That the ancients could harness electricity is absolutely essential to the belief that a high technology once existed in the remote past. We are all familiar with story of the great American statesman, writer and inventor Benjamin Franklin flying his kite in a thunderstorm; but the study of electricity has no doubt gone on for thousands and thousands of years. Benjamin Franklin is credited with the invention of the lightning rod, though, like most everything else, this too was no doubt used by the ancients. Andrew Tomas, in his 1971 book We Are Not the First cites this example: “In 1966 the author visited Kulu Valley in the Himalayas. In the town of Kulu there is a remarkable old temple on a hill, dedicated to the god Shiva. Its special feature is an eighteen-meter iron mast erected near the temple. In an electric storm the pole attracts the‘blessing of Heaven’ in the form of lightning which flashes down the mast and hits a statuette of Shiva at its base. The pieces of shattered Shiva are then pasted together by the priest and used for the next ’blessing.‘ The custom has existed since time immemorial, which would mean that the presence of electric conductors in India has been a reality from the most ancient times.”24
Electric batteries were in use more than 2,000 years ago says Dr. Wilhelm Koenig, a German archaeologist employed by the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, who discovered one in 1938 while conducting a dig at Khujut Rabu‘a, not far to the southeast of Baghdad. The Museum had begun scientific excavations, and in the digging turned up a peculiar object that—to Koenig—looked very much like a present-day dry-cell.5 Other similar finds followed.
A Popular Electronics article in the July, 1964 issue said that the ancient electrochemical batteries had central cell elements that included “...a copper cylinder containing an iron rod that had been corroded as if by chemical action. The cylinder was soldered with a 60/40 lead-tin alloy, the same solder alloy we use today.” Two thousand years ago they not only had electricity, they had also come up with exactly the same tin-alloy solder that we use today!
An earlier article on this amazing ancient technology appeared in the April 1957 issue of Science Digest entitled “Electric Batteries of 2,000 Years Ago.” (Harry M. Schwalb, Science Digest, 41:17-19). Says the article, “...in Cleopatra’s day, up-and-coming Baghdad silversmiths were goldplating jewelry—using electric batteries. It’s no myth; young scientist Willard F. M. Gray, of General Electric’s High Voltage Laboratory in Pittsfield, Mass., has proved it. He made an exact replica of one of the 2,000-year-old wet cells and connected it to a galvanometer. When he closed the switch—current flowed!
“These BC-vintage batteries (made by the Parthians, who dominated the Baghdad region between 250 BC and 224 AD) are quite simple. Thin sheet-copper was soldered into a cylinder less than 4 inches long and about an inch in diameter—roughly the size of two flashlight batteries end to end. The solder was a 60/40 tin-lead alloy—‘one of the best in use today,’ Gray points out.
Parts of the Baghdad Battery.
“The bottom of the cylinder was a crimped-in copper disc insulated with a layer of asphaltum (the ‘bitumen’ that the Bible tells us Noah used to caulk the Ark). The top was closed with an asphalt stopper, through which projected the end of an iron rod. To stand upright, it was cemented into a small vase.
“What electrolyte the Parthian jewelers used is a mystery, but Gray’s model works well with copper sulfate. Acetic or citric acid, which the ancient chemists had in plenty, should be even better.”
This is conclusive proof that the Babylonians did indeed use electricity. As similar jars were found in a magician’s hut, it can be surmised that both priests and craftsmen kept the knowledge as a trade secret. It should be noted here that electroplating and galvanization were again introduced only in the first part of the nineteenth century.24
Andrew Tomas (whose book is quoted above) was an Australian who travelled widely. He mentions that during his stay in India he was told about an old document, preserved in the Indian Princes’ Library at Ujjain and listed as Agastya Samhita, which contains instructions for making electrical batteries:Place a well-cleaned copper plate in an earthenware vessel. Cover it first by copper sulphate and then by moist sawdust. After that put a mercury-amalgamated-zinc sheet on top of the sawdust to avoid polarization. The contact will produce an energy known by the twin name of Mitra-Varuna. Water will be split by this current into Pranavayu and Udanavayu. A chain of one hundred jars is said to give a very active and effective force.
Says Tomas, “The Mitra-Varuna is now called cathode-anode, and Pranavayu and Udanavayu are to us oxygen and hydrogen. This document again demonstrates the presence of electricity in the East, long, long ago.”24
Electricity and Religion
Yet, the knowledge of electrical devices was not limited to batteries for electroplating. Authors such as Jerry Ziegler in his books YHWH22 and Indra Girt by Maruts89claim that electrical devices of various sorts were used in temples and were often utilized as oracles or awesome manifestations of deities. Ziegler cites a wealth of ancient sources on ancient lights, sacred fires and oracles in his books. He argues that the Ark of the Covenant as well as the sacred flames of Mithraic and Zoroastrian oracles were ancient electrical devices used for impressing the congregation.22 The famous Ark of the Covenant is often described as an electrical device, and several passages in the Old Testament describe how unfortunate people who touch the relic are killed, seemingly by electrocution. Ancient Hebrew legends tell of a glowing jewel that Noah hung up in the Ark to provide a constant source of illumination and of a similar object in the palace of King Solomon about 1000 BC.9
Asar (Osiris)
Similar devices were apparently used by Native Americans in special ceremonies held in underground chambers known as “kivas.” For instance, David Chandler mentions in his book 100 Tons of Gold91 that the Hopi of Northern Arizona had a fascinating generator for making light which was made out of luminescent quartz. It consisted of a rectangular base of pure white-vein quartz with a groove in it and a bolster-shaped upper piece of the same material. Friction produced by rapid rubbing made a strong glow in the dark, which was used to light the sacred kivas.
Says Chandler, “The machine still worked perfectly when it was discovered by archaeologist Alfred Kidder in the Pecos ruins, as he reported in 1932. Archaeologist S.H. Ball remarked upon it, ‘Here we have a perfected machine perhaps seven hundred years old; the first Indian to observe luminescence of quartz must have done so centuries earlier.”’91
Chandler goes on to say that similar “lightning machines” or “glow stones” have been found at several other localities in north-central New Mexico. Chandler is quoting from Stuart A. Northrop’s Minerals of New Mexico (1959, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque) on the existence of the quartz light machine that the ancient Indians used. These machines may still be being used by Hopi or other tribes to generate light in secret ceremonies in their kivas.
Ancient electrics in many cases were apparently only used by special priesthoods and not by the masses. In Ziegler’s Indra Girt by Maruts89 it is maintained that many of the ancient Vedas also describe electrical devices, and these were typically used in religious ceremonies.
A similar book to Ziegler’s is the difficult to find Ka: A Handbook of Mythology, Sacred Practices, Electrical Phenomena, and their Linguistic Connections in the Ancient World, by Hugh Crosthwaite.90 Crosthwaite’s fascinating 1992 book maintains that the ancients built simple—and more complicated—electrical devices that were used in religious ceremonies. These sacred “fires” ranged from amber disks that created sparks of static electricity when rubbed together (easily seen in a darkened room) to static electrical condensers such as the famous Ark of the Covenant.
What is important about Crosthwaite’s book is that he shows how much of early religion was built around electrical phenomena. The many famous temples may have had as their center of attraction an electrical light of some sort that amazed the pilgrim and gave him something to genuinely wonder about.
Tomas mention
s that Lucian (AD 120-180), the Greek satirist, gave a detailed account of his travels. In Hierapolis, Syria, he saw a shining jewel in the forehead of the goddess Hera which brilliantly illuminated the whole temple at night. Nearby, the Roman temple of Jupiter at Ba‘albek was said to be lit by “glowing stones.”24
Crosthwaite says the Ka of the ancient Egyptians is related to electrical phenomena and that much of the teachings of the so-called Mystery Religions, such as at Delphi in Greece, were related to various electrical devices as well. Over time, civilization slipped into the Dark Ages and the old religions were swept away by Christianity and Islam.
Electric Eternal Flames
Australian author and researcher Andrew Tomas, who was well versed on classical texts of both east and west, has an entire chapter entitled “Electricity in the Remote Past” in We Are Not the First.24 This chapter has a long list of classical authors who have made many statements in their works testifying to the reality of ever-burning lamps in antiquity. Some of these ever-burning lamps may have used ancient electrical devices of various design.
A beautiful golden lamp in the temple of Minerva, said to burn for a year at a time, was described by the second-century historian Pausanias. Saint Augustine (AD 354-430) wrote of an ever-burning lamp which neither wind nor rain could extinguish.
Tomas relates that when the sepulchre of Pallas, son of Evander, immortalized by Virgil in his Aeneid, was opened near Rome in 1401, the tomb was found to be illuminated by a perpetual lantern which had apparently been alight for hundreds of years.24
Tomas also says that Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, had a perpetual light shining in the dome of his temple. Plutarch wrote of a lamp which burned at the entrance of a temple to Jupiter-Ammon, and its priests claimed that it had remained alight for centuries.
He claims that an ever-burning lamp was found at Antioch during the reign of Justinian of Byzantium (sixth century AD). An inscription indicated that it must have been burning for more than five hundred years. During the early Middle Ages a third-century perpetual lamp was found in England, and it had burned for several centuries.
Tomas also mentions a sarcophagus containing the body of a young woman of patrician stock that was found in a mausoleum on the Via Appia near Rome in April, 1485. When the sealed mausoleum which had housed the sarcophagus was opened, a lighted lamp amazed the men who broke in. It must have been burning for 1,500 years! When the dark ointment preserving the body from decomposition had been removed, the girl looked lifelike with her red lips, dark hair, and shapely figure. It was exhibited in Rome and seen by 20,000 people.
Quoting Tomas on other examples of ancient lighting:In the temple of Trevandrum, Travancore, the Reverend S. Mateer of the London Protestant Mission saw ‘a great golden lamp which was lit over one hundred and twenty years ago,’ in a deep well inside the temple.
Discoveries of ever-burning lamps in the temples of India and the age-old tradition of the magic lamps of the Nagas—the serpent gods and goddesses who live in underground abodes in the Himalayas—raises the possibility of the use of electric light in a forgotten era. On the background of the Agastya Samhita text’s giving precise directions for constructing electrical batteries, this speculation is not extravagant.
In Australia the author learned of a village in the jungle near Mount Wilhelmina, in the western half of New Guinea, or Irian. Cut off from civilization, this village has “a system of artificial illumination equal, if not superior, to the 20th century,” as C. S. Downey stated at a conference on street lighting and traffic in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1963.
Traders who penetrated this small hamlet lost amid high mountains said that they “were terrified to see many moons suspended in the air and shining with great brightness all night long. These artificial moons were huge stone balls mounted on pillars. After sunset they began to glow with a strange neon-like light, illuminating all the streets.
Ion Idriess is a well-known Australian writer who has lived amongst the Torres Strait islanders. In his Drums of Mer he tells of a story about the booyas which he received from the old aborigines. A booya is a round stone set in a large bamboo socket. There were only three of these stone scepters known in the islands. When a chief pointed the round stone toward the sky, a thunderbolt of greenish-blue light flashed. This “cold light” was so brilliant that the spectators seemed to be enveloped in it. Since Torres Strait washes the shores of New Guinea, one can perceive some connection between these booyas and the “moons” of Mount Wilhelmina.“24
Other mysterious lights and “glowing stones” have been reported in lost cities around the world. Tibet is said to have such glowing stones and lanterns mounted on pillars in towers. Tomas relates that Father Evariste-Regis Huc (1813-1860), who travelled extensively in Asia in the 19th century, left a description of ever-burning lamps he had seen, while the Russian Central Asian explorer Nicholas Roerich reported that the legendary Buddhist secret city of Shambala was lit by a glowing jewel in a tower.
Atlantis and ever-lasting stone lamps were featured in the beliefs of the famous British explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett, who vanished in the Brazilian jungles while searching for a lost city which he believed was lit by glowing stones on pillars. Tomas quotes a letter sent by Fawcett to British Atlantis authority Lewis Spence about the lost city in the jungle and what the natives had told him about the glowing stones. “These people have a source of illumination which is strange to us—in fact, they are the remnant of a civilization which has gone and which has retained old knowledge. ”24,57 Colonel Fawcett disappeared with his oldest son in 1925 but his youngest son published a book of his father’s material in 1953 entitled Expedition Fawcett88 (called Lost Trails, Lost Cities in the US edition).
Colonel Fawcett never reported finding his city, but Tomas (probably quoting from Harold Wilkins’ books on South America),124,125 relates that in 1601 the Spanish author Barco Centenera recorded the discovery of a similar-sounding place. Centenera wrote of the discovery of the lost city of Gran Moxo, located near the source of the Paraguay River in the Mato Grosso. In the center of the island city he says “on the summit of a 20 foot pillar was a great moon which illuminated all the lake, dispelling darkness.“22
Osiris Tat
As Tomas avers:History shows that the priests of India, Sumer, Babylon, and Egypt, as well as their confreres on the other side of the Atlantic—in Mexico and Peru—were custodians of science. It appears likely that in a remote epoch these learned men were forced to withdraw into inaccessible parts of the world to save their accumulated knowledge from the ravages of war or geological upheavals. We still are not certain as to what happened to Crete, Angkor, or Yucatan and why these sophisticated civilizations suddenly came to an end. If their priests had foresight, they must have anticipated these calamities.
In that case they would have taken their heritage to secret centers as the Russian poet Valery Briusov depicted in verse:The poets and sages,
Guardians of the Secret Faith,
Hid their Lighted Torches
In deserts, catacombs and caves.24
Electric Lights in Ancient Egypt?
Tomas says that the Jesuit Kircher, in his Oedipus Aegyptiacus (Rome, 1652), tells of lighted lamps found in the subterranean vaults of Memphis. Here we have reference to electric lights in Egypt, these still functioning, incredibly, for thousands of years.24
One of the early proponents of electricity in ancient Egypt was Denis Saurat in his 1957 book Atlantis & the Giants.81 Saurat suggests that the flashes observed in the eyes of Isis in her temples throughout Egypt were made with an electrical apparatus. Like many other authors, Saurat saw Atlantis as linked to the sciences of the ancient world.
There have also been high-tech devices depicted in Egyptian hieroglyphic panels. Recently in the news was one found at Abydos Temple in southern Egypt. This had been discovered in 1987 by Dr. Ruth McKinley-Hover of Sedona, Arizona. Her discovery was of a lintel with hieroglyphics and symbols carved into the granite
rock which showed what appeared to be a helicopter, a rocket, a flying saucer and a jet plane. These unusual pictures may be interpreted by the reader as seems fit, but they are genuine, and not a clever hoax. Mainstream Egyptologists have not yet commented on these hieroglyphs.
At the Hathor Temple at Dendera, near to Abydos, is found an unusual depiction of what appears to be an ancient Egyptian electrical device. Like the Temple of Osiris, Dendera is a beautiful and massive edifice with huge columns that tower over one’s head like redwoods. The temple is of quite recent origin, built in the 1st century BC, but it encloses earlier temples. An inscription in one of the subterranean vaults says that the temple was built “according to a plan written in ancient writing upon a goatskin scroll from the time of the Companions of Horus.” This is a curious inscription, essentially stating that the Ptolemaic (Greek) architects of the 1st century BC were claiming that the actual plan of the temple dated to the legendary prehistoric era when the “companions of Horus” ruled Egypt. This long era extended for many thousands of years, and in a sense takes us back, once again, to the legendary civilization of Osiris.
Technology of the Gods: The Incredible Sciences of the Ancients Page 11