Quote Originally Posted by lars573
The other is that the Ark box itself could generate a powerful and potentially lethal electrical shock. The idea behind that is tha the Egyptians had stumbled on a way to generate electricity via a chemical reaction in canopic jars, which the Israelites some how found out and used in the construction of the Ark box. There is also another one that says the Egyptians then invented lights bulbs and used these canopic batteries to power them, but I digress. So some engineer tried to see of these Egyptian canopic-batteries could in fact generate electrical current and how much. These canopic batteries could in fact generate a current and if you connected enough to gether then you could generate a big enough jolt to kill a man. So then the theory goes that the Isrealites built these canopic batteries into the Ark's base and made most of the box out of conductive metals so that if you tried to open it and didn't grab the right part you got fried.
Was the name of that engineer Erich von Däniken? I didn't know he was an engineer, but I do know he made roughly the same claims about the Ark and the so-called "Batteries of Bagdad". I also know he told a number of things about other historical artifacts that are patently untrue.

From what I know (but that is not much), the Ark was not that different from the portable altars in use at that time, so it is strange that so many wonderous qualities are attributed to this single artifact.

Off course, it is possible that the Egyptians knew electricity, but these kind of ideas tend to outstrip the available evidence very fast, especially in a enviroment where there is so little ability to verify them as the internet.