Forgotten Ages Research

The Baghdad Batteries and Beyond—Evidence of Ancient Electricity and Electroplating

Report Topics:

• Background on the unearthing of the clay pot battery at Khujut Rabua in Iraq
• Remnants of other batteries found in nearby sites all dating to the Parthian period
• Expert opinions and tests with working replicas of the ancient batteries
• Discovery of Sumerian artifacts in the Iraqi State Museum showing evidence of silver plating using the electrolysis process
• Speculations on what else the Parthian batteries may have been used for
• Countering skeptics’ arguments against ancient knowledge of electricity
• Evidence of batteries and electroplating utilized in Egypt and India
• Egyptian artwork depicting the manipulation of bio-electric and geo-electric energies
• The author’s tests using replicas of the ancient Wsr staff and Ankh scepter within the temples of Egypt

Full Report:

Beginning in 1930, an Austrian painter-turned-archaeologist named Dr. Wilhelm Konig (alternate spelling in some sources, Koenig) helped facilitate a German expedition to the ancient Mesopotamian site of Warka. A year later he was appointed Assistant Director of the Baghdad Antiquities Administration, and became its full Director in 1934. He then took over as head of the Laboratory of the Iraqi State Museum, and in 1938 helped excavate ruins at Khujut Rabua, a village to the southeast of Baghdad.

What intrigued Konig about this location is that two years earlier a hillside had been washed away by a local flood, revealing an ancient gravesite. On June 14, 1936, workmen of the Iraqi State Railroad Department, in cleaning away the debris, discovered more extensive remains which were tentatively dated to the Parthian period, a Persian culture that occupied the region between circa 250 B.C.E. and A.D. 225. Among the initial finds was a number of beads, clay figurines and engraved bricks.

During Konig’s subsequent investigations, he brought to light an unusual object—a six-inch high pot of bright yellow clay. The pot contained a cylinder of sheet-copper five inches by one and a half inches in diameter. The edge of the copper cylinder was soldered with a 60–40 lead-tin alloy which is comparable to the best solder we have today. The bottom of the cylinder was capped with a crimped-in copper disk and sealed with asphalt or bitumen. Another insulating layer of bitumen sealed the top and also held in place an iron rod suspended into the center of the copper cylinder. The rod showed evidence of having been significantly corroded with acid.

With a background in mechanics, Dr. Konig recognized this configuration was not a chance arrangement, but that the clay pot was nothing less than an ancient electric battery. Konig published his findings in a book entitled The Lost Paradise, which described his nine-year exploits in the Middle East. His account came to the attention of science historian Willy Ley, and in 1939—working with Willard F. M. Gray of the General Electrics High Voltage Laboratory in Pittsfield, Massachusetts—he constructed a duplicate model of the ancient clay pot battery.

They found that by adding copper sulfate, acetic acid or citric acid—all of which were well known two thousand years ago—the battery produced between one and a half and three volts of electricity. The model was later placed on exhibit in the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield.

More tests with another model, conducted in 1960 by John B. Pierczynski of the University of North Carolina, used a five percent vinegar solution as the electrolyte. The replica battery produced half a volt of electricity for eighteen days.

More recently, in 1999, students of Dr. Marjorie Senechal, professor of the history of science at Smith College in Massachusetts, built models of the ancient battery and also used vinegar as an electroyte. The replica put out 1.1 volts for a sustained period of time.

In one episode of the popular television series “Myth Busters,” first aired on March 23, 2005, the investigation team decided to put to the test whether the “Baghdad battery” actually worked or not. They constructed ten hand-made terracotta jars, placed inside the copper cylinders and iron rods in precisely the same configuration as the original, then used lemon juice as the electrolyte. Linking the jars together in series, the television team successfully produced nearly 4 volts. Needless to say, no “myth” was “busted” in that evening’s program.

What is truly amazing is that generation of electric current by the same means was not invented in Europe until 1800 by Count Alassandro Volta. Some modern experts of course remain skeptical about the idea of electricity dating back to ancient times, but the evidence is continually pointing more and more to such a conclusion.

Physicist-chemist Walter Winton, a Keeper of the Science Museum in London, examined the original clay pot battery firsthand while re-organizing the Iraqi Museum in 1962. He made this comment:

“Not being an archaeologist, I jumped straight to the easiest scientific solution. I still can’t see what else it could have been used for, and if there has been a better explanation I haven’t been told it. Is a practical knowledge of current electricity at this early period so unthinkable? I am sure the ability of early people is much underrated. Perhaps the incredibility is in the mind of the unbelievers. Arrogant pride in our modern scientific achievements makes us unwilling to believe that the effects of current electricity could be known by our Mesopotamian ancestors two thousand years ago.”

As further support, soon after Konig’s initial discovery of the first clay pot battery other ancient batteries were brought to light. Four similar clay pots with copper cylinders were unearthed in the remains of an ancient residence near Tel Omar—the ancient Seleucia—also near Baghdad. With these were found thin iron and copper rods which may have been used to connect the pots into a series in order to produce greater voltage.

The remains of ten other batteries were also unearthed at Ktesiphon—again near Baghdad—by Professor E. Kuhnel of the Staalichen Museum of Berlin. These were found broken down into their component parts. A large ceramic vase contained ten copper cylinders, a second vase had ten iron rods, and a third possessed bitumen plugs with holes ready for the rods to be placed through. It looks as though the batteries were mass produced and their maker had been interrupted before assembling the pieces into working batteries.

Investigation indicates that the clay pot batteries were used in ancient times to plate objects with gold, silver and even antimony using the electroplating process. Not only does electroplating involve electricity, but also knowledge of manipulation of complex chemicals. Dr. Konig, before leaving Iraq in 1939, discovered that the gold and silver smiths of Baghdad were still using a crude form of the ancient batteries to electroplate their wares. This process had been kept secret by them and handed down father to son for an unknown number of generations.

Electroplating techniques, however, generally need a current of only half a volt. Yet the finds at Tel Omar and Ktesiphon imply that methods were being employed to increase output beyond the three volt maximum of a single pot battery, and that the batteries were being mass produced. What had they been used for, besides electroplating?

Not long ago, a number of modern researchers suggested that perhaps the ancient batteries had been used for medical purposes. We know from ancient texts that both the Babylonians and Greeks used the natural current discharge in electric torpedo fish, eels and rays to heal headaches, relieve pain, and as a local anesthetic during minor surgery. Did they substitute the more controllable current from clay pot batteries to obtain the same results?

Another possibility is that ancient physicians utilized an amplified generated current to help bring back patients who had suffered from heart attacks—in much the same manner that the electrical shock produced by a modern “crash cart” found in today’s hospitals aids in reviving cardiac arrests.

In 1993, Paul T. Keyser of the University of Alberta, Canada published a paper in which he noted that, accompanying the battery remains at Seleucia were found several needles made of bronze and iron. He brought up the real possibility that the Parthians had employed a form of electro-acupuncture for healing purposes. The more traditional forms of acupuncture treatment were already existing in China at that time, the knowledge of which could have been carried to Mesopotamia via the ancient Silk Road stretching across Central Asia.

In a more mundane context, Dr. Paul Craddock, an expert in ancient Near East metallurgy from the Department of Scientific Research at the British Museum, believes the ancient batteries may have served as secret instruments for religious or magical showmanship. In fact, one set of batteries was reported having been unearthed from what the excavators called a “house of a magician,” filled with unusual herbs, chemicals and contrivances. One idea is that the clay pots could have been placed inside the metal statue of a deity. When a supplicant asked a question, the officiating priest would activate the current, and whoever touched the statue at that moment got either a pleasant tingle or a nasty shock as their answer.

Dr. Caddock feels there is still a possibility of many more ancient battry finds are yet to be made. He stated, “Other examples may exist that lie in museums elsewhere unrecognized.”

The ancient battery in the Baghdad Museum as well as those others which were unearthed in Iraq all date from the Parthian Persian occupation between 248 B.C.E. and A.D. 226, with most coming from the end of the period and the beginning of the succeeding Sassinid period. However, Konig found copper vases plated with silver in the Baghdad Museum excavated from Sumerian remains in southern Iraq dating back to at least 2500 B.C.E. When the vases were lightly tapped, a blue patina or film separated from the surfaces, characteristic of silver electroplated to copper. Martin Leavey of Pennsylvania State University confirmed from cuneiform texts dating to the third millennium B.C.E. that the Sumerians possessed all the necessary metals and acids that went into the construction of the old batteries. Yet the mystery is that the background steps necessary for the development of the battery exist nowhere. It is as if they suddenly came out of thin air, from no known contemporary source.

It would appear that the Persians and later smiths of Baghdad inherited their batteries from the earliest known civilization in the Middle East. The question is, where did the ancient Sumerians receive their knowledge of the battery and electricity from?

The only answer to the enigma is that an older yet more advanced culture once existed which disappeared, but from which the Sumerians became the beneficiaries of a former technology. That original point for such a lost technology must stretch back much further into unknown antiquity.

Tragically, we may never find the solution to this historical mystery, because in 2003 during the American invasion of Iraq, the National Museum in Baghdad was looted and partially destroyed. The ancient batteries and so many other treasures have been lost, and a most remarkable heritage from the past will never be recovered, unless more archaeological finds of a similar nature are one day forthcoming.

Despite the fact that we possess a wide variety of evidence that a working knowledge of electric energy and its generation was known in Mesopotamia at least two millennia ago—and very likely even earlier by several more millennia—there are a number of conservative scholars who have voiced their skepticism at such an idea and have offered various criticisms against the “Baghdad battery.” Here are some of the arguments made, and the counter-evidence that answers many of the objections.

Some skeptics have pointed out that for the ancient battery to generate a current the electrolyte has to be oxidized. But because the clay pot was found sealed with asphalt or bitumen, internal exposure to air would have been impossible and the creation of electricity could not have occurred. However, a study of the type of bitumen used, as it still seeps to the surface in places in Iraq as a byproduct of that country’s large petroleum reserves, reveals that even in a solid state the material is semi-porous. It actually makes a perfect sealant for a working battery, because it allows a controlled intake of air which helps to prolong the chemical reaction going on inside. The many successful tests of models of the ancient battery employing this type of bitumen seal or its equivalent bears witness to the fact that oxidation is taking place and electricity was repeatedly generated.

In 1938, Konig found evidence in the Iraqi Museum that much older Mesopotamian artifacts show signs of silver having been electroplated to copper perhaps as early as four thousand years ago. But opponents argue that the items in question more likely had undergone a process called fire-gilding that employed the use of mercury and did not involve electricity at all. Yet as Konig discovered, when the objects were lightly tapped the silver separated from the copper left a bluish patina residue, which is exclusively the byproduct of electroplating and not fire-gilding. Recent testing comparing the two processes confirms Konig’s original observation. What is more, a microscopic examination made of the patterning and thinness of the silver layer onto the copper was determined to be indicative only of electroplating. Tragically, a re-confirmation of these results is now impossible, because the artifacts were stolen and most likely destroyed when the Museum was ransacked in 2003.

Another argument that clearly misses the mark is that there could not have been any electric batteries in Mesopotamia because—as one website critical of “forbidden archaeology” put it—”there were no electrical devices present in the early first millennium for which a battery would be required.”

The major assumption being made here is that, just as our civilization today has created a myriad of devices that run on electricity, any previous technology that possessed batteries would have produced the exact same type of gadgetry. Yet in truth every culture is different and has different needs that would have expressed itself in a wide variety of different byproducts, many of which would be unrecognizable to our present-day mindset. Likewise, the development of technology is not single-tracked but multi-tracked, and the potentiality exists that other older technologies may have taken very different paths than our own. Also, as sophistication increases, new innovations generally become simpler, and the meaning and purpose of their designs and functions would be completely misunderstood or misinterpreted by another civilization of lesser development. Yes, it is true that we do not find electricity-based artifacts from ancient Mesopotamia that match what we have today. But among the untold numbers of “unclassified” or “miscellaneous” items gathering dust in museum storage rooms around the world, could there not be objects that are really reflections of lost technologies beyond our abilities to recognize for what they really are?

Several critics have attempted to offer an alternative explanation for what the clay pots were used for by suggesting they were storing vessels containing scrolls of papyrus that had ritualistic purposes. Supposedly the scrolls had incantations written on them, were sealed inside the copper cylinders and wrapped around the iron rods (the reason for which is never fully explained), then the whole pot assemblage was buried in the foundations of houses to ward off evil spirits. Over time the papyrus dissolved leaving only a slightly corrosive residue. As supporting evidence, skeptics point to the fact that a few of the clay pots unearthed at Seleucia did indeed have remnants of papyrus scrolls inside.

There are, however, a number of problems with this scenario matching all the facts. First, the papyrus scrolls found in the pots at Seleucia do not date to the same time as to when the pots were manufactured. It would appear that the people of a later period who had no inkling what the clay pots had been originally used for merely procured them for their own storage purposes. In the “Baghdad battery” that Konig found, wherein the purported scrolls supposedly dissolved away, the stickler is in the assumption that they are what caused the evidence for corrosion. Papyrus fiber is only slightly acidic, but not to such a degree that would have created the heavily rusted appearance of the pot’s central iron rod. This is the kind of corrosion that only occurs in the presence of a strong acid solution in liquid form, such as from citric juice. Besides, if papyrus had been present, some kind of microscopic fibrous plant residue would have been left behind. Nothing of the sort was ever detected.

While no other actual remains of batteries have yet been unearthed outside of Iraq, there are indications that batteries were nevertheless used by other ancient civilizations. Electroplated objects have also been found in Egypt, discovered by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette. Excavating in the area of the Sphinx at Giza (where the Hall of Records is said to exist buried beneath the monument), Mariette came upon a number of artifacts at a depth of sixty feet. In his day the electrolysis technique had only been known for a few years. Yet Mariette’s suspicions that the objects he unearthed had been plated were later proven correct.

In 1837, during Colonel Howard-Vyse’s exploration of the Great Pyramid, one of his assistants, J. R. Hill, was instructed to clear the southern air shaft of the King’s Chamber. In the process, only a few feet in from the shaft entrance, Hill discovered a piece of iron wedged in between the monument’s building blocks. It was a smelted iron plate a foot long, four inches wide and an eighth of an inch thick.

Now the ancient Egyptians were not supposed to have been knowledgeable about smelting iron at such an early age. Iron production did not appear along the Nile until the Middle Kingdom, or a thousand years after the Fourth Dynasty.

Adding one mystery on top of another, in 1989 the Mineral Resources Department of Imperial College in London did a detailed metallurgical analysis of the iron plate and determined that it was not meteoric iron, which the early Egyptians were known to be familiar with and had learned to fashion into jewelry.

Instead the nickel content indicated it was definitely a manufactured iron, and one which had been subjected to over a thousand degrees Celsius in its production. Even more surprising, one side of the iron plate was embedded with traces of gold. All the indications point to it having been electroplated. Does this suggest that the builders of the Great Pyramid were familiar with electricity?

More recently, Dr. Colin Fink, the inventor of the modern tungsten light, discovered evidence from the remains of ancient Egyptian metal wares that the Egyptians must have known how to electroplate antimony onto copper more than 4,300 years ago. He has gone on to find many more examples showing traces of electroplating among artifacts excavated along the length of the Nile.

In 1978, Dr. Arne Eggebrecht, Egyptologist with the Rowmer und Pelizaeus Museum of Hidelsheim, Germany—working with experts in electro-chemistry, goldsmith and galvanization—began actively experimenting with models of the ancient batteries, producing up to 0.87 volts. He successfully used one filled with grape juice as an electrolyte to plate gold on a six-inch silver object in two hours’ time. What is interesting is that Dr. Eggebrecht possessed a small Egyptian figurine of the god Osiris dating to 400 B.C.E. which shows exactly the same gold plate patterning as he obtained form using his ancient battery model. The German scientist was convinced that many Egyptian gold statuettes and other objects exhibited today in modern museums may not be solid gold as has been assumed, but are really made of silver and were simply plated with gold ages ago by the electroplating process.

It appears that metals were not the only substance to be subjected to the electrolysis technique in ancient times. In the Princes’ Library at Ujjain in India, there is preserved a document called the Agastya Samhita, which dates to the first millennium B.C.E. In it is this description:

“Place a well-cleaned plate of copper in an earthenware vessel. Cover it with copper sulfate and then with moist sawdust. The contact of all these elements in this manner will produce an energy called Mitra-Varuna. By it water can be split into Pranavayu and Udanavayu. A chain of one hundred jars will give a very active and effective force.”

We have here not only instructions for making a battery, but a description of the electrolysis of water into oxygen and hydrogen. It appears, too, that the Hindus were equally knowledgeable of the reverse process, of creating water out of the elements in the air. Both the Rig Veda and the Brihat Devatas mention that when “Mitra-Varuna” is placed in a water-jar and exposed to the heavens, the “god” born is named Khumba-Sambhava, the Indian equivalent to Aquarius, the Zodiacal god who carries on his shoulder a water jug that never empties.

Like the ancient clay pot batteries from Iraq, there is a good chance the Egyptians used similar electrical devices for displays of “supernatural” powers. Dr. Eva Auf is convinced that the pshemty or Double Crown worn by most of the Pharaohs from the early Dynasties on contained what she identified as a “uraeus-battery” or an accumulator-condenser of electrostatic energy that could produce an impressive high voltage flash or spark during religious ceremonies or important royal audiences. The vase-shaped Upper Egypt crown held the accumulator-condenser apparatus, and the metal spiral that emerges from the Lower Egypt crown provided the spark-gap within which a charge could be built up and then released. As Professor Rainer Ose of the Department of Electrotechnology at the University of Braunschweig/ Wolfenbuttel, Germany described it:

“In order to generate a visible electric discharge in the open, a gap through air is required of only 5 cm. (1.9 inches) of approximately 50,000 volts. The effect would have been quite impressive when demonstrating the ‘powers’ of the pharaohs.”

Numerous wall engravings found in such sanctuaries as the temple of Osiris at Abydos and the temple of Isis at Philae portray priests, priestesses, Pharaohs, gods and goddesses all manipulating various scepters and staffs that are clearly shown discharging streams of energy utilized for different purposes.

One of these devices was a long staff called the Wsr which all Egyptians deities were depicted holding out in front of them, suspended just above the ground. At the top of the staff was a stylized head of the god Anubis, or Anpu as his name was in the hieroglyphs. Anubis was the jackal-headed god, and he had both a benevolent and malevolent side to him, as he was the protector of secret places. This may have hinted at the possibility that the Egyptians used electricity as part of their security measures for guarding their treasures and secret libraries.

Anubis was also regarded as a powerful deity because he helped conduct the soul into the afterworld beyond death, and who controlled the energy exchange which takes place between this dimension and others. Did the Egyptians also recognize that changes in electrical fields are involved in the end of life and the transition into the afterlife?

What the Egyptians did with the Wsr staff was to use it to first “dowse” where an earth energy center or geo-magnetic vortex is located. Modern models of the staff made out of brass tend to revolve in the hand in locations where the geomagnetic gauss strength increases significantly. Once the center was found, then the holder literally "plugged" into the ground with the fork-like prong at the lower end of the staff, allowing the electrical energy of the earth to flow upward through it and through themselves.

In the other hand the Egyptian gods and goddesses held a second device called an Ankh, sometimes also called the Key of Life, and with it they drew in the bioelectrical energy of the planet. A model of an Ankh will turn in one’s hand like a pendulum when a person is standing over an upwelling of bio-electrical energy from the ground.

There is a wall engraving in the temple of Abydos which shows the god Anubis as Wawapet, the Opener of Ways, holding his Wsr staff, with Pharaoh Seti standing directly in front of him. A stream of small ankhs comes out of the head of the staff, hitting the Pharaoh in the forehead, right at the third eye, opening it.

The Ankh scepter was not always held by the loop which draws energy to it, but was also shown held by the stem by which energy was projected out. In the temple of Philae there is a picture of the goddess Isis holding an Ankh by the loop in her hand at the base of the spine of Osiris, who is standing with his back to her. She is holding in her other hand a second Ankh, this one by the stem, at the top of the god’s head. What she is doing is energizing Osiris’ kundalini energy throughout his entire chakra system—and one can detect the actual movement of energy from one Ankh to the other along the god's spinal cord by dowsing the wall engraving itself with a special device called an aurameter.

The many wall engravings portraying various energy manipulations demonstrate that the Egyptians were very much aware of how to use both planetary and biological electrical energies, and to receive and project these energies for different purposes, some of which we have yet to fully understand.

Most puzzling is the fact that today we are left only with images and replicas in art form of these instruments, that we have yet to find a single one of the original ancient staffs or scepters of power. And this was for a very good reason. Only the highest priests could handle them—anyone else would have completely burnt out their nervous system at the mere touch. These lost scepters and staffs are very likely hidden throughout Egypt in the most secret of places, yet to be discovered.

In late 1981, just before one of my earliest trips to Egypt, the logistics coordinator for the tour company I was working with gifted me with a beautiful full-sized replica of an Wsr staff. The coordinator’s husband was a design engineer, and he had carefully and meticulously machine-crafted the staff out of brass from specifications I had given him. These were based on my observations and measurements taken right off the wall engravings from various temples found along the Nile, as well as from statues portraying the leading deities holding three-dimensional representations of the staff exhibited in both the Cairo and Luxor Museums.

The staff had a stylized head of Anubis at its upper end, and the bottom of the staff was fitted with a small horseshoe-shaped “fork,” the whole instrument standing just under five feet in length. By holding it out in front of me, with the forked end just an inch or two off the ground, I was able to precisely mirror the same stance taken by the Egyptian gods as they held the staff in their hands. For traveling convenience, the brass staff was designed to be broken down into four threaded sections so that it could be stored in my suitbag, then screwed together and re-assembled into a tight-fitting single piece once I arrived at my destination.

Less tnan a year later, I had a local jeweler who was also a metallurgist fashion for me out of brass an Ankh or Key of Life scepter, again with the same proportional measurements and features I copied from wall reliefs, papyrus paintings and sculptured duplicates in wood and stone.

Over the next several years, on at least a dozen trips to Egypt, as my tour groups visited the various sacred sites I performed a series of experiments using both the Wsr staff and the Ankh scepter, together and separately. During the course of my investigations, I was able to make a number of observations.

One of the very first things I noticed is that, every time I approached the central altar in any of the Egyptian temples, the Wsr staff would begin to slowly turn in my hand, the forked bottom circling the floor in front of me. I interpreted this as my body’s bio-electrical field, through my hand being in contact with the staff, reacting with an upwelling of similar energy coming out of the earth. Invariably, each and every altar in Egypt had been purposely and deliberately placed above an energy vortex of some type. I found further that the staff’s slow circling occurred no matter which hand I used, and was significantly enhanced when I held the Ankh scepter in my opposite hand. What is more, the staff’s movements were always accompanied by a slight tingling sensation in my fingertips and palms. Stronger reactions also included feelings of slight shocks in may legs and spine.

Near or above certain altars the Wsr staff circled clockwise, while with others it circled counter-clockwise. Different locations appear to have involved either the “release” or an “absorption” of energies. At the double Temple of Kom Ombo, where there are two altars situated in close proximity to each other, I found the sacred stone dedicated to Sobek to be an “absorber,” and the sacred stone honoring Horus is a “releaser.” In other sites, such as in the Temple of Isis at Philae, the north-south sides of the altar in the holy of holies is where the Wsr staff circles clockwise, while its east-west sides is where it circles counter-clockwise.

What is fascinating about this last example is that the Isis altar is not in its original location. The whole Temple precinct was moved to higher ground over forty years ago to prevent it being flooded due of the nearby construction of the Aswan High Dam. When I first performed my experiments at Philae in 1982, I barely detected any movement in the Wsr staff anywhere around the main altar. By 1997, however, the energy vortex from the original site appeared to have fully shifted to the altar’s new site, and its energy configuraiton is now full force, comparable to that surrounding other Egyptian altars.

At Saqqara, in the Courtyard of the Heb Sed, is a long set of narrow steps made of Tura limestone dating to the Third Dynasty or circa 2900 B.C.E. It ascends to a small platform that may have once held an altar, and is recessed into one of the mortuary buildings that line the Courtyard. Even though the stairway was reconstructed fairly recently, it still holds a unique energy pattern.

The first step is rounded and appears to be neutral—while standing on it the Wsr staff remains motionless in my hand. On the second step the staff turns slightly clockwise. On the third step the staff turns the same degree, but counter-clockwise. On the fourth step it turns back clockwise, but swings around in a slightly larger circle. The next step causes a counter-clockwise motion, while on the next step beyond the movement is clockwise but in a still larger circle.

This alternating sequence with ever-widening turning continues all the way up to the platform, where the energy once again appears to be neutral, and the staff remains motionless. Other tour participants who have held the Wsr staff while going up this stairway have experienced the exact same reaction phenomena, and without any prompting from me. I have also observed the identical set of motions repeated using a brass pendulum specially designed by an Egyptian expert in radiesthesia, who copied it from a similar device depicted among images of medical instruments portrayed on one of the walls of Kom Ombo Temple.

Clearly, the Saqqara stairway was constructed for a singular purpose. By going up these stairs one step at a time, a person was meant to experience a full range of subtle bio-electrical energies and alternating currents, in a continuous spectrum. What its underlying purpose was and still is, however, and how it specifically affects the body, are questions which remain not fully answered.

I also discovered that both the Wsr staff and the Ankh will react to the presence of either granite or a large amount of limestone. Generally the two instruments are drawn toward or attracted to the east-west sides of obelisks made of Aswan granite (such as those situated in Karnak and Luxor Temples), and are pushed away or repelled by their north-south sides. The same phenomenon can be observed among the giant granite squared pillars in the Temple of the Sphinx at Giza. Aswan granite is composed of 55% quartz content, and I believe the brass instruments are reacting to differentials within the piezo-electrical fields generated by weight pressure within the granite.

Even more pronounced reactions were observed inside the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid, the floor, ceiling and four walls of which are made entirely of Aswan granite, as is also the Stone Box placed at the western end of the room. What I found remarkable is that the complexity of vortex points inside the Chamber as indicated by the instrumental movements corresponded exactly with the locations where changes in gauss strength have been measured with a magnetometer. Clearly, there is a direct association between the staff and scepter reactions and alterations in the strength of the localized field of electro-magnetism.

Curiously, I noticed the exact same type of instrument motions around the massive columns in Karnak Temple’s famed Hypostyle Hall. Even though these are made of huge sections of limestone, not a very good conductive material, nevertheless energy fields and their variations are definitely present, and appear to interact with one another from column to column. Did the Egyptians use such hypostyle architecture as an ancient “battery” for their sacred shrines?

One of the most significant experiments I performed was to energize the Wsr staff with an electrical current which made it slightly magnetic, but only for short periods of time. The overall effect, however, was to greatly amplify the staff’s reactive abilities. On two of my tours, I wrapped a wire around the length of the staff and hooked it up to a modern set of AA batteries fastened to the Anubis head. Its low-level magnetism could thus be maintained, and the staff’s ability to differentiate by movement the surrounding changes in energy vortex patterns proved to be exceptional. In wall engravings in the Temple of Abydos, I saw images of Wsr staffs enveloped by “serpents” in exactly the same wiring configuration I used on mine, which I interpret to be electrical currents used by the Egyptian priests to empower their staffs with energies portrayed as streams of ankhs.

Based on these results, and as I was able to repeat them at other sacred sites around the world, I firmly believe the Egyptians and other ancient cultures utilized electric batteries in helping to enhance their own versions of power staffs and scepters similar to those manufactured along the Nile. These in turn became tools for both finding and tapping into the greater electromagnetic and bio-electrical fields of the planet. They were likewise employed for locating and setting out the energy designs for their holy places as well.

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