Tefillin - an analogue of an ancient walkie-talkie?
We have already talked about how in the biblical story with the Ark of the Covenant, scientists were able to recognize all the signs … of a modern ionophone! However, this is far from all evidence of technological means of communication that actually existed and worked in prehistoric times. Moreover, their material traces and samples still exist today! The ancestors kept them as "cult" images and objects …
A modern tourist who visits the Western Wall at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and is far from knowing the traditions of the Jewish religion is surprised to see that some Jews perform some strange ritual before their prayer - they put some objects on their heads and hands. This ritual is called "imposing tefillin".
Tefillin consists of two main parts - tefillin shel-rosh (that is, tefillin placed on the head) and tefillin shel-poison (that is, tefillin placed on the hand). Each of them is a small black cube box called a byte, which contains scrolls with excerpts from the Torah. Through the holes in the bases of each byte, retsuot are threaded - black leather straps, with which the tefillin are fastened on the arm and on the head.
The imposition of tefillin must be done before praying to God.
But what is “prayer to God”?.. This is an appeal to God, a connection with God. Actually, this is exactly how the Jews interpret it when they explain that the meaning of the ritual is communication with God. However, why additional elements are needed in the form of boxes on belts, no one can specify. Meanwhile, the whole procedure is very much like … communication on a modern mobile phone or walkie-talkie!
It is curious that the use of two objects at once, which are located on the head and arm, that is, they are spread in space at a certain distance from each other, can be associated with an increase in the size of the antenna, which makes it possible to improve the quality and range of communication …
Promotional video:
A short video on the topic:
Something is missing in the table - what was "before" …
In the mythology of various peoples, “gods” have “magic” objects that are worn on their heads and that enable the gods to hear, see and know what is happening somewhere far away. For us, representatives of a civilization that has gone far enough along the path of technological progress, such descriptions evoke quite clear associations with some kind of transceiving devices.
Many thousands of kilometers from Israel, on the other side of the world, there is a similar ritual in Japan. Japanese hermit monks, the Yamabushi, place small black boxes called tokin on their foreheads, just as the Jews do their tefillin. The size of the tokin is practically the same as that of the Jewish tefillin, only the tefillin is cube-shaped and the tokin is round.
However, in Japan, even the ban on the use of this "means of communication" to the first comer was preserved - not all monks wear tokin, but only yamabushi. Yamabushi means "sleeping in the mountains". These are followers of the Shugendo movement, who retired to the mountains for ascetic practice. Their other names are: yama no hijiri - "mountain sages"; shugenja - "practicing to acquire magical abilities"; syugesya - "engaged in ascetic practice"; gedja - practitioners.
Tefillin and tokin, of course, are not any real means of communication today. They are just imitation. But the imitation is quite indicative …
In Israel, the use of another similar object is widespread, which is called the mezuzah. Mezuzah is actually an integral part of any Jewish home. Its purpose (in the modern sense) is to protect the house from diseases and enemies, that is, to perform the functions of a kind of protective, protective barrier.
Modern "boxes" - mezuzahs are quite diverse. With a general similarity in shape, they have different sizes and different patterns decorating them. They are placed at the entrances of not only residential buildings, but also other very different premises.
When a Jew enters a house, he is obliged to touch his hands to the mezuzah, say the words of the prayer, and then kiss the fingers that touched the mezuzah. This is how the ritual of guarding a given room is believed to work.
This procedure is very similar to the use of a certain sensor that picks up a voice and reads fingerprints, that is, some kind of device that prevents unwanted persons from entering there.
Even a special instruction on how to install the mezuzah has been preserved. And it has a clear, technological character.
In general, we can conclude that with the help of mezuzah, tefillin and tokin, people have preserved the memory of some real technical devices that worked here in the distant past.
