Baghdad Battery
What is the Baghdad Battery?
The Baghdad Battery, or rather, a collection of excavated artifacts imagined as puzzle pieces to form a battery, is argued by some as being an ancient power source. The clay container, a bright yellowish color, had a height of about 15 cm and a removed neck (Eggert). The vase-like structure was found containing two interior pieces. The first, a tube of sheet copper about 9 cm high with a closed bottom approximately 26 mm in diameter. Second, a completely oxidized rod of iron 75 mm in length with a point at the bottom end (Eggert). A collar of bitumen around the top of the iron rod connected it to the inside of the copper tube, creating an assembled piece. Additional bitumen was found covering the base of the copper cylindrical portion of the battery. The conjoined artifacts existed within the clay vase at excavation (Mills). Similar finds were excavated from Seleucia and Ctesiphon. From Seleucia, bronze cylinders with papyrus relics inside were identified, while from Ctesiphon rolled bronze sheets were among the finds (Eggert).
Excavation
June 14th, 1936, construction operations on the Baghdad-Bakuba line carried out by Iraq State Railways, near Khuyut Rabbou’a on the outskirts of Baghdad, lead to the exposure of a stone slab covering an ancient burial. Upon this discovery, excavations of the site were then carried out by the Iraq Antiquities Department (Mills). Over 600 artifacts and fragmented pieces were recovered from the site. It was believed the artifacts came from the Parthian period, which was around 248 B.C.- 226 A.D, when the Parthians occupied that land (Sethi). Some of the finds included clay figurines, pottery and glass pieces, engraved bricks, and the group of pieces named collectively as ‘the Baghdad Battery’. After collection, the artifacts were sent to the Iraq Museum where they were examined by Wilhelm Konig. Wilhelm Konig, the director of Antiquities at the Iraq Museum of Baghdad at the time, determined that the vessel was a kind of galvanic cell (Handorf).