properties of the djed were associated with the grounding process of the earth.

Atop the pictured djed pillar is an ankh—symbol of life and the power of the gods—and extending upward from it are two outstretched arms holding a bright, glowing object. The glowing object is peculiar in its portrayal, for while all other elements in the wall picture are drawn well-defined, the object is not, blending into the sky, suggesting that it is not solid and is in a different state of matter.

French researcher Robert Charroux believes the entire device may have been a plasma generator, with the glowing “object” at the apex being a successfully produced concentration of electrons excited to a fourth state. Rays of energy appear to be emanating from the generator, and the baboons and two human operators seated nearby are all posed with uplifted hands, as if to shield their faces from the heat and brightness of the radiation.

Nearby to the Temple of Dendera is a necropolis field which includes the mastaba of Prince Mena, who lived during the reign of Pepi I in the Sixth Dynasty, over 4,500 years ago. On one of the Prince’s tomb walls, Sir Flinders Petrie in 1898 found depicted a series of offering representations made to the deceased. Among these is a stack of tubes identical to those seen in the Temple, and next to it is a large bowl containing what looks like modern electric bulbs complete with loop-wire filaments inside each one.

In addition, Petrie reported that, “a large piece of jointed wire was found just outside the northeast corner of the sarcophagus of Mena.” Had this anomalous wire been part of an electrical device, possibly an ancient light bulb?

The wall engravings and inscriptions found in the temple of Dendera are only one example found in one ancient site which reveal advanced knowledge of electricity from the ancient past. How much more might exist in other ancient sites the world over, which has either not yet been discovered, or has not yet been recognized for what they really portray?

Glen Kreisberg, author and professional radio frequency spectrum engineer, has identified numerous examples of textile and wall engraving designs found around the globe in various ancient and indigenous cultures as depicting sine waves and other wave form patterns that are a part of the natural electromagnetic spectrum. He remarked:

“There is no doubt that many ancient cultures had a connection with nature and natural forces that was fundamental and could only be described as intimate and profound in ways we moderns can merely attempt to comprehend.

Are we to believe that mankind is only now, in the past century, exploiting the waves and frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum for the first time? And perhaps more importantly, if ancient cultures did possess this knowledge, where did it come from and how was it processed?

“Could it be that many of the symbols, images, architectures and myths of ancient cultures are representations reflecting the possession of such technological knowledge?”

Report Update - Tales from the Crypt—Revelations from the Words and Stonework Surrounding the Images of the Dendera “Tubes”

Despite the corroborating testimonies of a number of experts in the fields of physics and, in particular, electrical engineering regarding the Dendera tube images, conservative archaeologists and Egyptologists steadfastly refuse to accept that these pictures have anything to do with energy experiments of an advanced order. Their all-pervasive prejudice against any evidence for “out-of-place” technologies having existed in the past runs very deep, because it upsets long-cherished views of the linear progression concept of history, that cultural development has always been from simple to complex.

As a result, many historical researchers who uphold the accepted status quo are spending their time coming up with their own theories of how to explain the Dendera figures. Here are just a few ideas they have proposed.

On one hand are some interpreters who insist that the Temple images depict natural objects the ancient Egyptians were familiar with in their everyday life, and cannot be anything else. As an extreme example is one expert who insists that the tubes are nothing but giant eggplants. Other traditional Egyptologists, with equally straight faces, claim the bulbous items are actual lotus flowers inside which real snakes are being born.

Trying to take such a literal stance with this kind of imagery falls far short of any attempt to sensibly solve the mystery of what are obviously meant to be symbolic representations. We can well ask, when is a lotus flower not a lotus flower? Answer: When it is giving birth to a snake. And when is a snake not a snake? Answer: When it is being born out of a lotus flower.

Still other conservative interpreters argue that the Dendera tubes are nothing more than pictures of inert “cult objects,” ceremonial pieces that were utilized during ritual celebrations during the course of the religious year in the worship of the goddess Hathor. Various rooms, including the crypt in which the tubes appear, were storage compartments for such objects that were taken out during certain Temple festivals and moved about inside the sanctuary to fulfill different ritualistic functions.

These interpreters point to the hieroglyph inscriptions surrounding the wall images and what they describe. The “lotus flowers and snake” objects, symbolizing various aspects of the powers of the deified son of Hathor, were placed on representations of the solar bark, or a barge-like sled, that was either carried or dragged from Temple room to room on appointed festive days, imitating the annual movement of the sun through the religious year.

But this is as far as the conservative experts take these observations. Reading the actual texts, it becomes clear that the reason the ritual tube represented the annual solar movements is because it was anything but inactive, andactually supplied a potent source of illumination among the otherwise darkened sanctuary chambers.

The deity involved in the ceremonies was variously called Somtus (son of Hathor), Harsomtus (son of Horus) or Resomptus (son of Ra in the Horus form as the god of the rising sun, Ra-Harakhty)—all Greek forms of the earlier Egyptian god Harsamtawy. Every one of these was considered aspects of the active solar disc shining at its brightest. The texts read:

“Words to speak in praise of Harsomtus, the child. You shine with your snake (energy) at the head of the sacred land of Dendera, the living Ba (spirit-energy) in the lotus flower of the solar barge. He goes brightly as a disk of gold, like the sun goes to the sky coming out of the horizon, as master of the eternity of the day. He is alive as he shines on the day of the New Year (like the sun rising with the star Sirius). He shines among the shrines illuminating the night (darkness) wherever he nests (is carried), and gives light to the place of his birth (the Temple).”

There are still other skeptics who criticize that, even if they admit that the Dendera tube illustrations are technical and portray sophisticated electrical apparati, among the six variations depicted there is only one that could actually have produced light.

Yet one is really all you need. And that single tube was the one object that was transported from place to place to bring illumination to the many sanctuary chambers. The other slightly different tube portraits only go to show that the Egyptians were experimenting with using electrical radiation for other purposes other than as a lighting source. From what is show in the majority of wall engravings, most of the experimentation dealt with aspects of healing and spiritual expansion.

In this regards, research-writer Jon D. Jefferson made these significant observations:

“Hathor was the patroness of healing. One of Dendera’s most important functions was that of a healing center, the equivalent to that of a hospital. Pilgrims came for miraculous cures, and all manners of magical and psychological therapies were practiced.

“Having an electronics background, my initial analysis of these scenes is that they are portraying electrical device systems. I believe that the scenes show how electrically produced energy fields were somehow used for radiatioin treatments, the exact type and purpose is not really known at this time.”

Some critics have also argued that inscriptions found elsewhere at Dendera indicate that the present-existing Temple was begun under the patronage of Ptolemy XII about 54 B.C.E., and was completed by Augustus Caesar in A.D. 14, and that nowhere else do we find similar tube images in any contemporary sanctuaries of that period. If this is such technically advanced information, why do we not discover it in other places?

However, hieroglyph sources found elsewhere in the sanctuary testify to Dendera having existed over several millennia of time, that the holy site was built, torn down and replaced on several occasions in the past. Confirming this was the discovey of a single block from a previous Dendera sacred precinct dating back to Amenemhet I of the Twelfth Dynasty, circa 1990 B.C.E. Still other inscriptions claim that Dendera was a faithful copy of older sanctuaries, all having been designed by Thoth, the god of architecture himself, going back to Zep Tepi or the First Time, the distant Age of the Gods and the Companions of Horus, who ruled in prehistoric Egypt over twelve thousand years ago. Did some of the advanced yet lost wisdom from that distant era get passed down in the form of the Dendera tube portraits?

A definite supportive indication of this possibility is the fact that, while in every other location in the Temple—particularly in the upper sanctuary rooms on the main floor—the images were carved into the soft sandstone walls, the same material that the rest of the entire building was made from. Its inferior quality is the reason why today the tube figures here appear so badly worn and damaged. However, in the crypt beneath the holy of holies, someone expended a tremendous amount of effort to very specifically put into place walls made of Tura limestone, a very durable substance that gets harder with age. For this reason the same type of material was used as casing stones to cover the outside of the Great Pyramid. And it is for this reason also that the tube images in the crypt are still so well preserved, its carving details remaining intact.

Why did the Ptolemaic builders use Tura limestone only here in this crypt passage, and nowhere else in the Temple? The obvious purpose was to be able copy and save something they deemed important enough that they wanted to pass it down to future generations. More than likely they had in their possession very old technical portraits that were part of a much earlier sanctuary that was in the process of being destroyed in order to make room for the new Dendera Temple then being constructed.

Did Dendera once have its own minor Hall of Records—a cache of age-old secret wisdom that was reproduced and passed down with each rebuilding of its sanctuary, from generation to generation?

Very probably the Ptolemaic artists did not completely understand all they copied, and the inscriptions they added to the wall engravings was their feeble attempts at trying to interpret what they were given. They also likewise tried to incoporate the enigmatic symbolism of the tubes and their various aspects as best they could into the Temple rituals.

Perhaps the ancient keepers also inherited actual working tubes, and had enough background knowledge—either from writings preserved elsewhere at Dendera that are now gone, or from the missing scroll collections in the Library of Alexandria—to actually get them to function and use them. The tubes themselves have disappeared, lost from numerous lootings when the present Temple was subsequently taken over and desecrated by later succeeding religions. But through the intervening centuries the tube images managed to remain safe and hidden, and are today a powerful testament to advanced technologies long vanished.

Report Update—Are There Geometric Keys to Hidden Chambers Surrounding the Dendera Tube Crypt?

Author-researcher Robert Temple has demonstrated that the ancient Egyptians were obsessed about encapsulating sacred geometry into all their architectural plans. Their primary component, which they considered the symbol for resurrection and eternal life, as well as the key to the greater mysteries of the Cosmos itself, was what Temple calls the golden angle—generated from the golden section of the phi number of Fibonacci and the proportion of 1 to 1.618. As his primary example, Temple discovered that the entire layout of the Pyramids, the Sphinx and other monuments constructed on the Giza plateau, was based on a myriad of golden angles that defined their placements and dimensions.

On a much smaller scale, Temple also found the use of the golden angle in very specific locations in certain tombs and sanctuary chambers, which he believes was a secret sign that there are hidden chambers situated somewhere closeby. And one place where such geometric signs show up in profusion is in the crypt chamber at Dendera where the strange “tube” pictures are portrayed. The author is convinced that other uncovered chambers exist either on the same level or below the crypt, and that there are moveable stones in the crypt itself that could lead to hollow spaces opening into them.

The various Dendera tube figures, Temple noted, are depicted at golden angles to the horizontal. In addition, a line delineated from the point where a portrait of the son of Hathor’s left hand holds the end of one of the tubes, to the end of the top of the baseline of the central scene at the exact corner of the chamber, altogether forms a golden angle with the top of the baseline. Elsewhere, another image of the goddess’ son is seen crouching on an upright rectangular platform which, as the base on level with the adjoining base on which Hathor herself sits, creates a golden rectangle with several inherent golden angles.

Likewise, in another scene, a line drawn from the edge of the base of the god Sokar’s pedestal manifests a golden angle with one of the serpent heads in its tube, touching the top of the left serpent’s head. On the opposite wall, where there is only one tube shown, the lines from the edge of the base of the north wall’s Sokar falcon touches the head of that tube’s serpent, producing yet another golden angle.

As if adding confirmation that all this sacred geometry is pointing to something hidden, Temple focused his attention on a curiosity about the mortar marks that can be observed on one of the stone walls. Their appearance in an odd placement in the center of the wall engraving suggests it is sealing two small inserted stone blocks—strategically located in terms of sacred geometry beneath the heads of the two tube serpents—which at one time could have been removeable. Temple comments:

“The two small blocks are definitely suspicious, and may well lead to other concealed crypts that could elucidate the strange mysteries of this chamber. I also believe there is another chamber below this one, which has not been entered since antiquity, because I detected by tapping what appeared to be a hollow space beneath the stone at the far end of the crypt where you descend and go in.”

There may be yet other clues hinting at more secrets to be revealed here. Temple suspects the inscriptions on the crypt walls may be a form of what he calls “hieroglyphic cryptography”—that there may be in fact two different ways to decipher the texts, an obvious reading and a more occult reading. Someone in the future may one day crack the code of the deeper language interpretation, which in turn could lead to a far more revealing explanation of the puzzling portraits in this crypt of mysteries.

[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]