Ancient Egyptian drill holes question

Our "debunker" OP has gone missing. It would have been interesting to hear what s/he had to say to all the mountains of evidence assembled in this thread showing interesting but mundane explanations for this issue.
 
Well, it could be they're presenting to their friend. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. Well, at least the first time.
 
marplots said:
Very good article. Clicking the .pdf tab brings up a version with the pictures.
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Indeed. And I'd like to especially point out the picture on page 43 and the accompanying analysis. The lines are not regular, parallel, or (therefore) at the same angle around the core.

Those are NOT lines that are consistent with a high speed drill going into the material at a constant speed (at least approximately during a spin). They're not even consistent with a drill at all. Some grooves actually bifurcate, something no drill would produce.

They're the relatively haphazard lines that you'd expect when such loose and relatively coarse corundum (or emery, same hard material) bits abrade the material.
 
HansMustermann said:
In fact, as someone with a bit of an interest in ancient Egypt, here's something that most people don't realize: far from being examples of advanced tech, Egyptian pyramids and generally monuments were SUPPOSED to be pretty much the LEAST efficient use of manpower even at the time.

You want to know what they were? They were the equivalent of the 19'th century follies in the UK. You know, building some castle in the middle of nowhere, or a road leading from nowhere to nowhere. It was the pre-keynesian (only) kind of pseudo-welfare. You wouldn't just give the poor money, because we thought it will just make everyone lazy. So you'd pay them to do some useless construction effort instead.

It was actually a bad thing if the Pharaoh didn't permanently have hordes of people working for his monument, or monuments. So if you finished your pyramid early, you'd start a bigger one. Like Cheops did. Or have people dig some pointless tunnels under it to keep them busy. Again, like Cheops did.

It wasn't even supposed to be some super-efficient use of material or manpower. It was actually just supposed to keep a whole lot of people employed. Even if it was with pointless stuff like digging some tunnels to nowhere.
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Perhaps a coarse way of putting it - I wouldn't agree that it was ultimately pointless busy-work, like a 19th-century aristocrat having a castle tower or roman temple-like pavilion built in the middle of nowhere. The symbolism of the pyramids is completely consistent with the known religious role of the kings of the period, and there is also a consistent evolution of tomb design that pyramids were the pinnacle of.

You are right, however, that large projects did serve to occupy otherwise-idle hands. Most of the pyramids' construction was performed by farmers during the annual months-long flood season when working their fields was impossible. A much smaller professional crew would be working on them during the remainder of the year.
 
Checkmite said:
Perhaps a coarse way of putting it - I wouldn't agree that it was ultimately pointless busy-work, like a 19th-century aristocrat having a castle tower or roman temple-like pavilion built in the middle of nowhere. The symbolism of the pyramids is completely consistent with the known religious role of the kings of the period, and there is also a consistent evolution of tomb design that pyramids were the pinnacle of.

You are right, however, that large projects did serve to occupy otherwise-idle hands. Most of the pyramids' construction was performed by farmers during the annual months-long flood season when working their fields was impossible. A much smaller professional crew would be working on them during the remainder of the year.
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Please do not take this as doubt because I am in no position to do so since I have barely more than a newspaper headline knowledge of Egypt or the pyramids, but how do we know this to that detail? I was under the impression that the labor force composition was educated guesswork as opposed to established fact.
 
Checkmite said:
Perhaps a coarse way of putting it - I wouldn't agree that it was ultimately pointless busy-work, like a 19th-century aristocrat having a castle tower or roman temple-like pavilion built in the middle of nowhere. The symbolism of the pyramids is completely consistent with the known religious role of the kings of the period, and there is also a consistent evolution of tomb design that pyramids were the pinnacle of.

You are right, however, that large projects did serve to occupy otherwise-idle hands. Most of the pyramids' construction was performed by farmers during the annual months-long flood season when working their fields was impossible. A much smaller professional crew would be working on them during the remainder of the year.
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Well, maybe I was grandstating a bit. What I'm actually saying is that it's both. Sure, there was a religious justification for it, and in fact for all Egyptian monuments. And with the Pharaoh being a living god, well, it couldn't be non-religious anyway. But I'm saying it was also intentional that there would be a large work program every year, as evidenced (among other things) by that pointless tunnel dug under the great pyramid just to not call it fininshed yet.

I'm also saying, and this was really all the original point I was trying to make, is that there wasn't the same drive for efficiency we have nowadays. Nowadays you'd want a building finished with as little material and manpower as possible. Back then, you wanted basically to use up the excess budget, because you got no interest and a 10% yearly loss on those stored crops each year. (Mold, mice, you get the idea.) Sure, you wanted to have an impressive religious monument at the end, which isn't entirely as pointless as the 19'th century follies, but you ALSO wanted to keep as many people employed as you can in the process. It was really a part of the same religious thing. You didn't want it ended quick and with little manpower. You wanted to employ a lot of people in the flood season for the rest of your lifetime.

So ancient alien idiots trying to look at it as some quick and efficient job using power drills and power plants are missing the whole point by a mile. Is all I'm saying.


On the other hand, calling the pyramid an evolution is kinda, well, a case of both yes and no. I'd say that Imhotep's design was a radical change from the previous mastabas, in more than one way. I mean, even the supplies were outside in extra temples, instead of in the second room of a mastaba. Or even the presence of those shrines at all.

I mean, the only real link is that superficially you could say that Imhotep's design is several stacked mastabas... except they're not REALLY. They don't follow the two room plan of a mastaba. And they're not even constructed like the previous mastabas. That guy invented not only columns -- which previous mastabas didn't actually HAVE -- but anchoring them to walls too, to support the massive weight of the upper floors. It's a radical new architecture, without any precedent.

Now mind you, I'm NOT saying that aliens taught him that or anything. Just that Imhotep may well have been the greatest genius in recorded history. And not just for his architecture work.

But yes, I'd say the only real continuity is that it was still a sacred tomb. The architecture is not really an evolution of mastabas, IMHO, but something new. And pure genius, really.
 
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Garrette said:
Please do not take this as doubt because I am in no position to do so since I have barely more than a newspaper headline knowledge of Egypt or the pyramids, but how do we know this to that detail? I was under the impression that the labor force composition was educated guesswork as opposed to established fact.
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Ah - to be sure, the exact numbers of workers in total, and the exact numbers of itinerant labor as opposed to project-permanent, are educated guesswork. The inscriptions do not specifically state that the shift-labor were farmers, but this is really the only logical source for free workforce of that size. We know the workforce was free - i.e., not in a condition of servitude - because Egypt did not have such numbers of slaves, and because the pyramid builders were paid wages and buried with dignity and afterlife provisions if they died on the worksite (we have found their cemetery, adjacent to the pyramid complex itself), consideration that slaves were never given.

How the work force was organized, administered, and compensated, and that they worked in these shifts, is information that has been left to us on the walls of the tombs of the construction foremen and overseers, which were found when their cemetery along with the workers' village was discovered in the 90's. The tomb of one of the overseers for instance describes his being in charge of two teams of two thousand workers per team. These teams were divided into "gangs" of a thousand, further into platoons of a hundred or so, and finally into small task forces of ten to twenty. Except for the gangs, which apparently chose unique and sometimes frivolous names for themselves (like "Khufu's drunkards"), all of these sub-units had standardized names and were divided by skill for specific tasks.
 
Rincewind said:
And I thought those aliens were supposed to be so much more advanced!

:rolleyes:
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Yes, well, as I keep saying, if you listen to the UFO gang, it's just a sad tale of idiocracy in slow motion. It's kinda like this:

- 400,000 years ago: aliens genetically engineer the evolution towards modern humans. Somehow.

- 4000 years ago: aliens teach humans to... stack big rocks on top of other rocks. And possibly teach humans to... paint inventory tags, from which writing would soon evolve. But still..

- present day: aliens are only interested in anal probing schizophrenic hillbillies and cutting out anuses and genitals off dead cows. Because THAT is what cattle mutilation is.

Am I the only one getting Idiocracy flashbacks there?
 
But, seriously, think of how many useful things those aliens COULD have taught early humans. E.g., off the top of my head:

- the sieve. Seriously, THE number 1 cause of death in the Old Kingdom was tooth abscesses, because sand in their food abraded the teeth to the pulp. So if you really want to do a major thing for them, without revealing space age tech, just teach them to use a sieve.

- a ceramic water filter. Endless clean drinking water, without all the wood you'd need to boil it.

- distillation. As an alternative, teach them to make a solar still, fer crap's sake. If there was one source of energy that Egypt had no shortage of, it was sunlight.

- glasses. Think of how many people's lives would have been so much less crappy, if they could just see what they're doing.

Etc.

There are so many little things we take for granted, and which would have made a HUGE difference for those people. But what do the supposed aliens teach them instead? How to stack stones and how to drill a hole in some rich guy's sarcophagus lid.

Geesh...
 
Checkmite said:
Ah - to be sure, the exact numbers of workers in total, and the exact numbers of itinerant labor as opposed to project-permanent, are educated guesswork. The inscriptions do not specifically state that the shift-labor were farmers, but this is really the only logical source for free workforce of that size. We know the workforce was free - i.e., not in a condition of servitude - because Egypt did not have such numbers of slaves, and because the pyramid builders were paid wages and buried with dignity and afterlife provisions if they died on the worksite (we have found their cemetery, adjacent to the pyramid complex itself), consideration that slaves were never given.

How the work force was organized, administered, and compensated, and that they worked in these shifts, is information that has been left to us on the walls of the tombs of the construction foremen and overseers, which were found when their cemetery along with the workers' village was discovered in the 90's. The tomb of one of the overseers for instance describes his being in charge of two teams of two thousand workers per team. These teams were divided into "gangs" of a thousand, further into platoons of a hundred or so, and finally into small task forces of ten to twenty. Except for the gangs, which apparently chose unique and sometimes frivolous names for themselves (like "Khufu's drunkards"), all of these sub-units had standardized names and were divided by skill for specific tasks.
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Perfect. Thanks.
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, maybe I was grandstating a bit. What I'm actually saying is that it's both. Sure, there was a religious justification for it, and in fact for all Egyptian monuments. And with the Pharaoh being a living god, well, it couldn't be non-religious anyway. But I'm saying it was also intentional that there would be a large work program every year, as evidenced (among other things) by that pointless tunnel dug under the great pyramid just to not call it fininshed yet.

I'm also saying, and this was really all the original point I was trying to make, is that there wasn't the same drive for efficiency we have nowadays. Nowadays you'd want a building finished with as little material and manpower as possible. Back then, you wanted basically to use up the excess budget, because you got no interest and a 10% yearly loss on those stored crops each year. (Mold, mice, you get the idea.) Sure, you wanted to have an impressive religious monument at the end, which isn't entirely as pointless as the 19'th century follies, but you ALSO wanted to keep as many people employed as you can in the process. It was really a part of the same religious thing. You didn't want it ended quick and with little manpower. You wanted to employ a lot of people in the flood season for the rest of your lifetime.

So ancient alien idiots trying to look at it as some quick and efficient job using power drills and power plants are missing the whole point by a mile. Is all I'm saying.
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Also, such projects would have brought large amounts of workers from different areas of the Empire together to work on a single, major project for a long period of time. I could see how such projects, making groups who would not normally interact extensively because they live in different areas, work together and get to know each other well. The projects might very well have also been a way to try and establish a sense of national unity.
 
simonxlong said:
Also, such projects would have brought large amounts of workers from different areas of the Empire together to work on a single, major project for a long period of time. I could see how such projects, making groups who would not normally interact extensively because they live in different areas, work together and get to know each other well. The projects might very well have also been a way to try and establish a sense of national unity.
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It may well be some of that indeed.

My personal guess, though, is still welfare. I mean, let's look at when it starts, and specifically at Imhotep. He was truly a renaissance man, you know, some 4000 years before there would be a renaissance, and came up with more than one thing. But it's the combination of two that makes me think:

A) an irrigation system, to feed a lot more Egyptians. Because Egypt was actually starting to have an overpopulation problem, and

B) hiring huge teams of people to build a whole monument complex. He didn't just build the first pyramid, he built almost a whole town around it, AND buried it half-way in sand.

Now you tell me if the two don't look like they could be related. The guy had a provable concern with keeping people from starving. And he just happened to come up with something that just happened to work as proto-welfare? It might not be a coincidence, is all I'm saying.

And of course, since he WAS high priest of Ra, the whole thing did have a religious justification. But, the guy didn't seem to be a religious fanatic. He wrote a very secular medicine manual, for example. (The first known, in fact.) Where he wrote about stuff like washing and bandaging wounds, as opposed to prayers and amulets.

He doesn't strike me as the type who'd just have some religious hallucination and make people build a pyramid out of fanaticism. I mean, he could be, but he didn't seem like it.
 
HansMustermann said:
It may well be some of that indeed.

My personal guess, though, is still welfare. I mean, let's look at when it starts, and specifically at Imhotep. He was truly a renaissance man, you know, some 4000 years before there would be a renaissance, and came up with more than one thing. But it's the combination of two that makes me think:

A) an irrigation system, to feed a lot more Egyptians. Because Egypt was actually starting to have an overpopulation problem, and

B) hiring huge teams of people to build a whole monument complex. He didn't just build the first pyramid, he built almost a whole town around it, AND buried it half-way in sand.

Now you tell me if the two don't look like they could be related. The guy had a provable concern with keeping people from starving. And he just happened to come up with something that just happened to work as proto-welfare? It might not be a coincidence, is all I'm saying.

And of course, since he WAS high priest of Ra, the whole thing did have a religious justification. But, the guy didn't seem to be a religious fanatic. He wrote a very secular medicine manual, for example. (The first known, in fact.) Where he wrote about stuff like washing and bandaging wounds, as opposed to prayers and amulets.

He doesn't strike me as the type who'd just have some religious hallucination and make people build a pyramid out of fanaticism. I mean, he could be, but he didn't seem like it.
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I am not arguing against the idea of welfare as a primary purpose. I'm merely pointing out additional added benefits of using this type of welfare.

1. It provides employment.
2. It reinforces religion and government power.
3. It serves to bring different groups from around the empire together and give them common purpose, reinforcing a central language, religion, and way of doing things.
4. It allows for the exchange of crafting techniques and the development of building advancements and innovations, as well as the opportunity to train apprentices under multiple artisans.
5. It provides the government the opportunity to get a feel for the public sentiment from around the empire as different workers come and go.
 
Nakani said:
I am just spit ballin' here but could they have drilled the hole and then used another type of drill bit to clean up the hole. If the hole was all ready drilled, roughed out so to speak, maybe the spiral tool marks on the side are from a honing bit used to finish the job.
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I have thought about it but i see no reason why do it like that? To carv inner grooves into relatively narrow holes is a pain in the ass. Wouldn't you agree?

But about the "spiral" holes - I told I'm not even sure if they are spiral after all. If drilled as the conspiracy theorists suggest, they should be spiral but has anybody actually confirmed them to be spiral? If not, then the conspiracists are doomed in a blink of an eye. If they are, then we have one more thing to explain.
 
Hans said:
When dealing with woo they often concentrate on trying to discredit the orthodox view for the simple reason that their own 'view' has little to no evidence.
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Yes, that's of course true. I like to mention them that couple of seemingly unfittable pieces do not prove the whole big picture to be wrong. Usually those pieces are just from another puzzle. Even if they found some pharaos mummy with a contemporary but rusted modern watch on it's hand, it would NOT prove some time travel or early technology. Mos likely it would prove the existence of some elaborate hoax. I understand perfectly well the concept of big picture but the woos don't and they tend to think, that this would immediately disprove everything we know. Even if it's much more likely a hoax or a result of some rat stealing some 19. century archaeologists watch and dragging it into the tomb.

The same thing with the holes and in my humble oppinion the only way to disprove the powertools is to replicate just ONE freaking hole with tools the egyptians could have had and would have used (i.e. it's not overly complicated for a practical use)
 
theprestige said:
As to your drill holes, what makes you think we can't? It's true that we don't, because we have better ways to drill holes, and better things to do with our resources than drill holes using 4,000 year-old methods.
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Of course we have but we also have a technology for it. What I meant was, that we can not reproduce those holes with the technology the egyptians must have had. Or can we? That was my initial question! Can we? Has anybody done that, so we could end the woo arguments for ever.

theprestige said:
Leaving aside your "guy", why is it important to you to determine which of several possible methods the ancient Egyptians may have used to drill holes?
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Well, i've explained it repeatedly but it couldn't hurt to do one more time:
By showing that the egyptians could have done it with tools and technology they had in those days (and of course with sufficient practicality, meaning that even if they could've carved them after a horrible painstaken period of time and effort, i dont think they actually did it this way because even then people had some sense about wasting time and energy if you know what i mean) we can eliminate FOREVER any of their arguments that they had no means to do it.

Yeah, well, ok...we can't convince the real woos but we can show the hesitant people that woo's suggestions aren't actually correct.
 
Noriabooks said:
<snip for brevity>


The same thing with the holes and in my humble oppinion the only way to disprove the powertools is to replicate just ONE freaking hole with tools the egyptians could have had and would have used (i.e. it's not overly complicated for a practical use)
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What is your objection to the multiple examples of that very thing which have been provided for you in this very thread?
 
bruto said:
If you're determined to be a pyramidiot, it's hard to prove that magic or extraterrestrial technology, or some lost art, did not come into play; but if you can show that the job could be done with the technology we know was available, you have shown that the other things are not necessary.
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Yes, you can't completely convince a pyramidiot alhough they also accept that holes CAN be drilled with bronze cores and abrasives but they point out (and with the information I have at the moment I have to agree with them), that the result can't be compared with what we see in egyptian stones. I have seen a reenactment video of limestone drilling a couple of years ago and even there the result was embarassingly sloppy. And the limestone is very soft compared to granite. It's really hard to imagine that the same techology could create quite nice holes into granite and I'm not surprised why the woos think the same. Can't blame them at least in that point. And here's the problem - if the experimental archaeologists reenact all sorts of activities to find out how people did this or that, I still cant find the solid explanations to most interesting questions. Like the holes. Maybe we never find out the real means they used but I hope we do.

bruto said:
I found an interesting site (archived from an old geocities site) that looks as if it addresses at least some issues.
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Yeah, i think i've seen this or some similar site. There are actually a lot of them around. It reminds me this siltstone vaze that was also pointed out as an "alien molten rock casting technology" or whatever and somewhere is a beautyful explanation how to create those with ancient tools and technology. Well, the woos don't point to those vazes much any more. But i'm still looking for a good solid practical show.
 
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