Foucault's Pendulum

by Umberto Eco

The Egyptians knew electricity. Without electricity they wouldn’t have been able to do what they did. A German engineer placed in charge of the sewers of Baghdad discovered electric batteries still operating that dated back to the Sassanids. In the excavations of Babylon, accumulators were found that had been made four thousand years ago. And, finally, the Ark of the Covenant (which contained the Tables of the Law, Aaron’s rod, and a pot of manna from the desert) was a kind of electric strongbox capable of producing discharges on the order of five hundred volts.” “I saw that in a movie.”