Egyptian light bulb – lost technology?
Imagine you’re an Egyptian craftsman, hired to paint frescoes in a freshly carved tomb. Precise drawing requires good light, but oil lamps in the chamber would leave soot all over your hard work.
So how... about electric light?
A stone relief in the Hathor temple at Dendera in Egypt depicts what some have interpreted to be the very first electric glass bulb with a tungsten filament.
However, the Egyptologists argue that this ‘bulb’ is in fact a stylized depiction of a lotus flower (very common in the art of Egypt), spawning a snake (filament) inside it. The snakes coming from the lotus symbolize fertility, linked to the annual Nile flood.
If so, then why were tombs clean of soot deposits? Did the painters use mirrors to light them or some other way? What do you think?
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Author: Maciej Paprocki