Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt: Advanced Engineering in the Temples of the Pharaohs

by Christopher Dunn

  When civilization fails for any reason, metals of all kinds become precious commodities. They become knives, spear points, scrapers, fishhooks, even plows. Ancient Egypt underwent numerous upheavals caused by droughts, earthquakes, civil wars, religious strife, and foreign invasions. During the times of collapse, the advanced metal tools that the ancient Egyptians used were probably disassembled, cut apart, or melted down. What wasn’t immediately used would corrode and disappear after thousands of years. And perhaps some other advanced technology was also employed, the remnants of which we wouldn’t recognize today.

  Large saw blades and other machine tools, if not secreted away from armies, earthquakes, floods, and mobs, would not endure very long. Over the millennia, few metal objects from our own time would survive or be recognizable. Life After People, a popular cable television show that debuted in 2009, shows example after example of the deterioration of manmade objects after years, merely because of lack of maintenance. In five thousand years, approximately the timespan estimated in Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt, almost nothing of today’s technology would be left. In a world of resourceful (and destructive) human beings, the devastation would be much worse than Mother Nature alone could cause; marauding bandits and nomads would re-use, recycle, or otherwise destroy even our ubiquitous automobile engine blocks and our porcelain toilet bowls!

  It may be that future archaeologists will one day uncover an untouched ancient factory or workshop under the sands or in the caves of Egypt, a place that was purposefully hidden away from destructive recycling, a place that would show us exactly what the ancients used and how. Such a discovery would be the equivalent of the unexpectedly sophisticated two-thousand-year-old Greek computational mechanism, the Antikythera Device! But to recognize their finds as evidence of ancient technologies, those future discoverers must have minds that are opened to the possibilities that Christopher Dunn has been the first to reveal. Otherwise, that advanced machine shop of the ancients could wind up stored in unnumbered boxes in the basement of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, labeled merely as “funerary objects.”

  Recent discoveries at the archaeological site Göebekli Tepe, in Turkey, indicate that twelve thousand to thirteen thousand years ago, so-called primitives were erecting T-shaped monuments as tall as six meters, ranging in weight from ten to fifty tons, perhaps building a Neolithic cathedral of sorts. Many of these stone pillars exhibit carvings of wildlife and even some human-shaped reliefs. For unknown reasons, the site was deliberately buried approximately ten thousand years ago. Because this site can be dated as existing prior to previously established dates for the beginnings of agriculture and urbanization, not to mention cooperative construction of stone monuments, we can readily believe that conventional chronology is at the least incomplete, if not wholly inaccurate. We see that every new archaeological discovery pushes back civilized development further and further into the past, never in the opposite direction.

  So here we have evidence of moving massive stones and carving them in intricate detail dating earlier than 10,000 BCE—thousands of years before the ancient Egyptians were believed to have begun the stone machining that the author examines in this volume and in his previous works. Several thousand years passed between the time of Göebekli Tepe and that of the Egyptian First Dynasty, millennia in which artisans and engineers of ancient times could have perfected their craft, invented their complete suite of enabling tools and supportive technologies, and eventually emigrated to the Nile Valley, becoming part of the incipient civilization emerging there. With centuries of experiment and practice, those who worked in stone could have kept their knowledge secret, offering their finished products to leaders, priests, and the wealthy. As Dunn points out in this volume, even today trade secrets and proprietary knowledge are closely held, even in an educated worldwide civilization with widespread literacy and training. In ancient times the impulse to secrecy may have been even more necessary for survival.

  Alas, the human beings who worked the Rose Red Rosetta Stone of Abu Roash, who machined the statues of Ramses, the columns of Denderah and the stones of the pyramids, were more fragile and evanescent than the mighty tools they employed in their work. If tools of metal are lost in war or natural catastrophe, their flesh and blood designers and operators are even more subject to the vagaries of Fate—disease, injury, wounds, and famine can take away technicians, inventors, planners, and managers, while leaving behind marvelous tools fit only for destruction by desperate people ignorant of their value.

  If the knowledge of a specific task, the operation of a given machine tool, or the procedure for laying out vast projects is resident in just a few people, maybe just one, then the loss of that person or group means the knowledge is gone forever, unless it is recorded. This is an eternal problem, not limited to the ancient Egyptians of five thousand years ago. As a modern example, in 1992 while working at the White House Science Office, I invited to a meeting there a person from the National Science Foundation. Although only peripheral to the agenda, this older scientist regaled us with a tale of a lost technology of modern times, namely how to start up the engines of the Saturn V rocket that took American astronauts to the Moon from 1969 to 1972. Incredibly, this leading scientist averred that no one was alive who knew how to start up the engines on the largest rocket ever flown. No one had written down the standard operating procedure, and the rocket men who had developed the technique had all passed away.

  So in 1992 CE or 1992 BCE or further back in time, we can find sufficient examples to demonstrate that technologies are not always lost as a result of conspiracy. Ordinary human pride, greed, stubbornness, selfishness, and even carelessness, can account for much of our loss.

  In two groundbreaking works, author Christopher Dunn has opened our eyes that ancient Egyptians, and maybe others in the past, designed, planned, laid out, and precisely machined stone statues that would be difficult to reproduce even with today’s manufacturing technologies. As the first person to uncover and develop this new paradigm, he has gone on to investigate other ancient Egyptian artifacts, temples, tombs, and pyramids using this new way of looking at information. He has retrieved knowledge that all before him have overlooked, save Flinders Petrie, whose interest was not primarily proving advanced ancient technology, merely commenting upon interesting findings. A new way of looking at old data could bring new respect to ancient civilizations that left magnificent ruins in a still-troubled part of the world. As we understand more about the origin of Egyptian temples and pyramids, we find a way to bridge the past and the present, a way to look for still other revelations that affect us as human beings.

  ARLAN ANDREWS SR., SCD

  Arlan Andrews Sr., a registered Professional Engineer, graduated from New Mexico State University with a doctorate in mechanical engineering. Throughout his career he worked as a missile tracker at White Sands Missile Range, as a member of technical staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories, as the advanced manufacturing initiatives manager at Sandia National Laboratory, and as the environmental director at the Naval Air Station, Corpus Christi, Texas. In 1991, Dr. Andrews was assigned to the Technology Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce as a Fellow for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Following his tenure there, he became an ASME Fellow at the White House Science Office. He later co-founded several high-tech startup companies, one of which was listed on NASDAQ and another still operating in North Carolina. He also founded the nonprofit futurist organization SIGMA, a group of professional scientists and science fiction writers formed to advise the Federal Government on future technologies and events.

  FOREWORD

  Recognizing the Brilliance of Ancient Manufacturing

  No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study, and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do
not suffer themselves to think.

  JOHN STUART MILL, ON LIBERTY

  As a lawyer trained in the areas of evidence and the nature of proof, I have witnessed firsthand the disagreements that occur in the arena of ideas. Sometimes these disagreements make their way into a courtroom, where a trial is held and a judgment made as to which opinion carries the weight of evidence—evidence that ultimately convinces a judge and jury. The court reaches a decision in favor of the party or parties that presented that convincing evidence.

  Over the course of this book, Chris Dunn presents evidence that raises a multitude of challenging questions, introducing new ideas and opinions about the history of craftsmanship in Egypt. This work calls into question established paradigms and theories that have, for many decades, formed the basis of academic studies in schools and universities around the globe and in volumes that occupy the shelves of virtually every library. But first, let me describe how I came to be involved in this debate.

  Leaving the formal practice of law in the late 1980s, I have, in the ensuing two decades, become a manufacturer, more specifically a fabricator of sheet metal components for gas turbine engines at Danville Metal Stamping Co., Inc., located in Danville, Illinois, USA. It was here that I first met Dunn, upon my arrival at Danville Metal in 1988. He preceded me at the company by a couple of years and was then serving in the capacity of laser engineer. He later became a manufacturing engineer and, in 1995, brought his manufacturing and engineering skills, as well as his judgment and insight, to the post of Human Resources Manager. As President and CEO, I devote a significant amount of time to human resources and, consequently, my contact with Dunn increased dramatically.

  At that time, I had little background or particular interest in Egypt, the pyramids, or ancient technologies and civilizations. Nonetheless, like most humans, I had a natural curiosity about how things are made or done and why. My curiosity then turned toward the subject that Dunn had spent the past twenty years studying in his spare time, and I was impressed by the enthusiasm and sense of wonder he had for it.

  Over breakfast after a Sunday walk, Dunn would discuss his thoughts on ancient technologies. Those discussions were often supplemented by a photograph or other visual aid, such as an engineering drawing or a sketch on a napkin or scrap of paper. We would also discuss the online controversies that swirled around his comments, theories, and questions raised in his first book, The Giza Power Plant. Dunn’s analysis did not stop there; he instead applied the criticism he received to improve his methods and collect further evidence.

  In February of 2006, Dunn took another of his many trips to Egypt, this time with a tour group that visited a number of temples in Upper Egypt. Although he had first visited those temples in 2004, his exposure had been brief and he was interested in more closely inspecting temple artifacts, especially in the Luxor Temple. This new expedition took Dunn deeper into and beyond the issues he had explored previously. He returned from the trip with a new and elevated interest in the accomplishments of the ancient Egyptians in the temples, particularly the statuary. His observations in the temples presented a new frontier of amazing feats, raising questions that were complementary to observations he had made in connection with granite boxes and other aspects of construction in the pyramids.

  In April and May of the same year, I took the opportunity to travel with Dunn to witness in person what I had only examined as photographic evidence. This included many looks through the viewfinder of his camera equipped with a telephoto lens and then verifying the results captured by the camera.

  From personal observation, I can verify that in this book Dunn has been true to the evidence he observed. As an engineer, Dunn was able to analyze his observations with CAD/CAM programs and geometrical analysis unavailable or incomprehensible to the average observer. Among other things, with advances in digital imaging, a technology used daily in manufacturing, his computer-assisted analysis afforded him the ability to see attributes that could not be seen or analyzed with the naked eye even in the presence of the original artifact.

  Using his extensive skills and his tools as an engineer and a toolmaker and bringing to bear his decades of experience in manufacturing, Dunn was relentless in assessing what he could reach and, through his camera lenses, preserving that which he saw. He also used his camera to capture what he could not necessarily reach and was thoughtful and creative in his approach. As the reader will witness in the pages that follow, Dunn thinks well in three dimensions and understands thoroughly the consequences of a particular test, comparison, or view.

  After our visit to the temples in 2006, Dunn studied his photographs and detected in the statues certain features that resembled tool marks—the kind of tool marks that a craftsperson or engineer would recognize. Realizing that he had focused on collecting geometric information and neglected to look for evidence of tool marks, another trip was planned and taken in November of 2008 to further authenticate and more finely focus on what his previous photographs indicated. On this trip I was able, through Dunn’s camera, to see the tool marks on the cheek of one of the Ramses in the Temple at Karnak, even though the head of that statue was some 45 feet in the air. I was later able to examine the resulting photograph, as can the reader later in this book.

  I vividly remember my first (and then every subsequent) visit to the Luxor Temple. Although smaller than the nearby Temple at Karnak, the Luxor Temple is impressive. The different areas of the Temple provided an interesting variety of architecture from the hall of the Ramses to the colonnade to the plaza to the inner temple. Each had something different to offer and yet they harmoniously fit together. The imposing Ramses statues hewn out of huge solid blocks of granite, the immense columns, and the fact that the Temple, its contents and its surrounding have existed for thousands of years caused me to wonder about the influence it had on the civilization that built it. From these thoughts, my mind was opened to a new awareness.

  As I am confronted with the evidence, both in Dunn’s book and from my own personal observation, I find myself wondering, among other things, how the technology of the ancient Egyptians that allowed them to carve and shape stone as they did was applied in other areas of their society, such as healthcare and dentistry for example. In our society, advancements in one area of technology are quickly spread to other areas in which those advancements might apply. Wouldn’t the ancient Egyptians have done the same?

  While my background as an attorney and a manufacturer qualifies me to evaluate Dunn’s work objectively, I am still awestruck by what he has revealed in his studies and by the disparity between his findings and the understanding I gained in the course of my traditional education on the subject. If, metaphorically speaking, truth lies at the heart of an onion, I have witnessed firsthand as Dunn peeled away layers of that onion to get closer to the heart of technologies employed in ancient Egypt, revealing previously unaddressed questions. While the most obvious and prominent of those questions is how these ancient artifacts were made to exhibit such remarkable geometry and precision, the second most obvious that follows quickly on the heels of the first is why.

  At this time, there are no certain answers to these questions, and it is human nature to fill the void of the unanswered question with something. Those who ignore questions because the answers are not apparent are disingenuous. I am reminded of this quotation from John Stuart Mill in Considerations on Representative Government: “From despairing of a cure, there is too often but one step to denying the disease; and from this follows dislike to having a remedy proposed, as if the proposer were creating a mischief instead of offering relief from one.”

  A skeptic is defined by Webster’s as “a person who questions the validity or authenticity of something purporting to be factual,” while the same dictionary defines cynical as “distrusting or disparaging the motives of others.” In his work, Chris Dunn invites us all to be skeptical of things that we may have never really questioned while, at the same time, he invites rigorous skepticism of his own obse
rvations. This skepticism is healthy and helpful. It is not cynicism, however. It is not contempt for the theories or ideas of others or for those who proffer those theories or ideas. It is a questioning and a testing of one’s own ideas and theories as well as those of others. In reading and contemplating the pages that follow, I entreat the reader to be skeptical but not cynical.

  In exercising skepticism while reading Dunn’s work, also bear in mind this quotation from the Wizard in the play “Wicked”: “Back where I come from we believe all sorts of things that aren’t true . . . we call it history.”

  Perhaps a more famous Winston Churchill quote, “history is written by the victors” should be considered. The history of Egypt traditionally taught in the west has, for the most part, been written by western scholars who followed on the heels of their armies. I am confident that the obvious sophistication of the ancient Egyptians revealed in this book will, in due time, prompt western scholars and others around the world to reexamine what has been written about ancient Egypt and to consider what else the citizens of that ancient civilization, by whatever means, accomplished.