The French electricity company EDF has ironized Thursday on an abracadabra theory relayed by the rapper Gims, according to which the Egyptians would have had electricity since the Antiquity, in a communication operation on the tone of the humor.
“EDF, official supplier to the pharaohs since 2000 BC”, the energy company claimed in a full-page advertisement published Thursday in the daily newspaper Le Parisien, with two large pyramids in the picture. “No, Mr. Gims, not at all. But we are sure that if electricity had existed in the time of the pharaohs, they would have chosen us”, adds EDF in this communication operation.
Deconstructing a misconception
“As a rational and scientific brand, for us, the idea was to deconstruct misconceptions with humor,” said EDF management, contacted by AFP. This “wink” also allows EDF “to address a young audience”, this communication operation was also declined on Twitter, Instagram and SnapChat, said the same source.
In a video interview of more than an hour and a half to the YouTube channel Oui Hustle posted on March 22, which has accumulated several hundred thousand views, the Congolese singer took up an ancient claim that the Egyptians had an electrical system from ancient times thanks to the pyramids. Three weeks later, on April 13, the singer released his latest track Hernan Cortes, named after the Spanish conquistador, on his YouTube channel. As an illustration, an image of pyramids, topped with a golden capital and near a pylon, cables and electrical cabinets.
An ancient and absurd theory
“At the time of the empire of Kush [appeared around 2.000 years before JC, NDLR], there was electricity. (…) The pyramids that we see there, at the top there is gold. Gold, it is the best conductor for electricity. They were damn antennas! People had electricity. People can’t understand that. The Egyptians, the science they had, it’s beyond comprehension, and historians know it!” advances the singer, followed by 3 million people on Instagram, and 11 million on Facebook as on YouTube.
This claim – unfounded – that Egypt had electricity long before it was invented in the 19th century, is far from new. In September 2018, it had already resurfaced in a video viewed more than 2.5 million times and entitled “the true mystery of the pyramids has finally been unraveled” which relayed this absurd theory of “power plants”.
