Anger is rising
Sawing of the joints of the blocks in ancient Egypt
December 3, 2016
containing a high proportion of arsenic
I am referring here to , the Bulletin of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, signed by Etienne Laroze and Antoine Garric.
This work answers the question:
- How, in antiquity, did the workers manage to fit massive blocks with such precision?
The answer is extremely clever. It had already been suggested more than a century earlier, but it took my friend Antoine to demonstrate it himself on his site at the Karnak Open Air Museum. In fact, the blocks are only closely joined at the edges of the faces, to a depth of 5-7 cm. The center of the face is slightly hollowed out with a chisel (the specialized term is "de-magreed"), to a depth of a few millimeters. The adjustment is therefore achieved by sawing this joint strip using a saw, which is a simple metal blade (in Egypt, copper) that incorporates quartz particles (either added or automatically present in the sandstone, which is a "secondary rock," naturally containing abrasive particles and thus naturally "self-abrasive"). The saw makes a back-and-forth movement and abrades the joint.
Very few original tools have been found (metal was a precious material, systematically recovered). Moreover, the tools found in tombs are symbolic and non-functional replicas. Here is what the authors state in their article:
These saws abrade the joints without wearing much. They actually serve to move the abrasive: the quartz powder.
Antoine Garric on his site. He adjusts the horizontal with a plumb line, from the Old Kingdom. Garric sawing the vertical joint. The following drawings illustrate this block sawing technique (quick, one centimeter per minute!). The sawing operations follow each other:
The block jointing can be completed by injecting a very fluid plaster through a vertical channel, which then forms a lens of a few millimeters thickness, in contact with the "de-magreed" faces. The resistance to seismic shocks is then maximum. The following photo demonstrates the proven existence of the plaster injection channels:
Channels for injecting the very fluid plaster.
These channels also ensure the rigid jointing of the vertical faces. Horizontal grooves are visible, facilitating the flow of the plaster and ensuring an ultra-rigid jointing of the horizontal faces.
The photos refer to excavations of elements dating from the New Kingdom (1500 BC). This study would need to be applied to the oldest elements. But already a conclusion emerges: there is no need to assume that these blocks were "cut by laser" and transported by "anti-gravity". Extremely simple techniques allow the realization of operations that previously appeared incomprehensible. Moreover, the copper extracted from Egyptian mines had mechanical properties close to those of bronze, which makes us abandon the image of Egyptian workers working with pure, soft copper tools.
That said, this does not answer all questions. For example, how were the blocks joined at sites in South America where metals were unknown. This also does not exclude the possibility that these ancient civilizations possessed knowledge that has been lost. The presence of a "multi-vernier" technology on , three thousand years before Vernier rediscovered this technique in 1631, is an undeniable, disturbing fact, for which there is still no explanation.