The Giza Power Plant (13 page)

While digging through the ruins of ancient civilizations, would archaeologists instantly recognize the work of machine tools by the kind of marks made on the material or the configuration of the piece at which they were looking? Fortunately, one archaeologist had the perception and knowledge
to recognize such marks, although at the time Petrie's findings were published the machining industry was in its infancy. The growth in the industry since then warrants our taking a new look at his findings. (See Appendix A for an excerpt from Petrie's
Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh
regarding this topic.)

F
IGURE
17.
Petrie's Samples of Machining

One can gather by reading Petrie's work that he involved himself in some extensive research regarding the tools that were employed in cutting hard stone (see Figure 17). Even so, there is a persistent belief among some Egyptologists that the granite used in the Great Pyramid was cut using copper chisels. I.E.S. Edwards, British Egyptologist and the world's foremost expert on pyramids, said, "Quarrymen of the Pyramid age would have accused Greek historian Strabo of understatement as they hacked at the stubborn granite of Aswan. Their axes and chisels were made of copper hardened by
hammering."
¹

Having worked with copper on numerous occasions, and having hardened it in the manner suggested above, I was struck that this statement was entirely ridiculous. You can certainly work-harden copper by striking it repeatedly or even by bending it. However, after a specific hardness has been reached, the copper will begin to split and break apart. This is why, when copper is worked to any great extent, it has to be periodically annealed, or softened, in order to keep it in one piece. Even after being hardened in this manner, the copper is not capable of cutting granite. The hardest copper alloy in existence today is beryllium copper. There is no evidence to suggest that the ancient Egyptians possessed this alloy, but even if they did, even this alloy is not hard enough to cut granite. Yet copper has been described as the only metal available to the craftspeople building the Great Pyramid. Consequently, it would follow that all work must have sprung from their use of this basic metallic element. Theorists may be entirely wrong, however, even in their basic assumption that copper was the only metal available to the ancient Egyptians.

Another little known fact about the pyramid builders is that they were iron makers as well. You will not find much reference to this fact in textbooks; as researchers have only found one piece of wrought iron, and because of its singularity, Egyptologists have not attached much significance to it. Howard-Vyse's assistant, J. R. Hill, discovered this wrought iron within one of the joints of the Great Pyramid's limestone masonry in 1837 (see Appendix B). From there it was delivered to the British Museum. As it was the only piece of iron ever found from that era, its impact was not significant enough to change our concept of world history. However, it is important to note that if there was an abundance of iron or steel at the time of the
Great Pyramid's building, its survival would be dependent on some kind of sanctuary from the elements, such as being buried in the limestone of the pyramid. Recent analysis of this metal discovered that it had traces of gold on one surface, as though it had been gold plated at one time.

Because of the convincing documentation of the discovery of wrought iron at the Great Pyramid and the identification of the builders of the Great Pyramid as the makers of that iron, we are left to ponder the possibility that other ferrous materials existed in prehistory. It is fair of us to ask, therefore, what other kinds of metal components—without the protection of several feet of limestone—would have rusted or have been sand-blasted away during the passage of thousands of years? Without going back in time and interviewing the craftspeople who worked on the pyramids, we will never know for sure what materials their tools were made of. Any debate of the subject would be futile, for until the proof is at hand, we can reach no satisfactory conclusion. However, we can surmise the manner in which the masons used their tools, and if we compare current methods of cutting granite with the finished product (i.e., the granite coffer), we can find a solid base on which to draw several enlightening parallels.

So let us do just that. Today's granite-cutting methods include the use of wire saws and an abrasive, usually silicon-carbide, which has a hardness comparable with diamond and, therefore, is hard enough to cut through the quartz crystal in the granite. The wire is a continuous loop that is held by two wheels, one of the wheels being the driver. Between the wheels, which can vary in distance depending on the size of the machine, the granite is cut by being pushed against the wire or by being held firmly and allowing the wire to feed through it. The wire does not actually cut the granite, but is designed to effectively hold the silicon-carbide grit that in fact does the cutting. By looking at the shapes of the cuts that were made in the basalt items 3b and 5b, as shown in Figure 17, one could certainly speculate that a wire saw had been used and left its imprint in the rock. The full radius at the bottom of the cut is exactly the shape that would be left by such a saw.

Wanting to know more about the sawing of granite, I consulted John Barta, of the John Barta Company, who informed me that the wire saws used in quarry mills today cut through granite with great rapidity. In fact, Barta told me that wire saws with silicon-carbide cut through the granite
like it is butter. Out of interest, I asked Barta what he thought of the copper chisel theory proposed by Egyptologists. Suffice it to say that Barta, being from Cleveland, and possessing an excellent sense of humor, came forth with some jocular remarks regarding the practicality of such an idea.

If the ancient Egyptians had indeed used wire saws for cutting hard rock, our next question would be to ask if these saws were powered by hand or machine. With my experience in machine shops and the countless number of times I have had to use saws (both handsaws and power saws), I was able to recognize strong evidence that, in at least some instances, the latter method was used.

Once again, Petrie provided us with a clue: "On the N. end [of the coffer] is a place, near the west side, where the saw was run too deep into the granite, and was backed out again by the masons; but this fresh start they made still too deep, and two inches lower they backed out a second time, having cut out more than .10 inch deeper than they had
intended. . . . "
²

The above was Petrie's notes on the coffer inside the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid. The following concerned the coffer inside the Second Pyramid: "The coffer is well polished, not only inside but all over the outside; even though it was nearly all bedded into the floor, with the blocks plastered against it. The bottom is left rough, and shows that it was sawn and afterwards dressed down to the intended height; but in sawing it the saw was run too deep and then backed out; it was, therefore, not dressed down all over the bottom, the worst part of the sawing being cut .20 inch deeper than the dressed part. This is the only error of workmanship in the whole of it; it is polished allover the sides in and out, and is not left with the saw lines visible on it like the Great Pyramid
coffer."
³

Petrie estimated that a pressure of one to two tons on jeweled-tipped bronze saws would have been necessary to cut through the extremely hard granite. If we agree with those estimates as well as with the methods proposed by Egyptologists regarding the construction of the pyramids, then a severe inequity can be discerned between the two theories.

So far, Egyptologists have not given credence to any speculation that suggests that the builders of the pyramid might have used machines instead of manpower in this massive construction project. In fact, they do not give the pyramid builders the intelligence to have developed and used the simple
wheel. It is quite remarkable that a culture that possessed sufficient technical ability to make a lathe and progressed from there to develop a technique that enabled them to machine radii in hard diorite would not have thought of the wheel before then.

Petrie logically assumed that the granite coffers found in the Giza pyramids were marked prior to being cut. The workers were given a guideline with which to work. The accuracy exhibited in the dimensions of the coffers confirms this, plus the fact that guidelines of some sort would have been necessary to alert the masons of their error.

While no one can say with certainty how the granite coffers were cut, the saw marks in the granite have certain characteristics which suggest that they were not the result of hand sawing. If there was not evidence to the contrary, I might agree that the manufacturing of the granite coffers in the Great Pyramid and the Second Pyramid could quite possibly have been achieved using pure manpower-and a tremendous amount of time. But it is extremely unlikely that a team of masons operating a nine—foot handsaw would be cutting through hard granite fast enough that they would pass their guideline before noticing the error. To then back the saw out and repeat the same error, as they did on the coffer in the King's Chamber, does nothing to confirm the speculation that this object was the result of handwork.

When I read Petrie's passage concerning these deviations, a flood of memories came to me of my own history with saws, both power and manual driven. My experience, plus my observations of others using power saws, makes it inconceivable to me that manpower drove the saw that cut the granite coffers. While cutting steel with handsaws, workers would be able to see the direction the saw blade would make well in advance of making a serious mistake, especially in an object that has a long workface and, certainly, in one with such dimensions as the coffers, which could not be cut with great rapidity. The smaller the workpiece, naturally, the faster the blade would cut through it. On the other hand, if the saw was mechanized and was cutting rapidly through the workpiece, the saw could "wander" from its intended course and cut through the guideline at a certain point at such a speed that the error could be made before the condition could be corrected. This is not uncommon. I do not mean to imply that a manually operated saw cannot wander, only that the speed of the operation would determine
the efficiency in discovering any deviation that the saw might have from its intended course.

Another interesting point to consider in Petrie's observations of the coffer was that the saw was run too deeply, backed out, and then cut into the stone again. Anyone who has been faced with the problem of drawing a saw blade out of a cut and then making a restart on only one side of the cut, which is essentially what was done with the granite, knows that excessive pressure on the blade would force it back into the original cut. To make a restart of this type, it is necessary that very little pressure be put on the blade. With these considerations, it is doubtful if we can ever verify Petrie's deductions that two or three tons of pressure were necessary to cut the granite.

Making a restart in the middle of a cut, especially one of such dimensions as the granite coffer, would be more easily accomplished with machine sawing than it would be with hand sawing. With hand sawing there is little control over the blade in a situation like this, and it would be difficult to accurately gauge the amount of pressure needed. Also, the blade of the handsaw would be moving quite slowly, a fact that causes me to question further the suggestion that a handsaw was being used. I believe, based on my own and others' experiences, that the accomplishment of such a feat, using a saw at such a slow speed and with very little pressure, would be almost, if not completely, impossible.

With a power-driven saw, on the other hand, the blade moves rapidly and can be more easily controlled. The blade can be held in a fixed position, with uniform pressure over the entire length of the blade, and in the direction necessary to restart a cut. A worker can accurately maintain this front and side pressure until sufficient material has been removed from the workpiece to allow a continuation of normal cutting speed. The evidence from the Great Pyramid's granite coffer shows that workers attained a normal cutting rate shortly after they rectified the mistake, a fact that can be deduced by noting that the mistake was repeated two inches further along. At that point the blade was cutting through the granite at the wrong place faster than the workers were able to detect and stop it.

Another method of correcting a mistake while using a handsaw, if the error was only in a small area of the cut, would be to tilt the blade and continue cutting in the unspoiled area, so that when the blade reached the area
that needed correcting, it would be supported by the fresh tilted cut and would have sufficient strength to combat any tendencies to follow the original straight cut. If the granite coffer had been cut with handsaws, it is conceivable that the workers could have used this method to correct their cutting errors. However, it has probably become apparent by now that Petrie had the eye of a hawk and documented just about everything he saw. At the same time he was studying the cutting mistakes in the granite, he also noticed other features of these artifacts: "[The coffer in the King's Chamber] is not finely wrought, and cannot in this respect rival the coffer in the Second Pyramid. On the outer sides the lines of sawing may be plainly seen: horizontal on the N., a small patch horizontal on the E., vertical on the S., and nearly horizontal on the W.; showing that the masons did not hesitate at cutting a slice of granite 90 inches long, and that the jeweled bronze saw must have been probably about 9 feet
long."
⁴