What do you think about this?
Deep inside the temple of Hathor at Dendera in Egypt, in a small crypt beneath the main floor, there is a carving that has launched a thousand arguments. On the wall, a figure holds what looks startlingly like a giant lightbulb. A long bulb shape encloses a wavy serpent, supported by a pillar, with a cable running back to a box. To modern eyes it looks almost exactly like an electric lamp with its filament glowing inside.
For decades, writers outside the academic world have pointed to it as proof that the ancient Egyptians understood electricity, that they lit their tombs with lamps rather than torches, which would explain why archaeologists find no soot on many deep chamber ceilings.
Egyptologists have a very different reading, and a well grounded one. Every element in the scene, they say, is standard Egyptian religious symbolism. The bulb is a lotus flower, from which a serpent rises, a familiar image of creation and the first sunrise. The pillar is a djed, a symbol of stability, and the whole panel is covered in hieroglyphs that name exactly what is being shown. Nothing about it mentions light or power.
What if the truth is that we are simply seeing a wall about gods and creation through the eyes of an electric age, reading our own inventions into a story that was never about them?
An ancient technology lost to history, or a sacred myth we no longer know how to read? What do you think the Dendera carving actually shows?
What do you think about this? The Abenaki spoke of something in Lake Champlain long before Europeans arrived, and Port Henry still keeps a sign counting sightings. In 1977 Sandra Mansi photographed a long neck and a dark hump, and no hoax was ever found in it. Log, or a real animal?
What do you think about this? In 1579 Francis Drake beached the Golden Hind somewhere on the northern California coast and claimed the land for England. Nobody can say which beach. A brass plate found in 1936 was celebrated for decades, then proved a hoax. Point Reyes, or somewhere else?
What do you think about this? Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, one is engraved on copper instead of parchment, and it is a treasure map. It lists 64 hiding places holding tons of gold and silver. Not one has ever been found. Real temple gold, or an ancient legend set in metal?
What do you think about this? On August 15, 1977, an Ohio telescope caught a 72 second burst from Sagittarius, 30 times stronger than background, right on the hydrogen frequency. The astronomer circled it and wrote Wow. It never came back. Fluke, or one word of a conversation?
What do you think about this? The Shroud of Turin carries a full length image of a man that behaves like a photographic negative, which nobody noticed until it was first photographed in 1898. Carbon dating said medieval. Nobody can explain how the image formed. Artwork, or something else?
What do you think about this? In December 1900 three lighthouse keepers vanished from a rock off Scotland. Door shut, meal uneaten, clocks stopped, one oilskin still on its hook, so a man walked into a storm without it. No bodies found. Rogue wave, or something stranger on that island?
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