The Baghdad Battery is one of the most famous artifacts of ancient Mesopotamia. The scientific world learned about the existence of this relic of antiquity only in 1938. When Wilhelm Koenig, the German director of the National Museum of Iraq, discovered what was later called the Baghdad Battery in the museum's collections. However, it is still not completely clear whether the batteries were excavated by Koenig himself. Or maybe Koenig actually found them in the basement of the Baghdad Museum when he took over as director. Since both versions are widespread in the media.
Most researchers date the batteries to about 200 BC.
Baghdad battery - what is it?
In 1940, after returning to Berlin due to illness, the scientist published an article in which he suggested that the Baghdad battery is a galvanic cell. It may have been used to electroplate gold on silver objects. In the Koenig Museum, copper dishes of the ancient Sumerians were also discovered, which were galvanized with silver.
The Baghdad Battery is a terracotta jug about 130 mm high. Inside it is a rolled copper sheet metal cylinder. In which an iron bar is inserted. The top of the iron rod is insulated from copper by bitumen plugs or plugs. Both the rod and the cylinder fit snugly against the opening of the can, which is at the top of the vessel.
So what does it do? If these artifacts are actually batteries, does that mean Alessandro Volta didn't invent the electrochemical power cell in 1800? And some ingenious scientist of antiquity was ahead of him by more than two millennia ??
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Where did ancient mankind get such knowledge from? And why were they needed at all, these ancient batteries?
The experiments that the Baghdad battery was subjected to (a model battery, of course) showed that it could generate a voltage between the electrodes of up to 5 volts. This suggests that ancient humanity had quite advanced technologies. And that ancient civilizations were not as primitive as we think.
Perhaps ancient mankind used these batteries to charge smartphones of some devices. It is also possible that ancient people found a way to connect batteries together. And generate more power to power multiple devices at once. Which could be used in construction and transport.
However, at the moment this is all just guesswork. We absolutely do not know what ancient humanity used these "batteries" for. Several theories are still being debated. But science made no final conclusion. Because not a single wire has been found that would prove that these artifacts really served to generate and transmit energy.
Where does knowledge come from?
Is it possible that these batteries were used to power devices such as the Dendera lamp? If the ancient alien theory proponents are to be believed, the answer is yes.
In fact, the range of possibilities for using such devices is simply enormous.
But there is a question that is perhaps more mysterious than the use of batteries. It sounds like this: who or what gave humanity such knowledge? Was it just an accidental discovery? Or maybe there is something unearthly about these batteries? How exactly did ancient Persian science understand the principles of electricity? And could you have come to this knowledge by chance?
All these questions still remain unanswered. And the Baghdad battery remains one of the most mysterious discoveries that still remain unexplained.
