Dendera Lamp of Hathor Temple

In the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, Egypt, there are stone reliefs in the southern crypt, that show a figure holding a lotus, from which emits a snake surrounded by a "protective cocoon", held aloft by a Djed pillar. These stone reliefs interpreted by some researchers as lamps. However, no archaeological or textual evidence for any kind of electrical device, or knowledge concerning electricity, has ever been recovered from ancient Egypt. Do these strange carvings represent an ancient knowledge of electricity, or are they to be interpreted as depicting mythological religious scenes?

Stone relief of "Dendera Lamp" inside the Temple of Hathor

The "Dendera lamp" is a term used to describe a supposed ancient Egyptian electrical lighting technology depicted on three stone reliefs (one single and a double representation) in the Hathor temple at the Dendera Temple complex located in Egypt. The sculpture became notable among fringe historians because of the resemblance of the motifs to some modern electical lighting systems.

A Norwegian electrical engineer noticed that the object shown on the relief could work as a lamp. Peter Krassa and Rainer Habeck, and an Austrian colleague said they could even work out a "lamp" theory based on it. It is a form of bulb, with two arms reaching into it near its thick end, and a sort of cable at the other end, from where a snake is leaping out to touch the arms on the other side. It really looks like a lamp.

The mainstream Egyptologists take the view that the stone reliefs is only a typical set of symbolic images from Egyptian mythology. While there is other theory that describe the stone relief at Dendera temple, it's most likely show an electric eel which living in the Nile called Malapterurus electricus and can be used for medical treatment.

Sources:
Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge and Ancient Mysteries by Brian Haughton;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendera_light;
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dendera_lamp;
http://www.theunexplained.moonfruit.com/#/dendera-lamps/4529715552

Pic Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dendera_light_002.jpg