A ceramic pot about 15 cm tall holding a copper cylinder 9 cm long, with an iron rod down the middle and bitumen sealing the lot, dug up at Khujut Rabu near Ctesiphon in 1936. Wilhelm König, who ran the Iraq Museum laboratory, proposed in 1938 that it was a galvanic cell, perhaps for electroplating or electrotherapy, and that idea has had a long life outside archaeology. Inside it, the electrical reading is universally rejected. Ten more vessels of the same kind had already come out of Seleucia in 1930 and Ctesiphon in 1931, all of them holding organic material and all found among magical objects, which points at a container for spells or sacred scrolls. Nobody has produced any written record of the things being used as batteries. The originals have not been accounted for since the 2003 invasion.
Khujut Rabu, Iraq
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