PERPETUAL LAMPS IN EGYPTIAN TEMPLES

PERPETUAL LAMPS IN EGYPTIAN TEMPLES

It was common practice among early Egyptians to seal lighted lamps in the sepulchres of their dead as offerings to their god or for the deceased to find their way to the "other side". Among the tombs near Memphis (and in the Brahmin temples of India), lights were found operating in sealed chambers and vessels, but sudden exposure to air extinguished them or caused their fuel to evaporate. Greeks and Romans later followed the custom, and the tradition became generally established-not only that of actual burning lamps, but miniature reproductions made in terracotta were buried with the dead.
Some lamps were enclosed in circular vessels for protection, and instances are recorded where the original oil was found perfectly preserved in them after more than 2,000 years. There is ample proof from eyewitnesses that lamps were burning when the sepulchres were sealed, and it was declared by later bystanders that they were still burning when the vaults were opened hundreds of years later.

The possibility of preparing a fuel that would renew itself as rapidly as it was consumed was a source of considerable controversy among mediaeval authors, and numerous documents exist outlining their arguments. After due consideration of evidence at hand, it seemed well within the range of possibility that ancient Egyptian priest-chemists manufactured lamps that burned if not indefinitely then at least for considerable periods of time. Numerous authorities have written on the subject of everburning lamps, with W. Wynn Westcott estimating that the number of writers who have given the subject consideration as more than 150 and H. P. Blavatsky as 173. While conclusions reached by different authors are at a variance, a majority admitted the existence of the phenomenal lamps. Only a few maintained that the lamps would burn forever, but many were willing to concede that they might remain alight for several centuries without replenishment of fuel. It was generally believed that the wicks of those perpetual lamps were made of braided or woven asbestos, called by early alchemists "salamander's wool". The fuel appeared to have been one of the products of alchemical research, possibly produced in the temple on Mt Sinai. Several formulae for making fuel for the lamps were preserved, and in H. P. Blavatsky's profound work, Isis Unveiled, the author reprinted two complicated formulae from earlier authors of a fuel that "when made and lighted, will burn with a perpetual flame and you may set this lamp in any place where you please ".

Some believe the fabled perpetual lamps of temples to be cunning mechanical con trivances, and some quite humorous explanations have been extended. In Egypt, rich underground deposits of asphalt and petroleum exist, and some would have it that priests connected asbestos wicks by a secret duct to an oil deposit, which in turn connected to one or more lamps. Others thought that the belief that lamps burned indefinitely in tombs was the result of the fact
that in some cases fumes resembling smoke poured forth from the entrances of newly opened vaults. Parties going in later, and discovering lamps scattered about the floor , assumed that they were the source of the fumes. There were some well-documented stories concerning the discovery of ever-burning lamps not only in Egypt but also in other parts of the world.