Free Pyramid Quest by Robert M. Schoch

of the vessels.
    Dunn maintains that this carving represents not the symbolism of ancient Egypt’s religion but a graphic record of a Crookes tube, also known as a cathode ray tube, a device developed in the 1870s by the Englishman Sir William Crookes. A Crookes tube consists of a partially evacuated glass tube or bulb with an anode and a cathode set into it. When an electrical source is properly connected to the tube, a stream of electrons will pass from the cathode to the anode. When the electrons hit a phosphorescent surface or screen in the tube, they form a visible image. The principle of the cathode ray tube formed the basis for a great deal of twentieth-century electronics, including old-fashioned radar tubes, oscilloscopes, and the tubes in certain televisions and computer monitors. As Dunn sees it, the Dendera wall carving is not a collection of religious symbols but the depiction of an electrical experiment.
    He points to more evidence as well, phenomena that Dunn contends can be explained only if the Egyptians had access to electrically powered devices—some of which may represent a technology so advanced we can’t even imagine it. Examples include the precise machining and polishing of very hard rock, such as the granite sarcophagus in the Great Pyramid’s King’s Chamber, and the ability of the ancient Egyptians to raise huge monoliths to great heights and maneuver them into place.
    As great as these accomplishments are, they prove only that the Egyptians were clever and adept. They by no means make it certain, or even likely, that the Egyptians had and used electricity. And the evidence that they did fails to hold up to even casual scrutiny. One of the founders of modern Egyptology, Sir William Flinders Petrie, long ago called attention to the amazing stoneworking abilities of the ancient Egyptians, 5 yet seemed satisified that it was within their capacity to have made such objects with their known technological level.
    Consider the Dendera wall carving, for example. None of the symbols depicted in the relief, such as the snakes and the baboon, are unusual in Egyptian religious art. As a goddess of the sky, which was feminine in Egyptian mythology, Hathor became the deity of women, fertility, and sexual love. The Egyptians, like many cultures ancient and modern, connected snakes with fertility—because they renew themselves whenever they shed their skins—and with sexuality, because the body of a snake rising to strike is reminiscent of the penis hardening and erecting. As a result, carved images of snakes are hardly anything unusual or unexpected in the temple of Hathor.
    Dating is also a major problem. Although the oldest foundation stones at Dendera date to 2600 B.C. and the Old Kingdom, the manifest temple was built and the carving made during the Ptolemaic period, which began with Alexander the Great’s invasion in 332 B.C., more than two millennia later. It is a grand assumption to decide, without evidence, that the Ptolemaic builders followed the details of the original building at Dendera and replicated an earlier image accurately depicting a technological wonder over 20 centuries old. In our time, the equivalent would be a detailed engineer’s drawing for a Roman catapult carved into a remake of the Coliseum.
    The problems surrounding Dunn’s power plant theory do not stop in Dendera. Consider just how much machinery has to be added to the pyramid to make the theory work. It begins with vibration equipment in the Subterranean Chamber and extends through banks of Helmholtz resonators in the Grand Gallery, an acoustic filter in the Antechamber, metal linings for both King’s Chamber shafts and a crystal filter in the northern one, a microwave receiver in the King’s Chamber, and a wireless transmission system that included relay satellites in earth orbit. As it is, none of this equipment now resides within the Great Pyramid. Even if it had been purposefully removed, some evidence should point