Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt: Advanced Engineering in the Temples of the Pharaohs

by Christopher Dunn

  I slid the parallel along the surface both horizontally and vertically, and there was no deviation from a true, flat surface. The flatness was similar to precision-ground surface plates that are used in manufacturing for the verification of exactly machined parts for tools, gauges, and myriad other products that require extremely accurate surfaces and dimensions. Those familiar with such products and the relationship between gauges and surface plates know that the gauge may show that the stone is flat within the tolerance of the gauge—in this case 0.0002 inch (0.00508 millimeter) flatness. If the gauge is moved 6 inches along the stone surface, however, and the same conditions are found, it cannot be claimed with certainty that the stone is within the same tolerance over 12 inches—unless the plate has been inspected by another means and is calibrated to a known standard.

  Nonetheless, moving the steel edge along the granite provided enough information for me to conclude that I needed a longer straight edge—and, preferably, even more sophisticated alignment equipment—to determine the accuracy of the inside surfaces of the box. I was also impressed to find that each corner of the box had a small radius that ran from the top of the box to the bottom, where it blended with the corner radius of the floor of the box.

  Returning to the hotel that evening, my mind was consumed by what I had seen. These artifacts were meticulously crafted boxes on a very large scale. Whoever decided to make them in this way did not have a whimsical fantasy about how pretty they would be as the bulls’ final resting places. It just didn’t make sense to think that the ancient Egyptians would pour such resources into manufacturing coffins while the mausoleum where the god Apis rested was rough cut and undecorated, except for a jumble of stelae with no pretense to geometric balance and harmony. As for the boxes, once the lid was on top of each of them, nobody would see the perfectly flat and polished surfaces or the conformity to orthogonal precision. Visitors would see only a dusty, dark, and rough-hewn catacomb that looked more like a London Underground tunnel than a mausoleum designed for a god.

  The challenges that these boxes would present to an engineer with modern stone-working tools are significant. This was confirmed for me when I arrived back in the United States and contacted Tru-Stone Corporation, a Minnesota-based manufacturer of granite surface plates, angle plates, V-blocks, and machine bases. In 1995, I provided Eric Leither, their engineer, with the specifications for creating one of these boxes, and he responded:

  Dear Christopher,

  First I would like to thank you for providing me with all the fascinating information. Most people never get the opportunity to take part in something like this. You mentioned to me that the box was derived from one solid block of granite. A piece of granite of that size is estimated to weigh 200,000 pounds if it was Sierra White granite, which weighs approximately 175 lb. per cubic foot. If a piece of that size was available, the cost would be enormous. Just the raw piece of rock would cost somewhere in the area of $115,000.00. This price does not include cutting the block to size or any freight charges. The next obvious problem would be the transportation. There would be many special permits issued by the D.O.T. and would cost thousands of dollars. From the information that I gathered from your fax, the Egyptians moved this piece of granite nearly 500 miles. That is an incredible achievement for a society that existed hundreds of years ago.7

  Mr. Leither goes on to say that Tru-Stone did not have the equipment to create this box and that they would have to create it in five pieces, then ship it to its destination and bolt it together on site.

  After my treatment of this discovery in my earlier articles and my first book—which reflected my excitement—some readers concluded and have claimed that such work cannot be done today, but it was not my intention to mislead readers into concluding that modern engineers could not devise the means to create these artifacts today. It was my intention to portray the artifacts as incredible, out-of-place anomalies that display attributes that are uncharacteristic of the capabilities of the tools available during the time period when they were allegedly produced.

  In 1999, I had another opportunity to visit Egypt, and during my time there, I tried to access the Serapeum again, for this time I had brought with me a longer straight edge and a toolmaker’s solid square. Try as I might, though, I was unable to gain access to the temple. I was told it was too dangerous due to water damage and that pieces of the ceiling were in danger of collapsing. I had obviously asked the wrong person for help, though the local businessman I had met at the Mövenpick Restaurant at Giza claimed that he had influence and could assist me.

  In 2001 my luck changed when I was invited to be part of a documentary that Grizzly Adams Productions was making for PAX television. I arrived in Cairo at 1:00 a.m. and was helped into a taxi that was driven by a man who was quite obviously intoxicated and who, after several stops for food, water, gas, and a bathroom—all accompanied by conversations with friends—took almost two hours to arrive at a destination that would normally take less than an hour. After we arrived at the Oasis, the driver held my suitcase hostage while demanding baksheesh on top of the money I had paid for the taxi.

  It was during this time that I met Dr. Zahi Hawass, who was at that time the director of the Giza Plateau. (Dr. Hawass has since been promoted to chairman of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.) We first met at the Cairo Hilton coffee shop, where Gail Fallen, Grizzly Adams field producer, introduced me to the camera crew. Dr. Hawass was charming and charismatic and listened attentively as Gail described what the video was about and what its main thrust was. Dr. Hawass was cordially dismissive of the reference to a Hall of Records, and he turned to me and asked, “What do you do?” I told him that I was an engineer and was here to pay respect to the amazing engineering feats of his ancestors. He seemed content with that answer, and the meeting concluded with arrangements for him to be interviewed the following day.

  Gail Fallen had shown interest in going to the Serapeum, and after the filming was finished, we visited Dr. Hawass in his office on the Giza Plateau in hopes of receiving permission. Dr. Hawass was even more ebullient and charming than when we first met. He gave us a slip of paper with permission to see several archaeological sites: the Great Pyramid, the workers’ village, and the rock tunnels of the Serapeum.

  I was particularly interested in seeing the workers’ village, which was a part of the Giza Plateau mapping project undertaken by the Oriental Institute in Chicago, under the direction of Dr. Mark Lehner. I was immediately struck by the difference in workmanship between the constructed walls of the village and those of the pyramids. Though the construction on the Giza Plateau was of the highest quality, with close-fitting limestone blocks, the stones built into the walls of the village were rough in shape and more like those you would find in a shepherd’s dry-stone wall in the north of England than where the world’s finest stonemasons once lived.

  When I visited the limestone quarries near Bedford, in southern Indiana, I met a quarry worker, Tom Adams, at his home. His house, like all the other houses in the area, was built of dressed limestone that was square and regular and mortared in place to create a straight and true structure. The limestone walls of the house may not have been as precise as the Great Pyramid, but at least they reflected the stoneworking capabilities of the local industry and the skill of those who worked in the quarries and lived in the houses.

  My impression was that the newly discovered settlement, the so-called workers’ village, was not the home of the pyramid builders, but instead was built later out of some of the waste gathered from the plateau. Within the walls of the settlement were chunks of undressed granite, and on the plateau by Khafre’s pyramid are large granite casing blocks that were stripped from the pyramid and that have quarry marks on them and pieces broken off the ends.

  Dr. Hossam Abulfotouh asked Mark Lehner about this contemporaneous inconsistency when he attended one of Dr. Lehner’s lectures at the American Researches Center in Cairo on December 6, 2006.8 Engaging specialists in interpreting anc
ient artifacts in Egypt is absolutely necessary in establishing a credible hypothesis. Without their input, there cannot be a comprehensive understanding of the past. For instance, the pyramids on the Giza Plateau were built not by Egyptologists or archaeologists but by engineers and craftsmen. It is not surprising, therefore, that Egyptologists overlook engineering features and nuances that would be recognized immediately by those who are trained in those disciplines.

  From the workers’ village, our taxi driver took us to Saqqara and the office of Adel Hussein Mohamed, the director of Saqqara. With consummate Egyptian hospitality, Dr. Mohamed asked us to join him for some tea before entering the Serapeum, and we were delighted to accept. After a short time, the inspector of Saqqara joined us, and we made our way to the entrance to the rock tunnels.

  Adel and Mohamed, the inspector, were both extremely good-natured men. I have found during my travels in Egypt that the Egyptian people are the most good-natured people in the world. Their sense of humor is irresistible, and they love to joke around. Walking into the Serapeum was a quite solemn affair, but when I took my flashlight out of my backpack and it fell from my fumbling hands to the ground and the batteries spilled out, the party relaxed and had a good laugh over my clumsiness.

  With permission from my host, I climbed inside the box with the opening in the corner and took my gauges out of my backpack. I had with me a solid precision square that had a 14-inch (35.56-centimeter) blade. The square had been calibrated to be accurate within 0.00005 inch (0.00127 millimeter) square. I wiped the dust from the surface of the granite with a damp T-shirt, placed the square against the underside of the lid, and brought the blade in contact with the inside of the box. When I shined a flashlight behind the blade, I did not detect any gap or imprecision on either the lid or the inside surface of the box. Gail Fallen took a photograph while I held the flashlight to illuminate the square. As seen in plate 12, the granite surface was finely tooled to a mirror finish. The reflection off the surface indicates an optical accuracy—there are no distortions or aberrations in the reflected image. Nonetheless, this does not mean that the surface was flat within nanometers or wavelengths of light—or even the tolerance of the square. What we see is a comparative test using a common gauge that has a known dimension. The results, however, do command attention and should encourage further inspection using more sophisticated metrology instruments, such as autocollimators and specialized laser alignment equipment that can provide surface mapping and orthogonal tolerances.

  That an examination with more sophisticated instruments has not yet been performed does not diminish these results when we tackle the question of ancient Egyptian manufacturing sophistication. On the contrary, it dovetails with what I discovered in the temples in Upper Egypt—with the geometry and accuracy found on the Ramses statues. The difference between the statues and the boxes is that the boxes in the Serapeum are crafted with simple geometry that is easily measured, while the Ramses statues require analysis in a computer. What is found in one and reinforced in another is a clear picture of a civilization that had developed state-of-the-art craftsmanship in cutting hard igneous rock to an extremely high level of sophistication.

  When compared to the geometry of a Ramses statue, the granite boxes seen in figure 5.7 has relatively simple geometry consisting of flat and square surfaces. Nonetheless, the difficulty in creating this object should not be brushed aside, because upon measuring the opposite wall, I noted that it too is flat and square with the underside of the lid, which means that the vertical surfaces had to be crafted parallel to each other. Such perfection is not an accident and cannot be produced with the tools found in the archaeological record.

  I next slid a precise, hardened steel, 12-inch straight edge along the surface of the granite, and I detected no deviation on a horizontal or vertical run of the instrument. Significant to me, as I drew on my own experience with precision steel on precision granite, was the perfection of the surface up to the tangency point of the corner radius. Having done such work myself and having been trained by craftsmen of old in creating accurate right-angle surfaces by hand, my mind was full of questions. I did not check the inside vertical corner of the wall for squareness at this time, but I did use a Brown and Sharp radius gauge to inspect the corner radius where the two surfaces meet. I can testify, that when I went through my set of radius gauges in order to select the closest fit, the 5/32 inch (4 millimeter)–radius gauge fit snugly in the corner.

  The inside corners of the boxes are a confounding puzzle. I wondered why craftsmen would take the time and trouble to work out the corner to a small radius of 5/32 inch (4 millimeters). In laymen’s terms, a round pencil would fit very nicely in the corner. For the assumed purpose of the box, the resting place of an Apis Bull’s carcass, a 24-inch radius would leave plenty of room for the bovine deity. It doesn’t make sense to work out the corners to such a small dimension. Next, to make sure that the inside surface of the box was perfectly flat to the tangency point of the radius causes great consternation among technologists who are familiar with this kind of work.

  The added cost of having a 5/32-inch radius as opposed to a 24-inch radius would be astronomical if the material was worked by hand. The popular belief that the ancient Egyptians had all the time in the world and could devote months or years to create this box falls flat when we consider the logic involved in creating the box this way. The squareness of the inside corner of the box in the horizontal plane was not checked at this time because of time constraints.

  The conditions I witnessed among the boxes indicate a high level of technology. Though Tru-Stone did not have the capabilities to produce such an item, if a manufacturer was under contract from NASA or the Department of Defense to create one identical to those found at the Serapeum—with no expenses spared to do the job—they would certainly find a way. Yet the discussion among their engineers would go beyond what was currently available to them for tools, and they would consider tools that they would need to build specially in order for them to fulfill the contract.

  The rough removal of material from the inside of the box would not present a huge challenge, with the exception that craftsmen were working with a 55-ton block of stone. In considering the finishing of the inside of a Serapeum box, we could draw several conclusions:

  The dimensions between the opposite walls of the box are the same at the top and at least at the bottom of the square’s blade, perhaps to the bottom of the box itself.

  The lid could not have been on the box when the inside of the box was finished, therefore:

  The top surface of the box was likely cut flat and square to the inside surfaces.

  The underside of the lid must have been made to the same surface flatness as the walls.

  To arrive at this level of precision, the manufacturers would have needed metrology instruments. None have been found in the archaeological record.

  Another fact we must consider is the existence of a rough box and lid in the tunnels. This indicates that the boxes were shaped roughly outside the Serapeum, more than likely before they were shipped from the quarries five hundred miles away. Certainly, having the quarrymen perform this task would have reduced the weight of the stone by about 20 tons. Interestingly, evidence in the Cairo Museum suggests that sarcophagi were shipped with the lids attached as part of a single piece of stone. Then, upon delivery, the lids were sawed off. One such box is located on the first floor of the Cairo Museum—it has part of the lid still attached to the bottom and a groove where the saw terminated.

  After the lid was separated from the box proper, they were both brought into the Serapeum and were finished underground. We might ask why the work was not completed outside, in the fresh air, or why the work was not performed as the box was in transit from the quarry. We may never know the answers to these questions, but possible answers should be examined along with all the other inexplicable artifacts that do not seem to fit within the conventional view of this ancient culture. One possible answer for why the
boxes were finished within the cooler confines of the tunnels may relate to the accuracy of the surfaces and the need to maintain their accuracy. If they were finished outside and then brought underground, the difference in temperatures would cause the granite to shrink in an unpredictable way, which could affect the surface flatness. This is a concern with all precision manufacturers. Surface plates may be rough machined to within 0.001 inch and then stored outside until an order is received. At that point it is brought into a controlled environment and the surface ground and lapped to specific tolerance. Also, the end users of these products need to make sure they are used in a similar controlled environment. Another reason may have something to do with proprietary processes that the artisans intended to keep hidden.

  Figure 5.9. Drawing of box in Cairo Museum with remnants of a lid on the bottom

  The engineering context of precision where precision is not necessary indicates the existence of sophisticated tools. These have not been found in the archaeological record, but the existence of them must be taken into account when we consider the mountain of circumstantial evidence to support their use.

  In the case of the Serapeum, the list of tools and instruments that are necessary to create the granite boxes has grown. We can say with certainty that exact measuring instruments existed, for this work and the work at Luxor and Karnak could not have been accomplished without them. They are the most important and necessary tools for such work. The wooden squares, plumb bobs, and alignment instruments on display in the Luxor and Cairo Museums are incapable of giving even the most talented craftsman the information he needs to know that his work has achieved this kind of accuracy. Even if these boxes and monuments were crafted today with modern tools, such instruments are limited in what they can measure—and they most certainly cannot explain the precision and geometry that we will look at next. In the next chapter, we will examine artifacts that are similar in geometry, and others with geometry that is more complicated than a simple box, but not as complex as the head of Ramses.