The Baghdad Battery: History Rewritten or History Misunderstood?

For those who search for the strange and unusual from history there are certain things which prove interesting time and again. Unexplained phenomena, disappearances and unsolved murders, these always appeal, and it is easy to understand why.

A mystery solved is, after all, no mystery at all, and those that remain so allow for endless speculation from experts and amateurs alike. But the most appealing of such categories of mysteries from history is generally the so-called “out of place artifact”.

These are discoveries, evidenced or surviving intact, which do not belong in the place they were found. Some are clearly mistakes or misidentifications, generally natural formed geology mistaken for something artificial. 

This is the case with miscategorized fossils, or the Balochistan sphinx: a mountain outcrop fallen victim to pareidolia. Erroneous conclusions also fall into this category: a lack of soot inside the pyramids does not mean the Egyptians had artificial lights, for example (and no, those aren’t incandescent lightbulbs depicted on their wall carvings).

Some are hoaxes, obviously. Such hoaxes can be historical, such as the famous diamond hoax of 19xx when US investors were conned by precious stones scattered in a field, but most are modern, perpetrated by those who seek infamy, or at least recognition. This is the case with almost all UFO sightings, or alien encounters.

But, once all of these false leads and fakes are filtered out, there remain a very few things from history where an explanation is not forthcoming. These “true” out of place artifacts are the ones which have the power to rewrite history, or at least to suggest that we do not fully understand how we came to be. 

These are generally items which appear too sophisticated for the time from which they came. These are items which suggest that the ancients, had they been a little more imaginative, could have achieved a technological leap that was missed for centuries, or even millennia.

So it is with the Baghdad Battery.

Electricity in Ancient Iraq

In 1936 in Iraq, an excavation near to the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ctesiphon uncovered a strange trove of items. Gathered together in a group in what is now the Khujut Rabu, a suburb of Baghdad, these items from smallest to largest compromised an iron bar, a hollow copper tube, and a small clay pot.

It appeared that the items belonged together and their size suggested that they could form a nested whole: the iron within the copper and both with the ceramic jar. This is how they were discovered and it is believed this is how they were to be arranged.

Other things about the find intrigued the archaeologists. One end of the iron rod was insulated from the copper sheath around it by tarry bitumen. There was also a hollow between pot and copper and between copper and iron, with the latter designed to be fit neatly in the opening at the top of the clay container. Corrosion found inside the jar shows it was likely once filled with vinegar.

Anyone with any electrical engineering will tell you that these are the components of a basic battery. This was certainly the conclusion of William Konig, then director of the National Museum of Iraq, but there were obvious problems.

The first is the age. Konig thought the artifacts to be Parthian, no later than the 2nd century AD. Even if he was mistaken and the artifacts come from the later Sasanian empire, as the shape of the pot suggests, they would still be well over 1,500 years old.

There are other problems, too. The copper part of the “battery” did not extend outside the pot, as would be required were it to operate as a battery and form a circuit. It may have been displaced during its long entombment but this was never suggested at the time.

Bitumen, too, is not a great choice as an insulator. As the “battery” heated up during operation the bitumen would become pliable and potentially move away from its position separating the iron and copper elements, meaning the battery would need to be constantly replenished, or only operate for brief periods.

Konig’s own conclusions are suspect, as well. He believed the battery to be a “galvanic cell” used for electroplating, but the items he suggested as candidates for such a treatment were in fact plated with mercury or gold in an entirely conventional way. Modern experiments have also shown the artifact would have been very poor as a power cell for such electroplating.

And yet, the artifact exists? And it is not only the single artifact: similar items have been found nearby. Another excavation in the nearby Mesopotamian city of Selecia had found four more of such items, six years earlier in 1930.

Like the Baghdad Battery, they consisted of a clay pot with an iron rod in the center, surrounded by another metal (here bronze instead of copper). Like the Baghdad Battery, they were sealed with bitumen. One, puzzlingly, contained shards of glass.

Ten more such jars were found in 1931, this time in Ctesiphon itself. Varying metals including lead and lead compounds were found in these, but nothing so convincing as the Baghdad Battery itself. Cellulose fibers were also commonly found in these pots.

So what is the Baghdad Battery, then? Given it appears to be a battery that does not work, could it be a curio, an experiment or only a partial find which was then abandoned?

Could it be something else entirely? Such jars were used for storage of scrolls, important documentation protected from the harsh environment. And while this would explain the cellulose fibers found elsewhere, it does not explain the vinegar.

It could just be that we are looking here at a true out of place artifact. An idea which, had those who witnessed it comprehended what they could achieve, could have changed the history of the world.

Sadly though it seems likely that we will never know. With the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 the region was thrown into turmoil once again. Widespread looting or antiquities was undertaken both by the fleeing populace and the arriving soldiers, and amongst the uproar the Baghdad Battery disappeared.

And with it, perhaps, we lost our only chance to truly understand what it was.

Top Image: The Baghdad Battery disappeared during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but we have a great deal of surviving detail on what the original artifact was like (Ironie / CC BY-SA 2.5)