Three of these finds, dated to the late Sassanid period (5th to 6th centuries AD), were sealed with bitumen. Similar vessels, which can be distinguished primarily by their contents, had previously been found and examined more closely:įour sealed clay vessels were excavated at Seleukeia in 1930 under the archaeological direction of Leroy Waterman, University of Michigan. Hafford gives context to the discovery of the artifacts in his reaction video to Milo Rossi's video on the subject. Īlbert Al-Haik noted original reports from the 1936 dig at Khuyut Rabbou'a giving the location as an area northeast of Baghdad, "some two miles off the Baghdad eastern bund." W. Furthermore, the style of the pottery is Sassanid (224–640). However, according to St John Simpson of the Near Eastern department of the British Museum, their original excavation and context were not well-recorded, and evidence for this date range is very weak. The artifact had been exposed to the weather and had suffered corrosion.Īustrian archeologist Wilhelm König thought the objects might date to the Parthian period, between 250 BC and AD 224. The copper cylinder is not watertight, so if the jar were filled with a liquid, this would surround the iron rod as well. At the top, the iron rod is isolated from the copper by bitumen, with plugs or stoppers, and both rod and cylinder fit snugly inside the opening of the jar. The artifacts consist of a terracotta pot approximately 140 mm (6 in) tall, with a 38 mm (1.5 in) mouth, containing a cylinder made of a rolled copper sheet, which houses a single iron rod. The artifact disappeared in 2003 during the US-led invasion of Iraq. An alternative explanation is that it functioned as a storage vessel for sacred scrolls. It was hypothesized by Wilhelm König, at the time director of the National Museum of Iraq, that the object functioned as a galvanic cell, possibly used for electroplating, or some kind of electrotherapy, but there is no electroplated object known from this period, and the claims are near-universally rejected by archaeologists. Similar artifacts have been found at nearby sites. It was discovered in present-day Khujut Rabu, Iraq in 1936, close to the metropolis of Ctesiphon, the capital of the Parthian (150 BC – 223 AD) and Sasanian (224–650 AD) empires, and it is believed to date from either of these periods. The Baghdad Battery is the name given to a set of three artifacts which were found together: a ceramic pot, a tube of copper, and a rod of iron.
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