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

by Christopher Dunn

  On each of the columns themselves, above Hathor’s head, a cornice sweeps outward to form a low flat crown and a base for the sistrum above, which is also topped with a cornice to meet the elements of the architraves. From Hathor’s neck to where the sistrum flares out to support the architraves, a complex arrangement of surfaces combine to create features that caused me to stare in slack-jawed wonder. The uniform contours of the stylized tresses that frame each of Hathor’s now ravaged faces flow into blends that, with uncompromised exactness, create the outline of her angular face. Above the forehead the cowl makes a similarly precise transition into the cornice below the friezes that adorn the four sides of the sistrum.

  Figure 7.4. Capital on a column in the Great Hypostyle Hall

  In February 2006, I took some digital photographs within the Great Hypostyle Hall and other parts of Denderah. After I looked closely at these images in my CAD program, I applied some reference lines—and what was revealed was quite surprising. So much so that I had to return to take more photographs, but this time with my camera firmly fixed on a stable tripod and with a right-angle viewer through which I could approximate a perpendicular and orthogonal orientation.

  Like the set of photographs I took at Luxor, the February 2006 photographs of the ceiling at Denderah indicated that the capitals of the columns in the Great Hypostyle Hall were crafted with machinelike precision. The uniformity of the surfaces with exact corners where a blend radius transitioned from the sweeping contour of one geometric element into the flat surface of another was evident when I zoomed in on the capitals. Unfortunately, I zoomed in digitally, rather than optically, hence the need for my return with a mounted camera and a zoom lens. This was how I could capture relative measures of the columns and analyze them in the computer in much the same way as manufactured products are analyzed today.

  Along with Judd, at Denderah I was extremely fortunate to have the help of an old temple guard named Mohammed. Traveling to Denderah behind the afternoon convoy on Sunday, we had only a short time there, but enough time to share tea and a warm conversation. We arranged to meet Mohammed on Tuesday, when he would accommodate our need for a lengthy stay at the temple, making sure we had enough time in the crypt and the Great Hypostyle Hall to set up and take photographs. It was arranged that we would travel behind the early morning convoy and leave when the last convoy was ready to travel back to Luxor in the late afternoon.

  In my travels to Egypt this past decade, it has always happened that someone fortuitously came forward to offer the kind of help I needed. This was one of those moments: with sincerity and kindness, a temple guard became the epitome of Egyptian hospitality and gave us access and freedom to study and take detailed, invaluable photographs.

  We had six hours to study and take photographs, but I spent much more time analyzing the results in the computer. These results present a totally different view of the temple than what we can discern with the naked eye. Visitors to the temples in Upper Egypt are greeted with structures that have been severely weathered and damaged over the millennia. The floor and bases of the columns are rough and show where repairs have been made to broken areas. The capitals of the columns have been intentionally and systematically defaced. Of the ninety-six faces of Hathor that grace the top of the columns, not one has escaped the vandalism of ancient fury.

  John Anthony West—an erudite scholar who personifies Euripides’ statement “the tongue is mightier than the blade”—offered an interesting perspective on the destruction of statuary in Egypt. At the Temple of Philae, he pointed out that it was almost as though the statue, or relief, in the case of Philae (figure 7.5), was being decommissioned. It was not the work of vandals, because the defacement was dutifully and skillfully carried out, with carefully placed chisel marks.

  Figure 7.5. The pylon at the Temple of Philae

  The ancient Egyptians believed that statues contained the power of those they represented, and that through their noses, the statues breathed the essence of the deity—their life force. By cutting off the nose, they cut off the life breath to the statue, and it ceased to hold power over the people. My own impression at Denderah was that the destruction of Hathor’s faces followed a significant catastrophic event that brought death and destruction to the Egyptians. Hathor was worshipped as the goddess of drunkenness and sex, but she was also known as the goddess of destruction who, upon the bidding of Ra, brought hardship and pain. Perhaps the survivors decommissioned or defaced the faces of Hathor because of a mind-consuming terror that she would bring more death and destruction.

  Fortunately, the vandals missed a carved image of Hathor tucked away in one of the architraves. With telephoto zoom lens, I was able to pull out of the shadows a clear photograph of what the faces on the capitals might have actually looked like.

  Interestingly, the face of Hathor at Denderah, is remarkably similar to that of Nefertari at Luxor (plate 14), who appears as Hathor, with the horned-disk headdress. Unlike the Ramses faces that look down on visitors with a smile, Hathor at Denderah seems more interested in the drama played out on the ceiling than on the ground, while Nefertari does little to warm a traveler’s heart with her hard granite, cold, haughty stare and pursed lips.

  Figure 7.6. The face of Hathor in the architrave at Denderah

  While I was setting up the camera and taking photographs, numerous tour groups rushed through the temple during the day. Some guides laced their official story of the temple with accounts of how the temple was built. The common theme, as it has long been written in Egyptology reference books on temple and pyramid building, is that the ancient Egyptians built an earthen ramp, dragged the stones up the ramp, and placed them in position. In the case of the temples, the columns were carved after all the stones were placed by working from the top down: as the masons worked their way down, the earth and ramp were removed.

  As soon as the story was told, the guide yelled, “Yala yala” (let’s go), and the group moved deeper into the temple, leaving me to ponder the contradiction before me. Through the viewfinder of my camera, I studied unusual elements of the capitals in the Great Hypostyle Hall that are significant in understanding their geometry. In order to comprehend how something has been made, we must clearly measure and understand all of its characteristics. Without knowing what it is, we cannot state with certainty how it was made. When we analyze any part of a statue or structure, we should always identify the most difficult aspects of the work, because without being able to explain how the most difficult tasks were accomplished, the simple explanations for simple tasks—however narrow a segment of the work they comprise—do not satisfy the evidence in its entirety.

  While the guide explained how the columns were put together (by dragging the blocks up earthen ramps and then chiseling them to the final shape), I pondered the manufacture and the “machined” appearance of surfaces that comprise the geometry of Hathor’s capital.

  Figure 7.7 identifies two features that stand out, to me, as being crafted with an uncommon order of precision, and are therefore worthy of a detailed examination. Point E, the cornice/cowl intersection, is where two adjacent cornices meet Hathor’s cowled hairstyle. This point is where the radial surface, Hathor’s cowl, meets two flat surfaces, the cornices on both sides of the cowl. The surfaces of the cornice appear smooth and regular, with the remains of ancient paint still evident, and the corners are sharp. Sharp outside corners are not difficult to create, but the presence of a sharp inside corner, cut on any piece, leads us to wonder what kind of tools were used to create it, especially when consistent and precise geometry seems to be associated with the sharp corner. From the base of the capital, where the tresses meet the top of the column, to the top of the sistrum, each corner transitions from an inside corner at the base to an outside corner at the cornice, and then it continues as an inside corner at the sistrum (arrows B, D, and F).

  Figure 7.7. The Denderah capital. Points to remember: point A, crown point where Hathor’s tresses meet the top of the column; poin
t B, inside corner that defines the end of one face of the capital; point C, point where Hathor’s cowl and the cornice meet; point D, outside corner that defines the end of one face of the capital; point E, points on both sides where Hathor’s cowl and the cornice meet.

  This sharp inside corner came into my viewfinder the day after I discovered another sharp corner on the headless statue of Amun with his wife Mut in the Luxor Museum. Where Amun’s left buttock meets the bench both Amun and Mut are sitting on, I detected an undercut that was about 2 inches in length (50.8 millimeters). Because photography was forbidden in the museum, I had to be satisfied with merely taking a wax impression of the corner and examining it later (see plate 15).

  The wax I used is hard (Kerr brand) that requires heating to 132–33°F prior to being molded against the feature to be inspected. It is commonly used in manufacturing to take impressions of small, complex internal machined features so that they can be more easily measured for conformity. The undercut on the statue is 0.078 inch (1.98 millimeters) deep, and, comparing it to a 1/32-inch radius gauge, it has a 0.0355-inch (0.90-millimeter) radius. It was obviously a mistake made in contouring the statue, but it is a mistake that speaks volumes when we try to determine how the ancient Egyptians cut their statues. An ancient craftsperson would have had to invest a considerable amount of time and painstaking effort to create such a feature by hand. It could not be created suddenly by the slip of a stone or copper or bone or wood—the cutting materials cited in the archaeological record. These kinds of mistakes are not made intentionally, but are made unwittingly and suddenly in a way that causes some anguish if the mistake cannot be accepted by the customer. On a statue, though, it is doubtful that, unless pointed out, anyone noticed the mistake.

  Intriguingly, along the length of the undercut are parallel striations that follow the path of the groove. The striations range from a distinct ridge to faint lines—and, as we have learned, these are known to machinists as witness marks or ghost marks. Their presence on a surface indicates the use of a tool that leaves a consistent impression of its geometry on the surface of the material as it travels along a path, removing material as it goes. The appearance of such marks generally rules out free abrasives, which tend to create random patterns. In the case of the statue in the Luxor Museum, the witness marks inside the groove are evidence of a tool that may have been worn on the crown where two ridges appear about 0.015 inch (0.381millimeter) apart. Away from the crown, on both sides, the striations are less distinct, but they can certainly be seen as faint parallel lines.

  If we consider the nature of the cut and the presumed unanticipated action of the tool that created the groove where the left buttock of Amun meets the bench, it makes sense that more advanced tools than those accepted to date were in the hands of the ancient Egyptians. Although these kinds of tools have not been found in the archaeological record of any dynasty of the ancient Egyptians, we are left with artifacts that present circumstantial evidence that they may once have existed. Also, in light of what we discussed in previous chapters, this discovery gives some hope of solving the innumerable questions and controversies associated with the crafting of ancient Egyptian stone artifacts.

  From a cursory analysis of the photographs taken in February 2006, I detected a quality about the geometric arrangement on the Hathor capitals that demanded a thorough examination. With this in mind, in May I took digital photographs of the capitals, keeping in mind the necessity to capture images that were squarely aligned with the ceiling and centrally located between columns or on center with a single column. My objective was to compare the cornice/cowl intersection (points C and E in figure 7.7) and the tresses/crown point (point A in figure 7.7) with the other elements of the capital’s geometry.

  The capitals are complex, three-dimensional, contoured combinations of geometric elements that have been elevated a distance of 50 feet (15.2 meters) above the floor, and the crafting and position of these elements provides significant information regarding the level of manufacturing sophistication possessed by the builders. As we can see in figure 7.8, a view looking up at a capital reveals a remarkable precision. Particularly because all points where lines intersect have three axes determining their position. In other words, a two axes view with the photograph taken perpendicular to the capital will reveal two-dimensional precision. With the photograph taken on an angle from 50 feet (15.2 meters) below, a third axis is introduced and errors can be amplified. On an x-y-z grid, the front view of the cornice and cowl could be considered to be the x and y axes, while the view from the side is the z axis.

  Figure 7.8. Capital geometry

  For purposes of studying the alignment of the various elements, what the camera captured is sufficient to see that the flat surfaces F, H, I, and J (figure 7.8) are parallel to each other. At the cornice/cowl intersection are two points on equal sides of the center of the face where three surfaces meet. The cornice/cowl intersections are identified with lines G, K (left), and N (right). Any one of the following conditions could mean that these lines would miss the intersection point completely.

  The cornice on the front had some manufacturing variation from one side to the other.

  The cornice on the side had some manufacturing variation from one side to the other.

  The cowl was manufactured with some variation from side to side in the torus-shaped contour that sweeps down to the forehead—that is, top to bottom and side to side. (Note: Because of the angle of the camera, the top of the cowl does not appear in the photograph, and what is seen is the surface of the cowl’s contour. This is a significant observation that makes the exactness more remarkable.)

  While we are only studying one face of the capital, there are indications that this exactness was crafted on the other three sides as well. Remarkably, line D crosses the cornice/cowl intersections of both the right and the left side of the capital. It is interesting to note, also, that Hathor’s ears, commonly seen to resemble those of a cow, come into play when line D crosses the top rib on the inside of the ear on both sides. Moreover, these features of the capital that consist of cleverly crafted three-dimensional contours find a correspondence on their tops and bottoms with line C and line E.

  The dimensions applied are relational; they lack a system of measure and are not intended to provide dimensional data. They were measured in my CAD program after the vertical lines were applied and have no bearing on absolute accuracy because of the scale in which they were drawn. Further studies would need to be made to quantify the amount of any variance to geometric perfection that Hathor’s capital may possess. Nonetheless, geometric perfection cannot be claimed when we see line B crossing the crown points of Hathor’s tresses. Not to disrespect the craftsperson who created this sculpture, because we recognize his or her appreciation for the ellipse—on Hathor’s cowl and where the tresses end at the top of the column—even if he or she did leave a high spot, revealed by the ellipse, on the right (Hathor’s left). The question before us would be, therefore, is this error contained in the y or z axis? That will remain a mystery until further studies can be performed.

  The adjacent faces at right angles to our view of figure 7.8 provide us with a tantalizing view of what we might find when the Hathor capitals are completely analyzed. Not only do the cornice/cowl intersections line up, but also, as seen with line A, the bottom of their tresses where the inside corner is cut, seen more clearly in figure 7.7, share the same horizontal plane. And here, again, we see the prolific use of ellipses in the design scheme.

  When we view the capitals of Hathor from the ground with the naked eye, we fail to see the methods used to craft and assemble them. Close-up photographs, however, reveal that they were made out of more than one block and skillfully and exactly assembled with joints that are hardly detectable.

  The design of the capital shown in figure 7.9 is typical of all those I examined. Figure 7.10 prompts some intriguing speculation about their manufacture. Were they crafted before being assembled, or were the blocks stack
ed up, in the manner suggested by Egyptologists, and then crafted in situ? It would seem that for purposes of quality control, a scheme whereby the stones are cut before being assembled would allow for greater precision, for it is quite obvious from the photographs that the split lines between the blocks necessitated exact surfaces in order for them to fit without a gap between them. In terms of difficulty, it would be hard to argue for one method over another. Either way, there are huge hurdles to overcome in replicating this ancient miracle. This fact becomes more relevant when we expand our analysis to that of the columns’ relationships to each other.

  Figure 7.9. Assembling Hathor capitals

  In studying figure 7.9 and figure 7.10, it appears that the enormously difficult task of creating the inside sharp corners may have been overcome by making the cornice separately before assembly. There is a faint hint of a joint where the cornice meets Hathor’s cowl in figure 7.10 and, while difficult to state assertively at this juncture, where the back of the cornice meets the flat surface where Hathor’s cowl ends, the corner is so sharp that it would be reasonable to suggest that the entire cornice was made separately before it was assembled in the capital.