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

by Christopher Dunn

  Figure 11.17. Top: Drilling rig. Bottom: Hole and core with chisel wedge and hammer.

  With respect to what methods the ancient Egyptians used to create Core 7, I have no real answers. However, to replicate the core and holes, an experimentalist might consider softening the granite using heat. Does the burnished finish on the surface of Core 7, as well as the random runs between the grooves and the proliferation of depressions where mica is removed, along with the spiral groove itself, indicate that these characteristics might be replicated if the granite was brought close to its melting point?

  Figure 11.18. Top left: Drilled hole at Abu Ghorab (courtesy Patrice Pooyard). Top right: Close-up of drilled hole in the Valley Temple lintel block. Bottom left and right: Drilled hole and core using a copper tube and silicon carbide 80-mesh abrasive.

  Figure 11.19. Example of wear on the cutting edge of a tubular drill

  Such a method may involve using a tool—similar to a thermal lance—that sacrifices its material in the process, as depicted in figure 11.19. Until an answer is found, Petrie’s Core 7 will remain in its case at the Petrie Museum as evidence of one of Egypt’s mysterious lost technologies.

  12

  Suspending Disbelief

  Have the wisdom to abandon the values of a time that has passed and pick out the constituents of the future. An environment must be suited to the age and men to their environment.

  PROVERB FROM THE EGYPTIAN INNER TEMPLE, IN ISHA SCHWALLER DE LUBICZ, HER-BAK: EGYPTIAN INITIATE

  Here, I have attempted to provide a more complete description of artifacts that Egyptologists seek to explain in their books on ancient Egyptian craftsmanship and engineering. My analysis of the various attributes of the artifacts presented is by no means exhaustive, but it provides us with a better idea of what steps researchers must take in order to say with conviction that they have discovered the means by which the ancient Egyptians built their civilization in stone.

  As we come to grips with what has been discussed here, it would help if I arranged—in order of significance, from a manufacturing perspective—the artifacts that I have discussed in this text. I’ll assign 1 to the highest level of sophistication and work down to 6, then I’ll explain why I have ranked them in this order. Of course, this ordering reflects my own opinions, which are biased toward manufacturing technology. Construction engineers or architects may order them differently, but this ordering is meant purely to provide a means to understand what could be considered the development of knowledge and the exercise of technological sophistication. My list is ordered by site and the principle artifact at the site that stands out as the most sophisticated expression of industrial art.

  The Temple at Luxor: the Ramses statues and obelisks

  The Temple of Denderah: the Great Hypostyle Hall columns

  The Giza Plateau: the contoured granite blocks and the pyramids

  The boxes in the Serapeum

  Abu Roash: the sawed granite block

  The Petrie Museum and the Unfinished Obelisk

  Surprising to many may be my selection of Luxor over the pyramids at Giza—which have been the only surviving members of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. I believe strongly that Luxor should be included on this list or should grace the top position on the newly drafted Wonders of the World (as recently voted on by people around the world). The finalists of this Internet popularity contest are, without ranking: Chichén Itzá, Mexico; Christ the Redeemer, Brazil; the Colosseum, Italy; the Taj Mahal, India; the Great Wall of China; Petra, Jordan; and Machu Pichu, Peru.

  Figure 12.1. When we wish to see, we open our eyes. When we wish to see more clearly, we open our minds.

  The reordering of the Wonders of the World by popular vote on the Internet was not taken kindly by Egyptian officials. Zahi Hawass would not dignify the populist poll by having the pyramids included in a contest in which the results were based on an emotional connection with a site, rather than on scholarship. In fact, he demanded that the pyramids be excluded from the voting. “Just think about it, could you have put the statue of Christ the Redeemer against the Abu Simbel?” Hawass asked, and argued further that those who have voted may not have even set foot in Luxor, Karnak, or the Valley of the Kings. “Just how could they let people rewrite history? History has been written by scholars who do important works for people to understand and respect, but this new voting is not correct. . . . We only deal with UNESCO, with official bodies and institutions, or respected individuals, but not a small tour company that does not have credibility,” 1 he said.

  Hawass’s concerns were heeded by the organizers, and the pyramids were taken off the list for the American Idol–style voting contest. Regarding the pyramids, the organizers of the contest made conciliatory comments on their website:

  The Pyramids of Giza, the oldest and only Ancient Wonder still standing, are testimony to perfection in art and design, never subsequently achieved. They were built by planners and engineers purely to serve their earthly rulers—who were also their gods. Philosophy did not exist at this time, and creation was not subject to any questioning. The pyramids are the purest of constructions, built for eternity. After careful consideration, the New7Wonders Foundation designated the Pyramids of Giza—the only remaining of the 7 Ancient Wonders of the World—as an Honorary New7Wonders Candidate. Therefore, people could not vote for the Pyramids of Giza as part of the New7Wonders campaign. This decision has also taken into account the views of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt and the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. The Pyramids are a shared world culture and heritage site and deserve their special status as the only Honorary Candidate of the New7Wonders of the World campaign. The New7Wonders of the World were chosen by the people across the globe from the remaining 20 New7Wonders candidates.2

  The results of the poll are difficult to accept for many people because they are the result of votes cast by people who may have not visited any of the sites or may have only visited one or two. The poll also lacked specific details of each of the sites, as well as instructions on what criteria were to be used in forming an opinion. Nonetheless, it captured the imagination of one hundred million people around the world, each of whom voted for their favorite world heritage site, and I am sure if the pyramids had been included in the worldwide vote, they would surely have been voted 1 on the list.

  Picking a “favorite” among the treasures left behind by generations past is a personal matter and one that speaks to the emotional attachment we form with a site. Descriptions and photographs of Machu Pichu have always captured my imagination, but when I visited the site in 2005, I was left without the sense of awe and wonder that I expected. Others who have visited the site claimed that to them it was like coming home, and that they felt a deep connection to the history and culture of the Andean people. Those who feel this way cannot be told that they are wrong and that they have selected the wrong site because an official body of scholars disagrees.

  When I visited Egypt in 1986, I was interested only in the pyramids and had no desire to travel south to see the Egyptian temples. A couple I met at the Mena House Hotel near the Giza Plateau, confirmed my view when I ran into them after they had visited the temples and claimed they had seen enough of the temples and had become tired of them. This all changed after I made my first visit. Subsequently, Luxor became my number one Wonder of the World because of the technological prowess expressed in its temples, statues, and obelisks.

  LUXOR AND THE RAMSES STATUES

  To me, the Ramses statues symbolize technology in motion. In his masterful work The Temple of Man, Schwaller de Lubicz demonstrates that the Temple of Amun Mut Khonsu was designed to symbolize man in motion. Key architectural characteristics of the temple were associated with different parts of the human body, and in the Ramses Hall, where the walking statues of Ramses are situated, the orientation of the hall allows the legs of the superimposed human to be positioned in a natural walking stance. This brilliant anthropomorphic analogue construction was created
to harmonize with the stages of human development as well as its relationship to the universe.3

  From the perspective of manufacturing evolution, the Ramses statues contain both the attributes of the boxes in the Serapeum (two-dimensional surfaces created from straight-line geometry) and the contoured blocks at Giza (three-dimensional surfaces created from straight-line and circular geometry) and go further in complexity to create surfaces that morph precisely between separate and different composite radial geometric shapes. That the ancient Egyptians accomplished this again and again, and that the information encoded in their statues is still accessible three thousand years after they were created, is a testament to ancient Egypt’s engineers and artisans. The Ramses statues provide a legacy of ancient knowledge that has receded into the shadows of history, but like the Great Pyramid at Giza, they are still singing their song for those who wish to hear. When Dr. Zahi Hawass asked how we could compare the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil to Abu Simbel, he posed a relevant question. Both are an expression of power and authority, but from an engineering perspective, they are quite different. Abu Simbel, which is fronted by four seated Ramses figures that are more than 60 feet high each, was carved from native sandstone bedrock while the statue of Christ the Redeemer, reaching 120 feet (38 meters) in height with its pedestal, was made of reinforced concrete and soapstone. These materials were chosen for the statue’s construction because of their ease of use and load capabilities, given the outstretched arms of Christ. Abu Simbel was crafted more than three thousand years ago, and work on Christ the Redeemer began in 1921 and was finished in 1932.

  During the New7Wonders campaign, there was a separate campaign in Brazil called Vote no Cristo (vote for the Christ), with corporate sponsors donating large sums of money to have the statue voted into the top seven Wonders.

  Meanwhile, the number one Wonder of the World according to my vote, given their materials, geometry, precision, mass, and endurance, received no attention at all, except for Dr. Hawass’s simple plea to make a proper comparison. Unfortunately, his plea has apparently fallen on deaf ears.

  THE TEMPLE OF DENDERAH

  The pyramids at Giza and the Temple of Denderah are distinguished by their complexity. From the sheer amount of stone used in construction, the pyramids would most obviously take the number one spot, and readers of this text may still argue that they should be there. Yet from the perspective of manufacturing and precision assembly, the Temple of Denderah provides a more complex arrangement of geometric elements that required more in the way of three-dimensional surfacing techniques than anything found on the Giza Plateau.

  Though the pyramids have rectangular and angular blocks that are cut and fitted with precision, the Temple of Denderah has rectangular blocks that are fitted with precision and have also been decorated with stunning three-dimensional reliefs before being assembled into the temple. On top of this, the Hathor capitals in the Great Hypostyle Hall have exact, three-dimensional surfaces that, whether cut before or after being assembled, are not only an amazing demonstration of artistry and skill, but also are precisely aligned with each other, from column to column.

  THE GIZA PLATEAU

  Depending on what discipline you consider to be Egypt’s master craft, the Giza Plateau has sufficient evidence to move it to number one on any list of Wonders. If we consider the pyramids to have been built merely to be used as tombs, they would reside, in my view, at number three on the list. If the sophisticated science that is thought by some to reside within the pyramids’ construction is proved to have merit, then they would resist all challenges for prominence among all artifacts anywhere in the world.

  For the purposes of this book, however, we are focusing on the artisans’ master craft, and on the Giza Plateau, the contoured blocks offer a transition between the simple, flat surface geometry found in the pyramids and the Serapeum and the more complex geometries that were revealed in the statues of Ramses II after ancient tools had plowed out thousands of tons of diorite and granite with apparent efficiency and ease.

  THE BOXES IN THE SERAPEUM

  The complexity of a box is not quite that of a statue or even the cornice block near the Valley Temple at Giza. Yet the message from the tunnels of the Serapeum is one of metrology and exactness. While precision is inferred from the geometry and symmetry of the statues, the boxes in the Serapeum let us know quite clearly that the ancient Egyptians were no strangers to such exactness. The lapidary work on the insides of these boxes should invite further studies by Egyptian engineers who can interpret the information that is crafted into the meticulousness with which these giant, enigmatic artifacts were made.

  THE SAWED GRANITE BLOCK AT ABU ROASH

  The stone at Abu Roash opens up an entirely different perspective on pyramid building in ancient Egypt. When we ponder how such a massive construction program could be executed with efficiency and precision, we understand more if we consider that machines existed that were up to the task. The stone at Abu Roash provides an important piece of information for our understanding of how tens of millions of pyramid blocks were cut.

  THE PETRIE MUSEUM AND THE UNFINISHED OBELISK

  The Petrie Museum offers evidence to support the need for a reevaluation of the kinds of tools used by the ancient Egyptians to cut their statues and other stone artifacts. Petrie’s Core 7 provides an important clue that a more efficient method of hole drilling was used by the ancient Egyptians than those proposed by Egyptologists. The examples of lathe work and the nicks and grooves on statues that were left by tools that could not have been simple chisels or stone balls all contribute to a radically different view of the capabilities of the ancient Egyptians. The Unfinished Obelisk provides information about highly efficient quarrying techniques, whereas the finished obelisks display evidence of the use of tools that were a mere ⅛ inch wide and were applied in a controlled way so as to leave sharp edges at the entrance point.

  CHRONOLOGICAL PROGRESSION

  Taking my six Wonders of Ancient Egypt in order of importance and applying their historical dates, it would appear that proficiency and skill spanned the entire timeline from the building of the Great Pyramid in the fourth dynasty to the crafting of the boxes in the Serapeum in the eighteenth dynasty, more than two thousand years later. The flat surfaces and square corners measured on the inside of the sarcophagus in Khafre’s pyramid, for instance, are no different from the flat surfaces and square corners inside the boxes in the Serapeum. What distinguishes the two kinds of boxes is their size. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that either the ancient Egyptians had developed a high level of precision early in their history and carried it forward through to the time of the Greeks and Romans or, as discussed in chapter 5, the provenance of the site is so clouded with confusion that the dating of the granite boxes is affected by evidence left behind by later cultures. These giant boxes, for which there are no dating methods, may have resided in the tunnels for millennia—and without any inscription from the Ptolemaic period describing how the boxes were quarried, moved, and crafted to such a high order of precision; or evidence of tools and metrology instruments that reflect such precision; or machines that must have been used to create them, it is more than likely that they were created close to the same time as the pyramids, which also may have an earlier date of construction.

  If I consider all the evidence within the same engineering context without regard to the time each example was built, I am compelled to suggest that the ancient Egyptians had to have used sophisticated machines that cut diorite and granite with little difficulty. The evidence suggests that they had lathes and that the lathes were built with precise bearings that regulated the rotation of the spindle. The contoured blocks on the Giza Plateau suggest that they had machines that cut exact, three-dimensional shapes on three axes.

  The telltale marks on a Ramses head at Karnak and the indentation above the eyebrow suggest that a rectangular tool was directed along a precise path while oscillating at high frequency, like a jack ha
mmer, against the surface. When the tool came to the eyebrow, it paused briefly, but the oscillations did not cease, and the tool cut deeper where it rested. Such signs are signatures of machining and are well-known consequences of allowing a tool to rest along its path while the cutting force is still applied. (This could be a lathe, for which the tool movement may stop but the work piece keeps rotating; or it could be a milling machine, for which the axes stop moving but the end mill continues turning.) Any machinist would recognize these marks.

  The accidental grooves found in the statue of Amun and Mut in the Luxor Museum are proof of tools that do not exist in the archaeological record. These grooves provide evidence of rotary grinding wheels that were used to cut the fine details on the statues.

  How were these tools guided? How was the symmetry of the Ramses statues created? The tool marks plus the three-dimensional accuracy present clear evidence that only a precisely guided tool could produce these statues, and further, that the human hand cannot guide a tool with such precision. Today, we would use computer numerical controlled (CNC) machines. Fifty years ago, we would have created a model and controlled the movement of the machine with a stylus that followed the contours of the model. What technology was available to the ancient Egyptians?