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

by Christopher Dunn

  We also have Engelbach’s unfounded speculation that the ancient Egyptians were able to remove 63 percent more material in an hour than he claimed to have removed, which would make their efforts twenty-five times greater than those of Stocks. Suffice it to say that there is more than enough reported variation in the material removal rate of granite by researchers that the whole idea of this method being used to quarry obelisks is fragile and subject to serious questioning.

  Neither should it go without notice that in the back of Engelbach’s mind was the translation of an inscription describing the time frame in which the ancient Egyptians had quarried, dressed, moved, and erected Hatshepsut’s obelisk at Karnak, more than one hundred miles away. The inscription at the base of this obelisk is translated by Engelbach:

  . . . so surely these two great obelisks, which My Majesty hath wrought with electrum for my father Amûn, that my name may abide in this temple eternally, are of one block of enduring granite, without seam or joining. . . . My Majesty exacted work thereon from the (regnal) year 15, the first of the sixth month (of the absolute year) until the year 16, the last day of the twelfth month, making seven months of exaction in the mountain.12

  With his optimistic ancient quarrying rates, Engelbach gave 7.2 months for carving the channel and undercutting the obelisk in order for it to be separated from the bedrock. Yet he presents conflicting and confusing data when he addresses how the undercut could have been carved. He adds 40 inches for the horizontal undercutting of the Unfinished Obelisk, reaching a total of 205 inches, using that dimension as part of his calculation. He then states that “the undercutting would have taken at least as long again, even though it could be done from both sides at once.”13 From this I take it that the 40 inches were added to accommodate the quarryman, who, after reaching the total depth of 205 inches, had to work horizontally beneath the obelisk. Yet in making his calculations for Hatshepsut’s obelisk, Engelbach writes:

  Before leaving the subject of the time taken, let us apply the results obtained from my pounding experiments to the obelisk of Queen Hatshepsôwet at Karnak, of which the measurements are given on page 30 [given as base 7.9 ft pyramidion base 5.8 ft pyramidion height 9.7 ft. total height 97 ft. weight 323 tons]. To the base measure of 94 inches we must add, say 30 inches for undercutting, making a total depth required of 124 inches. Calculating in the same way as before, we find the time necessary would be 4.4 months, working twelve hours a day. For detaching it from below we may add a similar period, making 8.8 months.14

  At 8.8 months, Engelbach’s hypothetical quarrymen would already have exceeded the time it took for Hatshepsut’s obelisk to be quarried, moved, and erected. Still ahead were the tasks of lifting the obelisk out of the quarry, finishing the surfaces to a near-perfect flatness, and sinking along the length of the four sides the deep, three-dimensional reliefs. Needless to say, the chasm appears to be widening between Engelbach’s theoretical optimistic ancient Egyptian results and the historical time-line of the obelisk’s creation.

  Engelbach allows only 30 inches of extra depth for the quarrymen to work on the undercut, in contrast with 40 inches for the unfinished obelisk. Even then, he is using material removal rates that he assumed the ancient Egyptians achieved and which far exceeded his own results, which researchers that followed have been unable to qualify. I would agree that the ancient Egyptians could remove a greater amount of material in an hour than he could, but not using the tools that he proposed. The idea that stone balls were used to quarry granite obelisks, or any other granite artifact, not only has not been proved, but also the evidence to support the notion falls apart under scrutiny.

  An additional difficulty not adequately addressed by either Engelbach or Lehner is that turning the work of bashing vertically onto the granite surface with a dolerite ball and working horizontally—working, in effect, without gravity’s help—is far more difficult, dangerous and less efficient than working with gravity on a horizontal surface.

  If we were to half the removal rate that Engelbach used to calculate the undercutting, we would still be performing the task more efficiently than Stocks or Lehner, who were applying force vertically. Such a claim that half the amount of material may be removed per hour when cutting underneath the obelisk as compared to the rate when cutting vertically alongside is not supportable, and to imagine the ancient Egyptians hammering away at the wall face with stone balls, stone axes, or any other kind of stone implements, and removing eleven times more adamantine granite an hour than Stocks removed is similarly unfounded.

  There is a tendency to romanticize the abilities of the ancient Egyptians because they produced structures that were miraculous for their time and certainly would pose a serious challenge to ours. They were somehow immensely more talented with sticks and stones than modern researchers have been able to demonstrate using the same implements. When pondering the theories proffered by Egyptologists, one gets the impression that an ancient Egyptian quarry worker was like a maestro playing a complete symphony on a violin made of a cigar box and a stick and producing the quality of a Stradivarius.

  The argument is pleasing and poetic, but the trouble is that, metaphorically speaking, when modern scholars make a violin from a cigar box and a stick, its results are precisely what you would expect from a cigar box and a stick. So the question persists: From what instruments did the symphonic architecture in ancient Egypt materialize?

  For a manufacturer or a technologist, the subject is more cut and dried, and it resides in real-world engineering. The material removal rates of tools are known, and if a tool is capable of removing only a certain amount of material under certain conditions, the only efficiencies to be gained are organizational efficiencies in reducing the time spent to support the use of the tool. Estimating engineers do not take the material removal rate of a tool and quote a job that assumes a 63 percent increased removal rate. They will calculate the material removal rate and add time to their quotation for ancillary tasks that support its use. In the case of the standard Egyptian obelisk, the ancillary tasks are the removal of waste, taking breaks for drinking and eating, tending to injuries, and periodically exchanging workers. To do otherwise would drive a company into bankruptcy. An engineer or construction superintendent would not look at the demands imposed by a granite obelisk on a worker with a dolerite pounder with any degree of optimism.

  Yet we are still faced with a nagging question: if the ancient Egyptians did not use dolerite pounders, then what did they use? I have pondered this question both on site and during the intervening years. I believe we have to look closer at the quarry marks and ask ourselves if these are truly the marks left by a dolerite ball. For instance, in plate 18, we can see a long view of the trench with Dan Hamilton standing inside one of the test shafts. Figure 9.16, figure 9.17, and plate 18 pose questions that dolerite pounders do not answer.

  What these photographs show is that the tool that cut the trench left horizontal marks that are familiar to machinists and are consistent either with a tool that is drawn out of a hole and then reinserted to begin cutting again or with a tool that cuts while performing a horizontal sweeping motion, or both. Down the entire length of each scallop on the wall of the bedrock and the obelisk, we can see clearly these horizontal striations, and most of them are in line with each other (see figure 9.16). Other features that argue against the dolerite pounder theory are sharp inside corners in the test shafts as seen in figure 9.17 as well as the undercut area seen in plate 18, which are evident in the upper and lower left photographs. These sharp corners are clearly not the result of a 6-inch round ball.

  Figure 9.16. Vertical cuts with horizontal striation down the north side of the obelisk

  Figure 9.17. Test shaft with sharp inside corner near base of obelisk

  Considering the implied efficiency in quarrying and delivering Hatshepsut’s obelisk in seven months, the use of more advanced tools must be introduced into the equation. With what has been proposed so far, the job would quite simply not
be done in time. In examining the trench around the Unfinished Obelisk and especially the test shafts, which plunge through the granite up to 19 feet from the top of the obelisk, the introduction of mega-machinery does not seem out of place—except that there have been no machines found in the archaeological record.

  A thorny question is now on the table: with dolerite pounders making their way back to the scrap heap where they belong, what kind of tools did the ancient Egyptians use to quarry their obelisks? The horizontal striations are typical in cutting when the feed of a tool that is removing material pauses along its path, withdrawn to remove waste, and the interruption of the tool leaves a mark on the surface. Also, it could be that as the tool was rocked back and forth against the walls of the trench to clear the waste on the vertical wall, horizontal striations appeared where the tool pressed the cutting surface against the side wall to keep the trench from narrowing.

  The tool marks on the trench are most certainly not precision machining. However, machining may provide a clue in explaining the features found on this mysterious ancient work site. With this in mind, I provided a drawing to Don Reed, the supervisor of the tool room at Danville Metal Stamping, and asked him if he could machine some holes in a piece of aluminum—or any other suitable material. I provided him with a drawing of the hole placement (see figure 9.18) and asked that the tool be a ball end mill (depicted in figure 4.4 and figure 6.17). I didn’t expect that the result would be identical to the marks left on the Unfinished Obelisk, as I was asking a skilled toolmaker to execute the work, being aware that when quarrying rock the toolmaker has no control over how his or her tools are being used or abused.

  The results were presented to me by an excellent toolmaker, Doug Carter, and were what I expected of the geometry suggested in figure 9.18. Figure 9.19 illustrates the results, but indicates that more than likely the ancient Egyptians did not use a tool that rotated horizontally. The ball end mill certainly left radial impressions on the bottom of the cut as expected, but they are not the same as those at the bottom of the obelisk’s channel. More than likely, the obelisk channel was cut using a tool that functioned similar to a chain saw, except it was much wider as the intention was to remove as much material as possible in an efficient manner. An idea of what such a machine might look like is seen in figure 9.20. Also, the horizontal striations on the aluminum were as expected, as these always appear when a tool is plunged into the material and is then removed for cleaning out waste, then reinserted in the hole to continue cutting.

  Figure 9.18. Drawing of drilling requirement in aluminum

  Figure 9.19. Tool marks with periodic horizontal striations

  However, there are indications that the machinery that plowed out the material around the obelisk was more versatile than the one shown in figure 9.20 and could actually cut around corners. Figure 9.21 provides evidence of undercutting that was made near the obelisk. Needless to say, this image fully discharges the dolerite ball theory and suggests either a more versatile machine than that depicted in figure 9.20, or another type of machine designed specifically for this kind of operation.

  Figure 9.20. Theoretical equipment for trenching around the obelisk

  Figure 9.21. Undercut near the unfinished obelisk (Courtesy of Patrice Pooyard)

  There should be no doubt by now that the ancient Egyptians were exceedingly brilliant in their conception and execution of large-scale projects. But what powered the tool and how it was applied against the rock are questions that lead us to the real world of the ancient temple, statue, and obelisk builders. This was a world that engaged in engineering on a massive scale and building a civilization for millennia. Surely such a grand vision that allowed the ancient Egyptians to think in these terms also requires us to grant them the intelligence to have developed tools that are of a similar scale in their grandeur.

  To suggest, however, that the ancient Egyptians used megamachines in prehistory is stretching the evidence to limits that are unacceptable to historians and Egyptologists. There have been no megamachines from the ancient past found in Egypt. Similarly, there have been no mega-machines from prehistory found in Rome or Greece, though writings about them exist and theories about what they might have looked like have been tested.

  Is it too much of a leap to go from dolerite pounders to machines, without any intermediate technologies such as iron tools? If we consider everything found in Egypt in an engineering context and look at other evidence of megamachines in action, a picture emerges that provides momentum to make that leap. From the Unfinished Obelisk we are going to travel to the outskirts of Cairo to a site that is off the well-beaten tourist path. We are going to Abu Roash, the site of an unusual pyramid and a mysterious piece of granite that provides more clues to the immensity of scale upon which the ancient Egyptians applied their genius.

  10

  In the Shadow of Egyptian Megamachines

  Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground.

  DANTE ALIGHIERI1

  Immense in size and enigmatic in their design, the pyramids and temples of Egypt are a perennial source of speculation and wonder. They have challenged the minds of generations of engineers and scientists, who marvel at their construction and complexity of design.

  In my discussions with fellow engineers over the years, there has been no disagreement that what was created in ancient Egypt is sophisticated in a way that would severely stretch even modern capabilities. In fact, when they visit Egypt, modern engineers, with modern tools and technology at their disposal, gape in awe at what the ancient Egyptians accomplished. Where are the answers to our questions about how such stonework was created? A prehistoric culture was empowered with a vision and genius to design and build pyramids and temples that are miracles of precisely tooled stone on a gargantuan scale. Surely they would not limit their genius to conceiving only the final product. It seems that such genius could influence the design and building of tools capable of producing works of such majesty.

  Figure 10.1. View of the Giza Pyramids from the pyramid at Abu Roash

  Academic historians may argue that modern engineers are overly influenced by their machines, thus all the Egyptians’ works are interpreted through the prism of modern technology and there is little respect for the abilities and talents of the ancient Egyptians who, they believe, made do with simple tools. For their part, engineers argue that the ancient Egyptian toolbox accepted by scholars has no tools in it that are capable of producing what is found in Egypt, and that to advance our understanding of that time in prehistory, we must assign sensible and workable tools and methods that can physically demonstrate the capability to create such work. Experimental trials have already demonstrated the inadequacy of conventional understanding of technology used.

  The artifact discussed in this chapter presents a challenge to modern engineers, for it cannot be produced using any of the methods proposed by conventional theorists. I first heard of the area where this artifact is located during a lecture by independent Egyptologist Stephen Mehler, a passionate and enjoyable companion and presenter who brings almost forty years of research, both in the field and in the library, to his unique perspective on Egyptian history. More than any person I have met, Mehler respects the abilities of the ancient Egyptians, and he honors the ancient Egyptians and an Egyptian elder named Hakim (now deceased, may he rest in peace) in his books: The Land of Osiris and From Light into Darkness: The Evolution of Religion in Ancient Egypt.2, 3 In November 2004, we both shared our perspectives and findings during a conference and tour of Egypt. I was particularly intrigued by a part of Mehler’s presentation that addressed the pyramid at Abu Roash (also spelled Abu Roashh, Abu Rowash, and Ab Ruwaysh). The site was not on the regular tourist venue, and even though it was only five miles away from the Mena House, where the presentation was given, I had no time left to visit the site. Besides, I did not expect to find incredible stonework there, because, from the photographs Stephen showed, there wa
s not much left of the pyramid, and no sarcophagi, statues, or building blocks caught my eye. There are some researchers who argue that the pyramid was completely finished before being ravaged by forces of nature, and then was plundered by humans, but others believe that the pyramid was never finished—which I am inclined to believe. Its unfinished state was probably due to the same forces that halted the quarrying of the Unfinished Obelisk and brought the ancient civilization to a screeching halt.

  The pyramid at Abu Roash is credited to Khufu’s son, Djedefra, who chose a site five miles away from his father’s pyramid—but for what reason? There are only speculations. Perhaps he was the black sheep of the family and had a greater ego than Khufu, so he wanted to be buried at a higher elevation. Who knows? Nonetheless, Mehler makes a cogent observation in his book The Land of Osiris.