The Dendera Light
The account
Reliefs in an Egyptian crypt supposedly show giant electric light bulbs, a sign of electrical power in antiquity.
What investigators found
The inscriptions beside them describe a lotus flower and a divine serpent, an image tied to the creation myth.
The story
At the Temple of Hathor in Dendera, in southern Egypt, a crypt built during the Ptolemaic period holds some curious reliefs: an elongated, bulb-like object with a wavy serpent inside, resting on a pillar and connected to something that looks like a cable. Since the 1980s, alternative authors have called these images the "Dendera lights."
To them, this is proof that the Egyptians had mastered electricity. Egyptologists answer with the hieroglyphs that surround the scene, which describe a serpent emerging from a lotus flower, a symbol of the birth of the sun and the creation of the world. The pillar is the djed, a symbol of stability. No wires, glass or batteries have been found at any Egyptian site. The accepted reading is religious, not technological.