The Dendera crypt reliefs
Carved in a crypt under an Egyptian temple more than two thousand years ago, a shape like a bulb with a serpent inside it, and inscriptions beside it.
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The Dendera Crypt Reliefs and the Bulb Nobody Can Name
Carved in a crypt under an Egyptian temple more than two thousand years ago is a picture that, to many modern eyes, looks like an electric light: a long bulb with a snake stretched inside it and a line running to a box. Since the late 1980s, writers have offered it as evidence that the ancient Egyptians had electricity. The inscriptions carved beside it say something else. This is what the wall shows, what each reading rests on, and the one question the carving still leaves open.