Reliefs in the crypts beneath the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, of Ptolemaic date, showing elongated lotus-shaped objects containing sinuous serpents, supported on djed pillars and attended by figures.
The two readings
The alternative reading, which entered wide circulation through Erich von Daniken and is repeated across the ancient-technology literature, is that these are electric lamps: the lotus is the bulb, the serpent the filament, the djed pillar the insulator and the cable the supply. The Egyptological reading is that the scenes are mythological, that the accompanying inscriptions describe them as such in the vocabulary of the emergence of the sun from the lotus and the serpent as a creative principle, and that the same iconography appears elsewhere without the alleged apparatus.
The problem with the lamp
No lamp, socket, conductor or generator has ever been found in Egypt, no text describes lighting of that kind, and the soot question, that the tombs show no smoke blackening, has ordinary answers in oil lamps and reflected sunlight. The reliefs belong in the file because they are the clearest example of the method the site’s source notes keep flagging: an image that resembles a modern object, read as a depiction of it, with the inscription beside it left untranslated.
Connections
The Giza Power Plant · Christopher Dunn · Erich von Daniken · Ancient Astronaut Hypothesis · Ancient Machining · Vimanas · Ancient Aliens