Traces of machining on dishes
To begin with, it is worth reminding the reader that modern Egyptology denies the ancient pyramid builders even the knowledge of the wheel and iron, considering this period the "Bronze Age" and explaining the technological advances of this civilization by the simple mechanical use of a huge amount of labor. However, if such an approach is able to partially explain the construction of megalithic structures, then it is hardly acceptable for explaining the level of mathematical and astronomical knowledge that existed in Ancient Egypt, as well as the highest examples of architecture and art …
The Cairo Museum, like many other museums in the world, contains stone specimens found in and around the famous step pyramid at Saqqara, known as the pyramid of the Pharaoh III of the Dynasty Djoser (2667-2648 BC). The researcher of Egyptian antiquities U. Petri found fragments of similar items on the Giza plateau.
There are a number of unresolved issues regarding these stone items. The fact is that they bear undoubted traces of machining - circular grooves left by the cutter during the axial rotation of these objects during their production on some mechanisms such as a lathe. In the upper left image, these grooves are especially clearly visible closer to the center of objects, where the cutter worked more intensively at the final stage, and grooves left by a sharp change in the feed angle of the cutting tool are also visible. Similar traces of processing can be seen on the basalt bowl in the right photo (Ancient Kingdom, kept in the Petri Museum).
Promotional video:
These stone spheres, bowls and vases are not only the household utensils of the ancient Egyptians, but also examples of the highest art ever found by archaeologists. The paradox is that the most impressive exhibits date from the earliest period of ancient Egyptian civilization. They are made from a wide variety of materials - from soft, such as alabaster, to the most "difficult" in terms of hardness, such as granite. Working with a soft stone like alabaster is relatively easy compared to granite. Alabaster can be machined with primitive tools and grinding. Virtuoso works made in granite raise a lot of questions today and testify not only to the high level of art and craft, but, possibly, to the more advanced technology of pre-dynastic Egypt.
Petri wrote about this: "… The lathe seems to have been as common a tool in the fourth dynasty as it is in today's factory halls."
Above: granite sphere (Saqqara, III Dynasty, Cairo Museum), calcite bowl (III Dynasty), calcite vase (III Dynasty, British Museum).
Stone items like this vase on the left were made in the earliest period of Egyptian history and are no longer found in the later. The reason is obvious - the old skills were lost. Some of the vases are made of very brittle schist stone (close to silicon) and - most inexplicably - are still completed, processed and polished to the point where the edge of the vase almost disappears to the thickness of a sheet of paper - by today's standards, this is simply extraordinary feat of the ancient master.
Other products, carved from granite, porphyry or basalt, are “completely” hollow, and at the same time with a narrow, sometimes very long neck, the presence of which makes the internal processing of the vessel obscure, provided that it is made by hand (right).
The lower part of this granite vase is processed with such precision that the entire vase (approximately 23 cm in diameter, hollow inside and with a narrow neck), when placed on a glass surface, after swinging, assumes an absolutely vertical position along the center line. At the same time, the area of contact with the glass of its surface is no more than that of a chicken egg. A prerequisite for such an accurate balancing is that a hollow stone ball must have a perfectly flat, uniform wall thickness (with such a tiny base area - less than 3.8 mm2 - any asymmetry in such a dense material as granite would lead to a deviation of the vase from the vertical axis).
Such technological delights can amaze any manufacturer today. Nowadays, it is very difficult to make such a product even in a ceramic version. In granite it is almost impossible.
The Cairo Museum exhibits a rather large (60 cm in diameter or more) original product made of slate. It resembles a large vase with a cylindrical center 5–7 cm in diameter, with a thin outer rim and three plates evenly spaced around the perimeter and bent towards the center of the "vase". This is an ancient example of amazing craftsmanship.
These images show only four samples of the thousands of objects found in and around the step pyramid at Saqqara (the so-called pyramid of Djoser), which is believed to be the oldest stone pyramid in Egypt today. She is the first of all built, which has no comparable analogues and predecessors. The pyramid and its surroundings are a unique place in terms of the number of pieces of art and household utensils made of stone found, although the Egyptian explorer William Petrie also found fragments of such items in the Giza plateau area.
Many of Saqqara's finds have symbols engraved on the surface with the names of the rulers of the earliest period of Egyptian history - from the pre-dynastic kings to the first pharaohs. Judging by the primitive writing, it is difficult to imagine that these inscriptions were made by the same master craftsman who created these exquisite samples. Most likely, these "graffiti" were added later by those people who one way or another turned out to be their subsequent owner.
So who made them? And How? And where? And when? And what events happened to those people whose household utensils were buried in the oldest of the Egyptian pyramids?
Part of the exposition of the Cairo Museum of Antiquities
and the step pyramid of Pharaoh Djoser at Saqqara
Sawing and drilling marks in hard stone
The photographs show a general view of the eastern side of the Great Pyramid at Giza with an enlarged plan. The square marks a section of the basalt site with traces of the use of the sawing tool.
Note that the cut marks on the basalt are clear and parallel. The quality of this work indicates that the cuts were made with a perfectly stable blade, with no sign of initial "yaw" of the blade. Incredibly, it seems that sawing basalt in ancient Egypt was not a very laborious task, because the craftsmen easily allowed themselves to leave unnecessary, "fitting" marks on the rock, which, if hand cut, would be a waste of time and effort. These "try-in" cuts are not the only ones here, several similar marks from a stable and easy cutting tool can be found within a radius of 10 meters from this place. Along with horizontal, there are vertical parallel grooves (see below).
Not far from this place, we can also see cuts (see above), passing along the stone, as they say, in passing, along a tangent line. In most cases, it is noticeable that these "saws" have clean and smooth, consistently parallel grooves, even at the very beginning of the "saw" contact with the stone. These marks in the stone do not show any signs of instability or "saw" wobbling that would be expected when sawing with a long blade with a longitudinal manual return, especially when starting to cut in a stone as hard as basalt. There is an option that in this case some protruding part of the rock was cut off, to put it simply, a "bump", which is very difficult to explain without a high initial speed of "cutting" the blade.
Another interesting detail is the use of drilling technology in ancient Egypt. As Petrie wrote, “Drilled channels range from 1/4" (0.63 cm) to 5 "(12.7 cm) in diameter, and runout from 1/30 (0.8 mm) to 1/5 (~ 5 mm) in. The smallest hole found in granite is 2 inches (~ 5 cm) in diameter."
Today, channels up to 18 cm in diameter drilled in granite are already known (see below).
The granite product shown in the picture, drilled with a tubular drill, was shown in 1996 at the Cairo Museum without any accompanying information or comments from the museum staff. The photograph clearly shows circular spiral grooves in the open areas of the product, which are absolutely identical to each other. The characteristic "rotational" pattern of these channels seems to confirm Petrie's observations on the method of removing part of the granite by pre-drilling a kind of "chain" of holes.
However, if you look closely at the ancient Egyptian artifacts, it becomes clear that drilling holes in stones, even in the hardest rocks, did not pose any serious problem for the Egyptians. In the following photos you can see the channels, presumably made by the tubular drilling method.
Most of the granite doorways in the Temple of the Valley near the Sphinx are well-marked with tubular drill channels. The blue circles on the plan to the right show the location of the holes in the temple. During the construction of the temple, the holes were used, apparently, for fastening door hinges when hanging doors.
In the next pictures, you can see something even more impressive - a channel with a diameter of about 18 cm, obtained in granite using a tubular drill. The thickness of the cutting edge of the tool is striking. It is incredible that it was copper - with the existing thickness of the end wall of the tubular drill and the expected force on its working edge, it must be an alloy of incredible strength (the picture shows one of the channels that opened when a granite block was split in Karnak).
Probably, purely theoretically, in the very presence of holes of this type there is nothing incredibly incredible, which could not have been obtained by the ancient Egyptians with a great desire. However, drilling holes in granite is a tricky business. Tubular drilling is a fairly specialized method that will not evolve unless there is a real need for large diameter holes in hard rock. These holes demonstrate a high level of technology, developed by the Egyptians, apparently, not for "hanging doors", but already quite established and advanced by that time level, which would have required at least several centuries for its development and preliminary experience of application.
* * *
Central entrance to the Cairo Museum of Antiquities
copper tools of the ancient egyptians
Sphinx