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An Experiment I did in a lab environnement of a friend to find again a technique i think was used in ancient Egypt for copper plating of statues. For that I built a gravity pile they could have created with materials of their time.
In the first picture you can see the copper statues of Pharaoh Pepi Ist (2260/2254BC, 6th Dynasty) and his son Merenra. The copper statues were found in Nekhen temple of Horus. Before storing both statues the Priests had disassembled them, placed one Inside the other, then sealed the resulting combination with a thin layer of copper.
The common hypothesis is that both statues were made from copper beaten over a wooden core… but in reality I don’t think so… Look carefully the refined face features and the lines of the legs...
Experts in Electroplating have another explanation: they said that those statues were made by electroplating on the wood. Then the wood disapeared by burning it. But the dilemma is that no generator (alike Bagdad pile) has been discovered in Egypt...
I will resolve this problem showing that they may be used a kind of Daniell battery called : « Gravity Battery » and I will try to demonstrate that Egyptians could have used everyday containers for that. |
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Statue intended to stamp the mold
I will use for that experiment things that ancient egyptians had :
1- A basic egyptian statue of pharaoh intended to stamp a mould
2- A mould for lost wax model with copper wires,
3- Copper sulfate crystals
4- Condensed sulfate solution
5- Diluted copper solution
6- Sulfate solution
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7- Zinc foil (or ferrous piece of meteorite)
8- Graphite powder (or gold powder)
9- I used 2 glass containers in order you can see better the experiment but ancient egyptians could have used ceramic containers.(They had as shown in South tomb pic)
You can see in the following pics the steps of the whole experiment.
Mould for lost wax model. |
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| Enameled ceramics, South Tomb,Sakkara SouthTomb, Photo AntoineGigal©2009-2012 |
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| All what is needed |
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| The explanation, drawing by FDavid for Gigalresearch |
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| The chemical reaction |
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| After a while I could see the progress of the copper platering on the statue |
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| Watching the progress |
What is interesting also is that with meteoritic iron anode, layers of rust deposits are seen also in the bottom of the containers, it was then a strong symbol for the ancient Egyptians : They used something coming from the skies ( from Divine cosmic energy), meteoritical iron for example, to cover the pharaoh statue with a mettalic skin giving to him a kind of immortality…at the same time the meteoric stone used in the platting process became rust deposits and disappeared (coming back to its origin..)
This experiment was done in 2009 and it was shown in public during my lecture in London in March 2009.
©AntoineGigal 2009-2012
Results of the experiment, I did it also on a small pyramid model :
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