conference

PRIFYSGOL CYMRU ABERTAWE,
UNIVERSITY OF WALES SWANSEA.

Some Experiments in Ancient Egyptian Stone Technology

Denys Stocks (Consultant Experimental Scholar)

This paper will be presented in two parts. The first part discusses the tools and techniques for ancient Egyptian stone vessel manufacture, covering key processes and tools that stretched from Predynastic times to the end of Egyptian civilization. Important epigraphic and archaeological evidence will be introduced and examined, with appropriate illustrations, together with the manner that this evidence, combined with mechanical engineering training, directed the experimental manufacture, evaluation and use of reconstructed tools for creating vessels of different shapes, which were made of both hard and soft stones. These reconstructed tools will be demonstrated to conference members for shaping, for drilling and for boring two replica stone vessels: ancient design ideas for tools, using plant’s structural features, will also be scrutinized.

The paper’s illustrated second part concentrates upon the development of a multiple, simultaneous stone bead drilling procedure that developed in the New Kingdom Period at Thebes , Upper Egypt , and which is illustrated in six private tombs. This remarkable development replaced single bead-drilling methods to make the threading hole, ushering in a new and exciting manufacturing technique that dramatically speeded up the most difficult part of manufacturing hard stone beads. The experiments needed to make and test the drilling tools will be described in detail. Drilling up to five beads simultaneously by one worker, in the same time period for drilling a threading hole in a single bead, considerably lowered the economic cost of producing many types of jewellery. Both the single and multiple drilling techniques will be demonstrated to conference members using a flint tool, a replica single bead drill and the reconstructed multiple bead drilling tools. Related ancient technological methods and materials will be discussed while demonstrations take place.

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