The Baghdad Battery: A Jar That Might Have Sparked, or Just Stored Scrolls

2026-06-27 · True Mysteries Editorial Desk · Impossible Objects · 7 min read

In 1936, laborers of the Iraq State Railway were sinking a foundation trench at Khujut Rabu, a village on the edge of Baghdad not far from the ruins of Ctesiphon, when their digging broke into an old grave. Inside lay a cluster of small clay jars. As odd finds usually do, they made their way to the Iraq Museum in Baghdad and into the storerooms of the man who ran its laboratory.

Two years later, in 1938, that man - an Austrian researcher named Wilhelm Konig - turned one of the jars over in his hands. It was small and unremarkable to look at: about thirteen centimetres of pale, unglazed pottery, its narrow mouth once closed with a plug of black bitumen. When he looked inside he found something more unusual. A cylinder of copper had been rolled and slipped into the jar, and within that cylinder stood a badly corroded rod of iron. The whole assembly was fixed in place by the same black bitumen that sealed the top.

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