The unfortunate fact is that singly and collectively these tools do not explain the full scope of the work. The copper chisel will not cut granite, but copper that is rubbed against quartz sand, which in turn rubs against stone, will wear both the copper and the stone. The impact of a dolerite hammer or pounder that is struck against a rock surface will crush the surface slightly, and after the loose material is brushed aside, more pounding can remove more material. A flint chisel struck against rock will crush the impact point so that small amounts of rock may be removed to accomplish fine detailing.
All of this work has been demonstrated by experimentalists who have attempted to explain how the ancient Egyptians built their monuments. In fact, a tremendous effort has gone into demonstrating how these simple tools worked and why they belonged in the ancient Egyptian toolbox.2
What is lacking in all the experiments that purport to explain how the ancient Egyptians crafted their statues and monuments are detailed manufacturing processes that leave us convinced that these methods are accurate and true to the evidence. To accomplish this, experimentalists must follow these steps:
Have experts examine rigorously and thoroughly the original artifact, paying close attention to the most difficult characteristics to reproduce.
Describe the theorized method used by the Egyptians.
Perform the work, including that which is most difficult.
Compare the experimental results with the original artifact—taking into account all the characteristics of the original.
In all cases, experimentalists have accomplished only steps 2 and 3. When steps 1 and 4 have been attempted, evidence has been overlooked or ignored. There is no argument that a hard stone bashed onto a softer stone will remove some of the softer stone. Will a flint chisel in the hands of a careful craftsman enable the craftsman to form stone into three-dimensional shapes such as small statuettes or hieroglyphs? Absolutely! Can quartz sand abrade rock in such a way that it gradually wears away the rock and leaves an impression of the object used to press down on or rub against the quartz? There is no argument that it cannot. An army of researchers could make a million slots in granite using flat and tubular pieces of copper that rub back and forth on sand, but unless the results match the evidence left behind by the ancient Egyptians, these results prove nothing about the ancient Egyptian stone-working methods. Steps 1 and 4 are not fully satisfied.
What we have been taught is that the ancient Egyptians were in possession of only simple hand tools, and that the only metals available to the Egyptians of the fourth dynasty, when the Giza Pyramids were built, were copper, gold, and silver. What is inferred, therefore, is that absent the tools made from these materials, the simple abrasive experiments actually demonstrate the stone-working methods of ancient Egypt. We are told that the ancient Egyptians had not yet developed the knowledge to extract the raw materials necessary to produce iron and steel. It has been suggested that they may have used meteoric iron, because they found it lying on the ground, but they did not mine the ore and smelt it in a foundry. Support for this view is the lack of evidence that they used tools made of any material other than copper, stone, and wood. Yet absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Although sophisticated tools made of iron or steel may not yet have been discovered in the archaeological record, what has been found is not adequate enough to explain how the artifacts were created.
In all experimentalists’ efforts to convince the public that their theories are correct, not one has provided convincing evidence that what they have accomplished explains all the evidence. There seems to be a tremendous effort not to disturb the status quo when it comes to the stories such scholars tell about ancient Egypt. As long as experimentalists can scratch out a few cubic centimeters of stone using primitive tools, the ancient Egyptians are kept in their place in the history books. They describe to us a sinewy, linear view of history, from club-wielding cavemen to copper-saw-rubbing, dolerite-ball-bashing Egyptians to the Olympic accomplishments of the Greeks and then to the gladiatorial strength of the Romans—and so on to modern Western humans, who exercise their sinews on a treadmill with a symbol of their intellectual muscle in the shape of an iPod strapped to their arm.
In the previous chapters, we have examined artifacts that provide a basis for the first step in the search for answers to the mystery of how the ancient Egyptians cut hard igneous rock with such proficiency and skill. We have examined the artifacts in their full glory, fully crafted and placed in their intended or subsequent resting places. In order to understand how they came to exist it is necessary to go to the source from whence they came—the quarries at Aswan in Upper Egypt.
In the next few chapters, we will examine in closer detail how Egyptologists have explained how the obelisks of Egypt were quarried and cut. We will review some of the literature that has been written on the subject as well as discuss the work of Mark Lehner, Denys Stocks, and Roger Hopkins in the Nova documentaries Secrets of Lost Empires: Obelisk (or Obelisk 1) and Secrets of Lost Empires: Pharaoh’s Obelisk (Obelisk 2).
We will then address a subject that Sir William Flinders Petrie started in 1883, when he described the spiral grooves on an ancient Egyptian granite core as a “drunken screw.” I revived the subject in 1984 with a rather controversial theory about how the ancient Egyptians drilled holes in granite that showed a remarkable feed rate of the drill. Rather than focus on my own theory of how such things were accomplished, I will concentrate on those who have published the results of their own experiments, to see if their results are capable of explaining the evidence at hand. This involves my own experiment in performing a granite drilling using a copper tube and an abrasive and comparing the results with the granite core in the Petrie Museum at the University College, London. The results are noteworthy and some of them were unexpected.
9
In the Shadow of an Obelisk
So as regards these two great obelisks,
Wrought with electrum by my majesty for my father Amun,
In order that my name may endure in this temple,
For eternity and everlastingness,
They are each made of one block of hard granite,
Without seam, without joining together!
INSCRIPTION ON THE BASE OF HATSHEPSUT’S OBELISKS IN THE KARNAK TEMPLE1
Of all the iconic symbols of Egypt, the obelisk rises above all but the pyramids, both figuratively and physically. If it had been possible for Western invaders and influence peddlers to cart off the Egyptian pyramids, they probably would have done so, but with the marshaling of sufficient manpower and materials, the coveted Egyptian obelisks made their way intact, and sometimes in pieces, to the favored environs of imperial powers—which were, of course, their major cities such as Lisbon, Rome, Paris, London, and New York.
Figure 9.1 . The obelisk of Hatshepsut in the Karnak Temple
Although only twenty-nine obelisks survive from the distant past, the ancient Egyptian landscape was at one time dotted with what is estimated to be more than one hundred of these enigmatic shafts of pink granite. They were placed like an arrangement of acupuncture needles that pierced the sky, perhaps to disperse negative forces that occasionally threatened to accumulate among the populace, and served to protect large, open spaces where people congregated in and around temples, where the obelisks stood, normally in pairs, as powerful talismans for the temple and conduits from the empyrean. The obelisk was a focal point that gave the population heart and connection to their solar deity, the god Ra.
The ancient Romans had a passion for carrying off many of Egypt’s obelisks, and their labors eventually resulted in Rome having more Egyptian obelisks than those that remained standing in Egypt itself. The obelisk that graces the center of the grand piazza of St. Peter in the Vatican was originally transported from Heliopolis to the Julian Forum of Alexandria under the orders of Emperor Augustus. It is the second largest obelisk in Rome, standing at slightly more than 75 feet (22.8 meters) in height and weighing approximately 330
tons (907 kilograms). In 37 CE, Caligula had the forum demolished, and the obelisk was transferred to Rome. From its place in the center of the Circus, it cast a shadow across the arena where Nero’s inhuman taste for blood sports was gratified.
In 1586, Pope Sixtus V, who was known to have spilled his own share of blood while leading his flock, ordered the obelisk to be moved to the Basilica of St. Peter, where a temporary wall was erected while it was hoisted upright. Gathering behind the wall and on every rooftop and terrace in the vicinity, which included the roof of the basilica, an eager crowd strained for a glimpse of the work where Domenico Fontana, the architect who built the Lateran Palace and reconstructed the Vatican Library, directed the gangs that strained against the spokes of capstans. He held his breath, praying that his invention for hoisting the immense tonnage would hold together and work. Arrangements had been made for Fontana to jump on a fast horse and escape should his enterprise fail, for the heads of those who displeased Sixtus V were known to end up on spikes, after their necks were stretched on the gallows.
During the transportation of the obelisk, the Bishop of Rome exorcized the horizontal shaft in an attempt to eradicate its pagan past and convert it to Christianity. When it was raised to its vertical position and the holy water had evaporated, a Christian cross, blessed by the pope, was affixed to the pyramidion.
The obelisk in St. Peter’s piazza does not have the reliefs and hieroglyphs typically found on Egyptian obelisks, such as the one remaining at Luxor and those at Karnak. As seen in figure 9.1 and figure 9.2 these ancient reliefs stand out as a remarkable testament to the capability of the ancient artisans and their tools. Because I had examined the precision and symmetry of the Ramses statues and crowns, I was struck by the incredible beauty and consistency of three-dimensional form in the sunken reliefs on obelisks. On Hatshepsut’s obelisk at Karnak (figure 9.1), for instance, the reliefs seemed to display a mechanical accuracy, using many of the same symbols as the obelisk at Luxor.
Some of the reliefs, such as the owls, have an eerie quality (see figure 9.2). With the light shining up the granite shaft at night, there is an optical illusion: After viewing the obelisk for a few moments, the sunken reliefs, their three-dimensional forms illuminated within the deep outline of the figures, appear as bas-relief figures projected outward from the surface of the granite.
While exploring the Temple of Karnak, I came across a piece of granite behind the Ramses statue just outside the Great Hypostyle Hall. It appeared to be part of a broken obelisk, and the workmanship of the reliefs, when seen up close, provided more detailed evidence of the astounding and flawless work of the ancient Egyptians. When viewed from a distance, the profusion of sunken reliefs on all four sides of the obelisks make the structure look like a beautiful piece of art. The right brain takes over, and the senses are overcome by the visual effect. Upon closer inspection of the extraordinary lengths the artisans went to in order to execute their design, the left brain takes over, and it becomes obvious to sculptors, artisans, and engineers that the carving was accomplished with a high degree of discipline and with little variation in exactness and form from one relief to the next, from one obelisk to the next.
Figure 9.2. The obelisk outside the Temple of Amun Mut Khonsu at Luxor
In figure 9.3, the depth of the sunken relief is consistent with most of the reliefs on the obelisk. To the right of my finger, however, are mere scratches that seem out of place and are, even to the most casual observer, different in quality from what the ancient Egyptian artisans were capable of producing, even on the same piece of granite. This seemed to be a common occurrence, and one that suggests that artifacts crafted by an older civilization were adopted and personalized by later cultures that were not quite as adept, and that did not possess the same kinds of tools as the original artisans.
Figure 9.3. Sunken relief of a Nebet (basket)
As seen in figures 9.4 and 9.5, there is more to the ancient artisans’ sunken reliefs than first meets the eye. One of the reliefs next to an owl inspired me to take a wax impression of the inside corner. My interest in this feature was the evidence of a corner radius that appeared to have been cut slightly deeper than necessary and that went below the three-dimensional contours of the relief. Significant in all the reliefs on Egyptian statues and obelisks that I have seen is the shape of the relief defined by a deep cut that is perpendicular to the outside surface, whether that surface is the flat face of the obelisk or the rounded contour of a statue. This particular relief was sunk from a flat face to a depth of approximately 0.5 inch (1.27 centimeters), where it terminated with a radius, though not a true radius from the tangency point of the straight surface.
Though the depth of the relief is technically impressive, the features to the right of where the wax impression was taken are even more so, and give us a better idea of the capabilities of ancient Egyptian tools. These are the extremely narrow cuts achieved when the artisans created the talons of an owl. The two sweeping arcs start out 0.3 inch (7.6 millimeters) wide and end at 0.14 inch (3.55 millimeters) wide. When compared to the primitive scratches in figure 9.3, there can be no argument that a different class of tool and artisan created them.
Figure 9.4. Photograph of details of wax impression
The surfaces that outline the shapes of the reliefs and provide their depth are not polished and do not show any marks to indicate that they achieved their final shape by the action of tools that scraped or rubbed along their length to remove discrete amounts of material. Figure 9.5 provides several views of these surfaces, and they appear to have been the result of a tool that plunged straight into the granite, withdrew, moved over, and plunged down again. A template could have been used to guide the tool and achieve the consistency of form that we see on other artifacts—particularly on obelisks. To achieve the narrow cuts that are evident in figure 9.4, it would be preferable to repeatedly plunge into the material to create the outline and remove the bulk of the material to form the relief. This is because a tool with a 0.14-inch (3.55-millimeter) cross section is better able to withstand compression forces acting upon it than shear forces acting perpendicular to its length (see figure 9.6).
Figure 9.5. Examples of deep reliefs
The figure in 9.5 that represents water or Uat (the zig-zag line) seems to provide confirmation that the outline of the relief was created first and then the material in the center was removed. In this relief, we can see the raised part of the center, which may, considering its width, have been broken down and then smoothed rather than tooled, as the complex, three-dimensional surfaces of other reliefs probably were. The falcon’s talons at the lower left of figure 9.5 also give us indications of this.
There are no surviving tools or machines that can be shown to have produced this work. Those that survive are incapable of such accuracy, especially on an industrial scale. There are some controversial theories about how the pyramids of Egypt were built, but the accepted conventional theory of copper chisels and stone or wooden hammers simply does not hold up because such technology cannot reproduce the results we see. Further, because this answer does not suffice, it invites nonconventional solutions.
Yet these are not heard by the general public, who know of only the conventional theories that all children are taught in school and that audiences see on the Discovery Channel and on PBS when the manufacturing methods of the ancient Egyptians are discussed. On such programs, copper chisels and stone pounders, crude as they may be, are not posited as a possible method of manufacturing; their existence in the archaeological record is presented as proof that such tools were used to produce the monumental megaliths that dot the Egyptian landscape. Obelisks are a prime example of what such a crude technology was supposed to have achieved.
Figure 9.6. Compression versus shear force on tool
It is important to give as accurate a description as possible of the characteristics of the sunken reliefs in Egyptian obelisks in order to judge whether modern attempts to show how they were created satis
fy the evidence. For instance, in the PBS Nova documentary Secrets of Lost Empires: Obelisk, Roger Hopkins, a stonemason who participated in the making of this documentary as a consultant and expert witness, discusses the reliefs with Egyptologist Mark Lehner: “Even with modern tools and, you know, diamond wheels and all that, we would have, you know, we would have a tough time getting it to this kind of perfection.”2
Not deterred by Hopkins’s expert opinion, Mark Lehner picks up a dolerite pounder and demonstrates his theory of how the ancient Egyptians roughed out big hieroglyphs using it. After pounding for an hour he sincerely declares: “I’m convinced that with their skill and their rapport with the stone and a great deal of time and patience, that this is the way they carved the fine details like the hieroglyphs on the obelisk.”3
Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt: Advanced Engineering in the Temples of the Pharaohs Page 19
