Egypt ancient tools

They realized that contemporary Egyptian masons of the day had been using primitive tools such as hammers, copper and bronze chisels, and wooden wedges to cut through granite for centuries, dating back to pharaonic Egypt. Ancient Egyptian sculptors making a statue. Underground Science The mainstream view suggests ancient Egyptian stone masons used common tools to crave and bore holes in granite.

The current understanding of how Egyptians bored through granite among mainstream archaeologists is that they used a method where they would drive a wooden wedge into a crack in the rock and soak the wedge with water. As the water expanded, this would cause the crack in the rock to widen.

After doing this, they would continue to drive the wedge in even further. Doing this repeatedly would eventually split the rock into blocks. This process happens all the time in nature through frost wedging. Water in the cracks of rocks, including granite and other igneous rocks, will freeze. Freezing of the water causes it to expand, which, over successive freezing and melting, will cause a crack to widen.

This can sometimes cause an entire boulder to split in two. The stone mason, modern or ancient, would be using the same principle to cut granite blocks along pre-existing zones of weakness.

An unfinished Egyptian obelisk at Aswan with holes showing how the granite would be split. This is still hard for some skeptical writers and observers to believe. They insist that the primitive methods used by early modern and ancient Egyptian stone masons were not enough and that it must have been with more advanced equipment that the ancient Egyptians bored through solid granite.

They argue that this is evidence that the ancient Egyptians and other civilizations were much more technologically sophisticated than is currently believed. While it is possible that more advanced technologies could have been developed by earlier civilizations then anticipated, there does not appear to be much reliable evidence to support this idea. If the ancient Egyptians did cut through granite with equipment such as electric drills or lasers or similarly advanced technology, these hewn granite slabs are the only evidence for it that we have.

So far, there is no indisputable evidence of physical remains of electrical batteries or wires or anything else that would suggest that the ancient Egyptians used technology that was more advanced than what is expected for that period. Abusir, Egypt. Remnant of granite pillar with lines etched on it. Photo Stephen S. Mehler, MA.

There is one case which some proponents of the idea that ancient Egypt was more advanced than contemporary archaeology would suggest - evidence that the ancient Egyptians used light bulbs. The temple of Hathor at the Dendera complex in Egypt contains several stone reliefs that appear to some observers to be a light bulb.

CC BY 2. It is far from conclusive, however, that this is a light bulb and most experts agree that it is a depiction of a djed pillar, a type of pillar associated with Ptah the creator god and a lotus flower.

It also involves other references to Egyptian mythology such as the sun barge which the god Ra uses to travel across the sky. The fact that no unambiguous ancient Egyptian lightbulbs have ever been discovered also makes the mainstream view more likely for the time being. We know that the Egyptians had stories involving a djed pillar, a lotus flower, and a sun barge. We do not however know, or have concrete indications, that they had electric lighting or electric drilling for that matter.

They require us to assume that the ancient Egyptians had mechanical or electrical technology - for which there is currently no indisputable evidence from archaeology or from historical records written by the ancient Egyptians. There are still a lot of questions about how exactly the ancient Egyptians were able to build their monuments with the tools that they had, but the fact that we know they had these tools as opposed to more advanced tools makes it more likely that they used these primitive tools in some way.

Aswan, Egypt granite quarry with hole where an obelisk block was carved out. With our modern cranes, power tools, and lasers, we tend to assume that engineering projects such as cutting or drilling through hard crystalline rock require reasonably advanced, modern technology, but humans have always shown themselves to be resourceful.

Ancient civilizations were able to make up for their relatively primitive technology by being clever in finding ways to accomplish great architectural achievements with very simple means. Perhaps we are the limited ones, relying too much on our own technology and not our ingenuity to overcome obstacles.

That is a lesson that we can learn from the ancient Egyptians, the ancient Maya, the ancient Incas, and countless other cultures across the world who brought us a collective cultural heritage. Top Image: Using common tools to work stone in ancient Egypt.

Close-up of drill hole in granite with spiral grooves. The Egyptian javelin was more than a hand-launched missile. It also functioned in close combat as a short spear about a meter long 3. New Kingdom soldiers would carry a quiver of javelins over their shoulder like arrows. At close range, they would use the javelin to thrust at the enemy behind their shields, but they could also launch the armor-piercing javelin at attacking chariots or lines of infantry.

They fitted their javelins with diamond-shaped metal blades and made them easier to aim and throw with a well-balanced and reinforced wooden grip. The battle axe also doubled as a multi-faceted tool suitable for all manner of wartime demands. Painted relief from the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, Light infantry on parade carrying standards, battle axes and palm fronds.

Archeologists have recovered evidence of a distinctive Egyptian weapon referred to as a mace ax. Starting as early as 6, B. But during the New Kingdom, they improved on the deadly design with the addition of a curved blade embedded into a solid wooden head. The mace ax would have been wielded with two hands to break enemy swords and bash through even the strongest bronze armor.

Only then was it possible to make short swords strong enough to withstand the rigors of battle. There were two common types of Egyptian short swords. The first was dagger-shaped and came to a sharp point. Its job was to stab the enemy at very close range. This sword was for slashing at the enemy from a safer distance and was strong enough not to bend when brought down hard on a shield or bone. Perhaps the most iconic and feared Egyptian weapon of the New Kingdom was a curved sword called a khopesh.

The distinctive blade of the khopesh looks like a question mark with the cutting edge on the outside of the curve like a scimitar, not the inside like a sickle. The Egyptians owed the Hyksos once again for this vicious-looking weapon, which is frequently depicted in relief paintings being wielded by a pharaoh to smite enemy armies.

The right side of the axe head is curved and would have been polished to a very sharp edge and this is the side that would be used to chop the wood.

In this photo, you can see the marks where the flint maker's shaping stone hit the flint to break off flakes and produce the sharp edge. The arrow head is the part of an arrow at the very tip.

It is very small, but it would have had a long thin, wooden shaft attached to it. The Egyptians would use these arrows to shoot their prey when they went out hunting for food. Ancient Egyptian Arrow Head used in Hunting. The size of the arrows can tell us a lot about how the Egyptians hunted.

The arrows would have been very light to carry, so they could easily carry a lot at once.