It is to Giza now that we will travel, to follow in William Flinders Petrie’s footsteps. Unlike this distinguished man of science, however, who studied on the Giza Plateau in his undergarments beneath a large umbrella in order to gain a wide berth from Victorian tourists, I will not be wearing pink underwear.
6
The Shadow of the Sphinx
You admire this tower of granite, weathering the hurts of so many ages. Yet a little waving hand built this huge wall, and that which builds is better than that which is built. The hand that built can topple it down much faster. Better than the hand and nimbler was the invisible thought which wrought through it; and thus ever, behind the coarse effect, is a fine cause, which being narrowly seen is itself the effect of a finer cause. Everything looks permanent until its secret is known.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, ESSAY ON CIRCLES
Using the slow strokes of ancient, ink-dipped quills to the rapidity of modern computers and every instrument in between, inspired minds have churned out hundreds of books replete with superlative prose in an attempt to explain the Giza Plateau, where the most famous Wonders of the Ancient World command the skyline. Whether seen from the shadows of the Sphinx enclosure bathed in the golden hue of sunrise, or from the shaded balcony of Hakim Awyan’s home in the village of Nazlet el Samaan, or from the rooftop of Gouda Fayed’s famous Sphinx Guest House as the sun sets in the west between the Great Pyramid and Khafre’s pyramid, this most famous site in the world leaves the viewer with an impression of awe.
Figure 6.1. The Giza Plateau
To the uninitiated, a trip to the Giza Plateau can be a frustrating affair. When I first visited in 1986, the walk up to the plateau from the Mena House was like running the gauntlet. I had to avoid aggressive sellers from souvenir shops that lined the east side of the street and sold everything from small models of pyramids and T-shirts to replicas of Tutankhamen’s mask and papyrus, and workers from nearby stables who insisted that they take you on a camel or horse ride across the plateau. In 2001, a particularly aggressive salesman wearing a galabeya opened the door of the taxi I was riding in and tried to get inside to sell his goods. By 2006, the area had been spruced up considerably, and the storefronts were freshly painted. A police station now occupied the souvenir shop, and its officers kept a close watch over the area, protecting visitors from aggressive sellers.
My visit in November of 2008 found a different place altogether. The road up to the plateau now has a particularly robust steel gate, and visitors are directed to a new tourist center, where they buy tickets for access to the plateau and the pyramids. Entrance to the plateau is now through a turnstile and there are toilets available in the building where security police scan bags and give visitors a welcoming smile.
The entrance fees to archaeological sites in Egypt and elsewhere keep going up, but tourists keep flocking to see these miracles of architecture. Since my first visit to Egypt in 1986, the Egyptian people have awakened to the real value of their antiquities and are pricing them accordingly. Though it may have once cost only two dollars to explore the plateau—and that included entrance to all the pyramids—there is only one Great Pyramid in the world, and to be in its shadow now for only ten dollars is a bargain, particularly when we consider what we have paid in airfare just to get there.
There is a special energy around the Giza Plateau. Some would argue that it is due to the intrinsic design and function of the pyramids; others might dismiss this idea and claim that it is because of the holiday atmosphere of the hordes of tourists that visit the site each year. Throngs of tourists are targets for local merchants, with their hawkers spilling out onto the plateau on a daily basis to sell myriad trinkets and baubles to foreign visitors. Children dart around groups of tourists, pleading to sell hieroglyph-adorned bookmarks, small statuettes, or an Egyptian headdress known as an egal. Elaborately adorned pen sets and plaster cast models of famous statues of gods, goddesses, and kings are all offered for sale, and a friendly banter along with bartering is always appreciated by the sellers—but more appreciated is giving them the asking price. I have explored the plateau more than a dozen times over the past twenty-four years, yet it is one place in the world that I cannot seem to get out of my system. I find myself going back again and again for the experience of being in the presence of such magnificent achievements even as I am reminded of my own fragile existence.
The Great Pyramid has stood without question as the first and foremost Wonder of the Ancient World. Though recently an effort was made to revise the list of the Wonders of the World, the pyramids of Egypt need no vote to qualify them. Those in doubt need only perform a detailed study of their construction. No other place in the world is blessed with such architecture and such exactness of manufacture. Even today, the precision that is found on the casing stones on the Great Pyramid is not required for construction of, for instance, a modern skyscraper. In 1883, William Flinders Petrie described the casing stones on the Great Pyramid as having an optician’s precision, but on a scale of acres.1 This is a slight exaggeration by Sir William, for the casing stones, while flat within 0.010 inch (0.254 millimeter), are certainly not optically precise. Still, the point is very well taken that the precision is not normal for stonework intended for a structure built today. The ancient Egyptians developed their tools and techniques to produce such a high order of accuracy that even the stones on the minor pyramids to the east of the Great Pyramid are cut with exacting precision and fit.
The most forceful arguments for disputing conventional views on the origins of the pyramids are thrust skyward from the desert sands as towering geometric miracles of stone. It is the engineering of the Giza Plateau that challenges historians and researchers and that has attracted so many diverse views. Egyptologists admit that there is still much to learn about the pyramids of Egypt, and an air of real mystery is conveyed to the public in Egyptologists’ presentations on the site. For instance, well-known Egyptologists such as Zahi Hawass, the outspoken chairman of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, and Mark Lehner, the charismatic Egyptologist with the Oriental Institute in Chicago, opened the door to the recent high level of interest in the Giza Plateau when they appeared in a 1993 documentary, Mysteries of the Sphinx.
Figure 6.2. Queen’s Pyramid casing stones to the east of the Great Pyramid
Because of the tendency of engineers to focus more on engineering matters rather than on archaeology, history, or anthropology, they are often accused of stripping artifacts of their cultural context and cherry-picking the evidence. Yet as an engineer, I strongly argue that the engineering context is, in fact, a cultural context in and of itself—one that is less susceptible to ambiguity than the cultural context of mummies and potsherds, which can be added decades or even centuries after a building has been completed.
For an engineer, a visit to the Giza Plateau is a bewildering, perplexing, and thought-provoking test of education and experience. The ancient Egyptians were engineering wizards whose work never fails to impress, regardless of how many times we visit. It is also a place that, throughout its history, has fueled controversy and heated debate. At times, I have found myself at the heart of that debate because of my controversial published views on how the ancient Egyptians cut hard igneous rock. My original article “Advanced Machining in Ancient Egypt?”,2 published in 1984, tackled the ancient Egyptians’ methods of cutting stone, but more recently my focus has been on the precision and geometry with which the stone was cut. This aspect of Egyptian craftsmanship does not receive the attention it deserves from academics, for if we are being honest, we would have to put aside theories about how the ancient Egyptians used bits of string or wood to create square corners and explain why granite boxes that were supposedly created with crude tools to house a mummy had inside surfaces that were flat and square to within a fraction of a human hair and had corner radii smaller than 0.25 inch (6.35 millimeters).
While I was in Egypt in 1995, I brought with me some gauges to inspect the flatness of artifacts
that, when I saw them in 1986, had seized my attention by their exact appearance. Just looking at an artifact, however, is not good enough when attempting to determine its true characteristics. I needed some kind of known reference with which I could compare its exactness. I also needed something simple and transportable. The precision-ground straight edge I used in 1995 allowed me to determine a higher order of accuracy in many different artifacts than what has been described in any previous literature written on the subject. The flatness of the straight edge I used was true to within one tenth the thickness of a human hair, or 0.0002 inch (0.005 millimeter).
The granite blocks outside the pyramid were flat, but with a few exceptions, they did not have a polish and could not be considered as precise as the gauge. Yet the surface inside the sarcophagus in Khafre’s pyramid (the second largest pyramid on the Giza Plateau) was remarkable in that sliding the gauge along it both vertically and horizontally was no different from sliding it along a modern granite precision surface plate that we might find in a machine shop or tool room. Discovering such precision was an unexpected surprise to me. I wondered why the craftsmen cut the inside surface of a sarcophagus to such great accuracy if its intended purpose was to be someone’s burial place. Since I first wrote about this aspect of Egyptian craftsmanship, nobody has given me a satisfactory answer to this question. One argument presented to me was that the king was viewed as a god, and if the king wanted a flat polished surface, he could have one. This answer, however, raises a crucial question: How did the ancient king become aware of ultra-precise flat surfaces?
Despite all arguments against considering the ancient Egyptians to be more advanced than conventional wisdom believes, I was left wondering. While pondering this question, my mind went back to when I was serving an apprenticeship and had to create a small surface plate from cast iron. The exercise was supposed to teach apprentices how to use hand tools to create flat surfaces by filing, hand scraping, and lapping the surface till it was flat. The iron plate was first machined on a shaping machine (a machine that is rarely seen today but was popular fifty years ago) by passing a single-point tool repeatedly over the metal to establish the basic surface.
Figure 6.3. Shaper machine tool slide and clapper box. Photograph by Glenn McKechnie, September 2005.
After the plate was machined flat, we used a draw file to remove the tool marks, and then a thin layer of India blue paste was applied to the surface. A precision master straight edge (a flat iron or steel plate) was then slid across the surface in order to identify surface imperfections, or high spots. The high spots were identified where the bluing, which doesn’t dry, is rubbed away on the peaks, exposing the metal. We worked down the high spots using a hand scraper, and finally, a lapping plate across the entire surface. After the plate was equally flat all over, we cut a swirl pattern (figure 6.4) into the surface using the sharp convex curved edge of the scraper (figure 6.5). This technique was used especially if the flat surface being created was a part of a machine and other components were to slide over it to retain oil in the slight depressions the scraper had made on the surface rather than have it swept away by another surface sliding against it.
Figure 6.4. Appearance of slideway frosted for improved oil retention. Photograph by Glenn McKechnie, September 2005.
Figure 6.5. Three different engineering hand scrapers. Photograph taken by Glenn McKechnie on the 24th March 2005.
A single paragraph does not begin to explain the full extent of a master scraper’s craft, and certainly others may be better able to describe it. Within all trades there are particular tricks and techniques that are not obvious to an outside observer. Traditionally, these have been held close to the vest, because they were seen as job security. While helpful books have been written for an apprentice to read about his trade, his skill and understanding were gained mainly through on-the-job-training under the guidance of a journeyman or master. The life of the craftsman is echoed in the words of the famous dancer Isadora Duncan, who wrote, “What one has not experienced, one will never understand in print.”3
When I was confronted in Khafre’s pyramid, then, with an accurate stone artifact that was created in ancient times and found it similar to those that can be found in the inspection department of a modern manufacturing company, I was understandably shocked and excited. A surface plate (figure 6.6) is used in manufacturing as a baseline or datum from which a manufactured item, such as a sophisticated combustor for a jet engine, is measured. Before the Industrial Revolution, there was little need for flat surfaces that held to such high levels of accuracy, so to find one that was crafted more than four thousand years in the past was remarkable.
Figure 6.6. Black granite surface plate with jet engine assembly (Courtesy of Danville Metal Stamping Co.)
In 1999, I was invited to speak at a conference held at the Tree of Life Bazaar in Nazlet el Samaan, near Giza. This was a time when interest in the Giza Plateau reached a fever pitch, and all sorts of intrigue and skullduggery was bandied about on the Internet. There seemed to be an excitement in the air and a belief that the turn of the century into the new millennium was going to bring new revelations and discoveries about our ancient origins—and many thought that Giza was where these discoveries would be made. In their book Giza the Truth, Chris Ogilvie-Herald and Ian Lawton coined the phrase “millennium fever” and attached it to principle researchers who had written an alternative view of the pyramids and other archaeological sites in Egypt.4 The book caused some consternation among independent researchers, but it brought balance to the debate and prompted me to address some of the counter arguments in their book and to produce more and better evidence.
It was with this principle in mind that I approached both the conference and the new measurements I would be taking. I carried in my backpack a precision-ground, 12-inch straight edge: The hardened steel edge was final machined on a surface grinder, and flat on one edge to within 0.0001 inch (0.0025 millimeter). I also had a toolmaker’s solid square that was similarly accurate. I knew exactly on which artifacts I wanted to use these instruments: the inside corners of the granite boxes at the Temple of the Serapeum at Saqqara and those inside the pyramids. Also in my toolkit was a set of Starrett radius gauges for inspecting the machined radius that makes the transition from one surface or contour of an artifact to another. These instruments are critical to our understanding of the basic attributes displayed by these artifacts from antiquity.
As I noted before, on this visit in 1999, I was unable to access the rock tunnel at the Serapeum—but there was certainly enough other work to do. Following my morning presentation on the advanced machining methods of the ancient Egyptians, the entire conference group and the film crew made their way to the Giza Plateau and into the bedrock chamber of Khafre’s pyramid—the one in which, in 1995, I had inspected the flatness on the inside surfaces of the black granite box (commonly known as the sarcophagus). In 1995, I exclaimed “spaceage precision” to a group of Spanish tourists who were looking on as I shone my flashlight behind the precise edge of my steel parallel and noted the stunning accuracy of the black surface. This test would have shown deviation in the flatness of the surface by revealing any amount of light seeping under the straight edge—and I could detect none except in areas where indentations occurred.
Though I wrote articles that hailed this remarkable example of precision craftsmanship as additional proof of the level of technology practiced by the pyramid builders, in the back of my mind was the nagging need to go back to Egypt with additional instruments to accomplish more tests. Every time I visit Egypt, I approach these relics of the past with eager anticipation mixed with trepidation.
The cool confines of the passageway leading to the bedrock chamber of Khafre’s pyramid were a welcome relief from the burning Egyptian sun. My backpack weighed heavily on my shoulders as I joined the group and made my descent. It felt familiar and right to be there at this time. I was excited to demonstrate the remarkable abilities of the ancient Egyptians that I
had noted four years earlier with the eclectic group of people who attended the conference as well as to be able to document the event on film. But still there was that tinge of doubt in the back of my mind. Had I made a mistake in the past? Will the new instruments reveal anything significant?
I climbed into the granite box, which is set into the floor of the chamber, and placed my straight edge on the inside surface of the box. The edge had been prepared differently than that of the straight edge I used in 1995: it had a chamfer on both corners, which gives the user a clearer view of any light that would pass through areas that do not conform to the precision of the straight edge. Before several witnesses, I slid this edge along the smooth interior of the granite box with my flashlight shining behind it and demonstrated its absolute flatness. While I was doing this, though, I was anxious to perform other tests. The square corners were of critical importance to me. Modern machine axes are aligned orthogonally, or exactly perpendicular, to each other to insure accuracy—and to assure that the corners a machine cuts into an object are square and true.
Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt: Advanced Engineering in the Temples of the Pharaohs Page 14
