Should we interpret the messages (hieroglyphs, inscriptions, relief sculptures, monuments) of antique Egypt only with the eyes of a traditional Egyptologist? Is the vocabulary of deciphering well adapted?

The only tools available to decode and understand the messages of ancient Egypt are on the one hand the Rosetta Stone (but this Stone does not allow to correctly translate all texts, including several inscriptions of Abydos, Edfu and Dendera that remain unclear), and on the other hand a number of buildings, objects, models, and artifacts on wall, stele, sarcophagus and papyrus that allow to make assumptions and suggest explanations.

Can we say that these assumptions and explanations are valid in all cases? We should not forget that traditional Egyptology is a relatively recent discipline which dates back to the end of the 18th century (the Foundation of the Institute of Egypt by Bonaparte in 1798), and which was, in the 19th and 20th centuries, the very closed field of specialists.

As seen in the above comparison table, the understanding of metaphors and allegories of the inscriptions of First Time of Egypt is perhaps mainly a problem of technical culture. The evolution of science and technology of the 21st century allows us to have a new look at these messages.

The traditional Egyptologist admires and studies these messages in the same way as you look at and appreciate a painting. The Egyptologist in-situ discovers them in a very physical way by making the excavations with shovel, trowel and brush in hands. Can we imagine that their assumptions and their explanations are valid in all cases?

Can we imagine the strange « machines » of Dendera are antique lighting systems? Can we imagine ancient Egypt lit up the inside of its temples and its pyramids? Alternatively, because of the presence of Anubis and the Djed pillar, can we say that it is an ancient « system of resurrection »?

An antique electric lighting in the Ancient Egypt ?

In everyday life, we know that the ancient Egyptians used oil lamps or torches, which normally have left traces of soot and other fatty residues of combustion on the walls and ceilings.

However, in several underground chambers or tombs of antique Egypt, such as for example the tomb of Seti II in the mountain of the Valley of the Kings, we find no trace of soot on walls or ceilings that are all painted and engraved in the rock. It is the same thing in the tombs of renowned artists and Government officials who were buried near the Kings.

So how did they do? It is possible to reduce soot due to oil lamps by adding salt in the oil. If olive-oil is used, there is very little smoke, but the oil lamps and wicks will smoke! Painting such accurate and colorful frescoes as, for example, those found in the tomb of Sennedjem in the only light of oil lamps should not be easy!

In Thebes, inside the tomb of Sennedjem, « guardian of the Place of Truth »,
the walls and the ceiling are without traces of soot
or other fatty residues of combustion,
and the frescoes are amazingly bright and colorful.

Did they really know the principle of electric lighting? Were they able to carry out an electrical installation in the pyramids, tombs, or other workplaces for producing light? Was it reserved for priests and initiated persons who have jealously concealed this knowledge? Had they discovered this technical knowledge by themselves or was it the ancient knowledge of an older civilization?

Some researchers have hypothesized that they simply used a series of mirrors to reflect the sunlight inside the deep corridors and underground rooms. The quality of the copper plates used as mirrors was not good enough for that. Egyptian silver mirrors reflected at best 40% to 50% of the sunlight so that, after successive reflections on some mirrors, darkness would be once again total in the galleries of the pyramids and tombs, some of which are over 100 meters long.

Visiting the inside of a pyramid or an underground tomb, one may wonder how the workers were able to work in the darkness of the corridors and rooms, without normal light and without ventilation. The Egyptologists state that torches and oil lamps were the only means of lighting available at that time.

The researchers found traces of soot and other oily residue of combustion on the walls of certain monuments, as is in Dendera for example. A trace of soot and other fatty residues is therefore not proof in itself. In fact, many monuments of antique Egypt have been visited, occupied, looted, degraded and ransacked for millennia, by robbers or other people using torches and oil lamps.

What about the technology ?

Can we therefore reasonably assume that there was some sort of electric lighting in antique Egypt? Can we assume that the Egyptians of the First Time of Egypt had the technology needed to achieve the electric lighting? If so, how could they produce these large bulbs and make the vacuum ?

In the pyramid of Dahshur, built by Snefru (2613 to 2589 BC), a big slab of artificially manufactured glass weighing at least 35 tons would have been found at the level of the foundations. Slabs in quartz weighing 45 tons and over 100 tons were also found in the pyramid of Hawara. All of these slabs could prove that ancient Egyptians knew how to work with large masses of glass and quartz.

It would seem that Egypt of the First Time knew the blown glass industry. This ancient industry would have been very successful at the time of the Pharaohs, in the secret city of Tantah (located between Cairo and Alexandria). The invention of the glass itself is attributed, either to the Phoenicians, or to the Egyptians (the Phoenicians would have been, in the latter case, only simple propagators). According to some recent theories, ancient glass industry originated in Mesopotamia. From Mesopotamia it would have passed in Egypt to return again to Mesopotamia, following the developments of these countries. The construction of the Dendera light-bulbs was therefore theoretically possible in antique Egypt.

The question is therefore whether these strange « Dendera lamps » were achievable and could operate with Egyptian means of the First Times ? Different researchers have studied these relief sculptures and showed they could function as lamps.

Two researchers, W. Garn and Erich Von Däniken, even reconstructed a model of these lamps in the laboratory. This model works as can be seen in the photograph below.

   
A « Dendera lamp » was built in the laboratory,
proving that such a lamp could work.
Unfortunately the light thus obtained is really poor
and the electrical power necessary to make it effective would be important.

This reconstituted lamp remains, however, a model. Of course it resembles the Dendera reliefs, but it is much smaller and it is what has allowed its realization. As seen above, the size of Dendera lamps (calculated in comparison with the size of the Egyptian server represented on the relief sculpture) must be about 2 to 2.5 metres long and 50 to 70 cm wide. The model is about 60 cm long and 20 cm wide.

This model is similar to a fluorescent lamp filled with gas under low pressure. The purple light is produced by the electric discharge in the gas. It is a well-known experiment: in bulb-shaped gas- or vacuum-tubes containing two electrodes, an electron beam will be emitted under the action of high voltage applied between the electrodes.

On the relief sculpture of Dendera, as on the model, one of the electrodes is located in the bottom cap (in the form of a lotus flower), and the other consists of two arms of the pillar insulator emerging in the bulb. However, the beam of light that appears between the electrodes of the model does not really look like the filamentous snake of the relief sculpture. In addition, the light produced is insufficient to provide a valid lighting system in a dark room. This experiment, although very interesting, does not demonstrate that it could be an effective system of lighting of antique Egypt.

What's the conclusion? Maybe these artefacts do not represent light-bulbs, or the problem is badly posed. On the walls of Dendera they are also different sorts of bulbs. Some have both small arms of the isolator pillar emerging in the bulb, others are « connected » in the middle of the pillar, others still have these two small arms (representing the essential anode) out of the bulb. It seems that the sculptor, who designed these relief sculptures, did not really understand what the initiated person asked him to represent.

In the underground chambers of Dendera, the sculptors have surely worked under the direction of initiated priests. These priests were the custodians of secrets from the dawn of civilization, when the « gods and demigods » reigned on Earth. The different sorts of bulbs are probably due to the fact that the sculptors who engraved the artifacts did not really understand the descriptions given by these initiated custodians of an antique science.