The Giza Power Plant (37 page)

The knowledge needed to evaluate certain of these ancient artifacts was not available until very recently. Even today there may be numerous articles that we will not understand until we further develop our own technology. We cannot fathom technology that is unknown to us, and we seldom consider things that seem impossible to us. Petrie, though knowledgeable in engineering and surveying, could not be expected to know anything about ultrasonic machining; hence his amazement at the machining abilities of the ancient Egyptians. Even if he had been aware of this technology, the intellectual climate of his time may have precluded his considering the possibility that these methods were known to the ancient Egyptians. Quite
simply, the greatest barrier to our understanding may not necessarily be knowledge. It may be attitude.

One of the most inconceivable events with which modern humans are faced is nuclear disaster. Though the threat of all-out nuclear war between the United States and the former Soviet Union has been greatly reduced, it is still possible that our civilization could be wiped from the face of the Earth by a few miscalculations in foreign policy, a reckless terrorist act, or an error or malfunction in our own nuclear weapons or devices—the ones supposedly protecting us from a premature reaction to a nonexistent threat. Could it happen? Most of us believe that we, as a species, are simply too smart for these possibilities to overtake us.

Has it happened before? Were the ancient Egyptians smart enough to ensure that their own civilization would endure? The greatest lessons regarding our own mortality may begin with the pyramids of Egypt, the strong evidence of advanced machining practiced by the ancient Egyptians, the geological and biological records, and the world's ancient sacred records—these are all pieces of a giant puzzle that so many of us are trying to piece together. I have hope that we will regain this lost knowledge and learn from the lessons of the far distant past in time to save our own society from the fate that likely befell advanced civilizations that came before us. And I hope that along with granting us the wisdom to survive, this knowledge also may provide us the means through which we can evolve—spiritually, intellectually, and technologically—into more than we have ever chanced to dream.

Appendix A

THE MECHANICAL METHODS OF THE PYRAMID BUILDERS

by
Sir William Flinders Petrie

From
Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh,
74–78.

Author's Note: These pages from Petrie are reproduced exactly from the original, including punctuation style. I have included this Appendix so that the reader will better understand the context within which Petrie presents his evidence.

T
he methods employed by the Egyptians in cutting the hard stones
which they so frequently worked, have long remained undetermined. Various suggestions have been made, some very impracticable; but no actual proofs of the tools employed, or the manner of using them, have been obtained. From the examples of work which I was able to collect at Gizeh, and from various fixed objects of which I took casts, the solution of the questions so often asked seems now to have been found.

The typical methods of working hard stones—such as granite, diorite, basalt, etc.—was by means of bronze tools; these were set with cutting points, far harder than the quartz which was operated on. The material of these cutting points is yet undetermined; but only five substances are possible—beryl, topaz, chrysoberyl, corundum or sapphire and diamond. The character of the work would certainly seem to point to diamond as being the cutting jewel; and only the consideration of its rarity in general, and its absence from Egypt, interfere with this conclusion, and render the tough uncrystallized corundum the more likely material.

Many nations, both savage and civilized, are in the habit of cutting hard materials by means of a soft substance (as copper, wood, horn, etc.), with a hard powder supplied to it ; the powder sticks in the basis employed,
and this being scraped over the stone to be cut, so wears it away. Many persons have therefore readily assumed (as I myself did at first) that this method must necessarily have been used by the Egyptians; and that it would suffice to produce all the examples now collected. Such, however, is far from being the case; though no doubt in alabaster, and other soft stones, this method was employed.

That the Egyptians were acquainted with a cutting jewel far harder than quartz, and that they used this jewel as a sharp pointed graver, is put beyond doubt by the diorite bowls with inscriptions of the fourth dynasty, of which I found fragments at Gizeh; as well as the scratches on polished granite of Ptolemaic age at San. The hieroglyphs are incised, with a very free-cutting point; they are not scraped nor ground out, but are ploughed through the diorite, with rough edges to the line. As the lines are only 1/150 inch wide (the figures being about .2 long), it is evident that the cutting point must have been harder than quartz; and tough enough not to splinter when so fine an edge was being employed, probably only 1/200 inch wide. Parallel lines are graved only 1/30 inch apart from centre to centre.

We therefore need have no hesitation in allowing that the graving out of lines in hard stones by jewel points, was a well known art. And when we find on the surfaces of the saw-cuts in diorite, grooves as deep as 1/100 inch, it appears far more likely that such were produced by the jewel points in the saw than by any fortuitous rubbing about of a loose powder. And when, further, it is seen that these deep grooves are almost always regular and uniform in depth, and equidistant, their production by the successive cuts of the jewel teeth of a saw appears to be beyond question. The best examples of equidistance are the specimens of basalt No.4, (Pl. viii.), and of diorite No. 12 ; in these the fluctuations are no more than such as always occur in the use of a saw by hand-power, whether worked in wood or in soft stone.

On the granite core, broken from a drill hole (No.7), other features appear, which can only be explained by the use of fixed jewel points. Firstly, the grooves which run around it form a regular spiral, with no more interruption or waviness than is necessarily produced by the variations in the component crystals ; this spiral is truly symmetrical with the axis of the core. In one part a groove can be traced, with scarcely an interruption, for a length of four turns. Secondly, the grooves are as deep in the quartz as in the
adjacent feldspar, and even rather deeper. If these were in any way produced by loose powder, they would be shallower in the harder substance—quartz; whereas a fixed jewel point would be compelled to plough to the same depth in all the components; and further, inasmuch as the quartz stands out slightly beyond the feldspar (owing to the latter being worn by general rubbing), the groove was left even less in depth on the feldspar than on the quartz. Thus, even if specimens with similarly deep grooves would be produced by a loose powder, the special features of this core would still show that fixed cutting points were the means here employed.

That the blades of the saws were of bronze, we know from the green staining on the sides of saw cuts, and on grains of sand left in a saw cut.

The forms of tools were straight saws, circular saws, tubular drills, and lathes.

The straight saws varied from .03 to .2 inch thick, according to the work; the largest were 8 feet or more in length, as the cuts run lengthways on the Great Pyramid coffer, which is 7 feet 6 in. long. The examples of saw cuts figured in Pl. viii. are as follow. No.1, from the end of the Great Pyramid coffer of granite, showing where the saw cut was run too deep in the stuff twice over, and backed out again. No.2, a piece of syenite, picked up at Memphis; showing cuts on four faces of it, and the breadth of the saw by a cut across the top of it. This probably was a waste piece from cutting out a statue in the rough. No.3, a piece of basalt, showing a cut run askew, and abandoned, with the sawing dust and sand left in it ; a fragment from the sawing of the great basalt pavement on the East of the Great Pyramid. No.4, another piece from the same pavement, showing regular and well-defined lines. No.5, a slice of basalt from the same place, sawn on both sides and nearly sawn in two. No.6, a slice of diorite bearing equidistant and regular grooves of circular arcs, parallel to one another ; these grooves have been nearly polished out by cross grinding, but still are visible. The only feasible explanation of this piece is that it was produced by a circular saw. The main examples of sawing at Gizeh are the blocks of the great basalt pavement, and the coffers of the Great, Second, and Third Pyramids,—the latter, unhappily, now lost.

Next the Egyptians adapted their sawing principle into a circular, instead of a rectilinear form, curving the blade round into a tube, which drilled
out a circular groove by its rotation; thus, by breaking away the cores left in the middle of such grooves, they were able to hollow out large holes with minimum of labour. These tubular drills vary from 1/4 inch to 5 inches in diameter, and from 1/30 to 1/5 thick. The smallest hole yet found in granite is 2 inches diameter, all the lesser holes being in limestone or alabaster, which was probably worked merely with tube and sand. A peculiar feature of these cores is that they are always tapered, and the holes are always enlarged towards the top. In the soft stones cut merely with loose powder, such a result would naturally be produced simply by the dead weight on the drill head, which forced it into the stone, not being truly balanced, and so always pulling the drill over to one side; as it rotates, this would grind off material from the core and the hole. But in the granite core, No.7, such an explanation is insufficient, since the deep cutting grooves are scored out quite as strongly in the tapered end as elsewhere ; and if the taper was merely produced by rubbing of powder, they would have been polished away, and certainly could not be equally deep in quartz as in feldspar. Hence we are driven to the conclusion that auxiliary cutting points were inserted along the side, as well as around the edges of the tube drill; as no granite or diorite cores are known under two inches diameter, there would be no impossibility in setting such stones, working either through a hole in the opposite side of the drill, or by setting a stone in a hole cut through the drill, and leaving it to project both inside and outside the tube. Then a preponderance of the top weight to any side would tilt the drill so as to wear down the groove wider and wider, and thus enable the drill and the dust to be the more easily withdrawn from the groove. The examples of tube drilling on PI, viii. are as follow:—No.7, core in granite, found at Gizeh. No.8, section of cast of a pivot hole in a lintel of the granite temple at Gizeh ; here the core being of tough hornblende, could not be entirely broken out, and remains to a length of .8 inch. No.9, alabaster mortar, broken in course of manufacture, showing the core in place ; found at Kom Ahmar (lat. 28°5'), by Prof. Sayee, who kindly gave it to me to illustrate this subject. No. 10, the smallest core yet known, in alabaster; this I owe to Dr. Grant Bey, who found it with others at Memphis. No. 11, marble eye for inlaying, with two tube-drill holes, one within the other; showing the thickness of the small drills. No. 12, part of the side of a drill-hole in diorite, from Gizeh, remarkable for the depth and regularity of the grooves
in it. No. 13, piece of limestone from Gizeh, showing how closely the holes were placed together in removing material by drilling; the angle of junction shows that the groove of one hole just overlapped the groove of another, probably without touching the core of the adjacent hole; thus the minimum of labour was required. The examples of tube drilling on a large scale are the great granite coffers, which were hollowed out by cutting rows of tube drill-holes just meeting, and then breaking out the cores and intermediate pieces; the traces of this work may be seen in the inside of the Great Pyramid coffer, where two drill-holes have been run too deeply into the sides; and on a fragment of a granite coffer with a similar error of work on it, which I picked up at Gizeh. At El Bersheh (lat. 27°42') there is still a larger example, where a platform of limestone rock has been dressed down, by cutting it away with tube drills about 18 inches diameter; the circular grooves occasionally intersecting, prove that it was done merely to remove the rock.

The principle of rotating the tool was, for smaller objects, abandoned in favour of rotating the work; and the lathe appears to have been as familiar an instrument in the fourth dynasty, as it is in modern workshops. The diorite bowls and vases of the Old Kingdom are frequently met with, and show great technical skill. One piece found at Gizeh, No. 14, shows that the method employed was true turning, and not any process of grinding, since the bowl has been knocked off its centring, recentred imperfectly, and the old turning not quite turned out; thus there are two surfaces belonging to different centrings, and meeting in a cusp. Such an appearance could not be produced by any grinding or rubbing process which pressed on the surface. Another detail is shown by fragment No. 15 ; here the curves of the bowl are spherical, and must have therefore been cut by a tool sweeping an arc from a fixed centre while the bowl rotated. This centre or hinging of the tool was in the apex of the lathe for the general surface of the bowl, right up to the edge of it ; but as a lip was wanted, the centring of the tool was shifted, but with exactly the same radius of its arc, and a fresh cut made to leave a lip to the bowl. That this was certainly not a chance result of hand-work is shown, not only by the exact circularity of the curves, and their equality, but also by the cusp left where they meet. This has not been at all rounded off, as would certainly be the case in hand-work, and it is clear proof of the rigid mechanical method of striking curves.

Hand graving tools were also used for working on the irregular surfaces of statuary; as may well be seen on the diorite statue of Khafra found at Gizeh, and now at Bulak.

The amount of pressure, shown by the rapidity with which the drills and saws pierced through the hard stones, is very surprising; probably a load of at least a ton or two was placed on the 4-inch drills cutting in granite. On the granite core, No.7, the spiral of the cut sinks .l inch in the circumference of 6 inches, or 1 in 60, a rate of ploughing out the quartz and feldspar which is astonishing. Yet these grooves cannot be due to the mere scratching produced in withdrawing the drill, as has been suggested, since there would be about 1/10 inch thick of dust between the drill and the core at that part; thus there could scarcely be any pressure applied sideways, and the point of contact of the drill and granite could not travel around the granite however the drill might be turned about. Hence these rapid spiral grooves cannot be ascribed to anything but the descent of the drill into the granite under enormous pressure; unless, indeed, we supposed a separate rymering tool to have been employed alternately with the drill for enlarging the groove, for which there is no adequate evidence.

That no remains of these saws or tubular drills have yet been found is to be expected, since we have not yet found even waste specimens of work to a tenth of the amount that a single tool would produce; and the tool, instead of being thrown away like the waste, would be most carefully guarded. Again, even of common masons' chisels, there are probably not a dozen known; and yet they would be far commoner than jeweled tools, and more likely to be lost, or to be buried with the workman. The great saws and drills of the Pyramid workers would be royal property, and would, perhaps, cost a man his life if he lost one ; while the bronze would be remelted, and the jewels reset, when the tools became worn, so that no worn-out tool would be thrown away.