Egyptian Stone Cutting Tools

In basic terms any tool should have a greater hardness than the material being cut or shaped.

Egyptian stone cutting tools.

Reproduction ancient egyptian stone mason s tools used for carving demonstrations. Franz löhner doesn t allege that the ancient egyptians already knew the difficult and elaborate procedure of making wrought iron but that they acquired the valuable iron by trading. It was very likely copper since bronze tools were not in use until the middle kingdom ca. Filmed in the egyptian museum of antiquities this granite box shows strong evidence for a lost high technology in ancient egypt.

As neither copper nor bronze is sufficiently hard to cut such stones as basalt diorite granite quartzite and schist. Details about how to cut stones specially what tools to use for hard granite stones. These joints with an area. The pink granite of which the unfinished obelisk is composed has a mohs hardness that sits between the scale of 6 and 7 the maximum being diamond at 10 and thus is more or less the same hardness as dolerite making the latter a poor material for shaping the former.

For the time being the balance of evidence seems to suggest the mainstream view that primitive metal and wooden tools used by common stone masons were sufficient for cutting through granite. Ancient egyptian stone drilling. Machine tools in ancient egypt.