Old Egyptian Stone Working...

[Rockhopper]

This abstract site describes how the Egyptians cut and formed the stones.

Early ancient Egyptian lapidary slabbing saws would have been made of copper, either cast or cold-worked until the Middle Kingdom, when bronze tools became more available. At this point in their history either copper or bronze would likely have been used until iron began to appear in quantity during the New Kingdom period (late 18th Dynasty), which gradually increased in availability until it became as common as bronze in the 26 Dynasty (Arnold 1991). Petrie (1883) has suggested that the rectangular bronze or copper slabbing saws were up to 2.7 m in length and about 0.75 to 5 mm in thickness. These were used for the cutting of a variety of rock objects, including granite sarcophagi. Laurer (1962) suggested that a thin copper sheet in the form of a hand saw was used to make the front edge of closely jointed, limestone casing blocks as early as the 3rd Dynasty. Stocks (1988) demonstrated that a flat-edged copper saw blades 5 mm in thickness could be made by poring molten copper into a shallow open mold. Copper, bronze, and iron are insufficiently in terms of indentation hardness to cut by abrasion hard stones such as basalt, diorite, granite, greywacke (schist), and siliceous sandstone (quartzite). A harder material than the metal itself is required as an abrasive in order to cut these rocks. This abrasive material could have been used either as shards of mineral aggregates or crystals used as cutting teeth, charged copper or bronze (small abrasive grains impregnated into the metal), or as a loose abrasive.

The Archaeologists used exactly the same techniques as shown in the hieroglyphics.

Source.

Timid Timmy!

[Lenzabi]

Between good stone cutting and making cement, they were amazing!

[Rockhopper]

Devilishly clever those Africans were Len!

Tim

[Agartha]

I don't like VM's name calling and silly personal attacks, but he does bring a very interesting point of view to our discussions on history and archaelogy... now it's just 3 of us agreeing!
lol

[Rockhopper]

Agreed Ags. Mr. Omega brought a different slant to our discussions.

Tim.

[Lenzabi]

All he had to do was disagree, but leave the personal attacks and name calling off the keyboards.

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