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

by Christopher Dunn

  Figure 1.29. Inferred center points of radii around each crown

  The design and precise geometry that was crafted into Ramses’ crown is a symbol of a society that was disciplined in precision engineering and craft. The pieces could not have been created without the aid of some kind of mechanical device that guided the tool along a prescribed contour. Neither was this mechanical device a simple machine. Figures 1.29 and 1.30 illustrate a path of the center point of an arc extrapolated from the geometry of the crown. If the designers were to convey to the engineers or craftsmen what they wanted, drawings similar to figure 1.29 and figure 1.30 may have been used. The design is one thing, but devising from the drawing a means of cutting the design into granite—with the exactitude noted in the photographs and transmitted through the palms of my hands to my brain as I felt each surface—is entirely another matter. Creating such an object today using modern computers, software, and computer numerical controlled (CNC) machines would present some significant challenges, to be sure—but not as much head scratching would be involved today as there would have been forty-nine years ago, when I first entered the manufacturing trade as a young apprentice. Applying the tools of fifty years ago to the Ramses challenge would severely tax craftsmen skilled in manufacturing, and the tools and instruments necessary to ensure such precise geometry would not even be in a sculptor’s toolbox.

  If we consider the use of a hand-operated device that allowed a tool to pivot around its center point, thereby striking an arc from the top knot of the crowns to the base of the granite, geometry dictates that as the tool sweeps along an arc, its path would be constrained such that precision is assured. The tool would need to be robust enough that it would not wander from its course. After accomplishing one pass, the pivot point of the tool would need to move along an orbital path around the granite. We can see from figure 1.12 that the center point of the arc is actually lower at 45 degrees than it is at 90 degrees. This indicates that the center point’s orbit around the crown may describe not a simple arc, but a wave. To explain this further, assume that the side view of the crown describes a contour that is at 270 degrees of a circle. Using polar coordinates (described in figure 1.30), we start the tool at 0 degrees and move it clockwise around the crown. At 315 degrees, the center point of the arc is lower than it is at 270 degrees, and the same applies at 225 degrees. As the tool is swung along its arc, the axis along which it moves follows an unwavering arc with precision between the tangency point of the blend radius at the top knot and the base, while the radius of the arc from 0 to 270 degrees gets incrementally smaller. Then, from 270 to 180 degrees, it starts to get larger again at the same precise increments that it did on the other side.

  Figure 1.30. Directing the tool

  The challenges involved in creating the Ramses crown would be significant in any era. Fifty years ago we might question why we should devise such complex machines to create a crown that is going to sit atop a statue that is 40 feet in the air and far removed from close inspection. In today’s world, if we had to create a dozen or so of these crowns and they all followed the same general design scheme—with some variations—it would be more efficient to create a computer model and generate a CNC program to automatically machine the piece. Then we would need to find a machine large enough to cut these crowns on—because they are not small by any means.

  Plate 1. Seated Ramses in Ramses Hall at Luxor. To the sculptor who has worked in stone and to the technologist whose job it is to shape adamantine materials, the sculpture calls out a question and issues a challenge: “What am I? How did I come to exist? Build another just like me.”

  Plate 2. Along the length and width of each crown, the surface follows simple arcs, a result of careful deliberation in concept, design, and manufacture.

  Plate 3. The scale of the Egyptians’ accomplishment is no better described than Ramses looking down on a throng of visitors to the temple.

  Plate 4. Ramses geometry speaks of unambiguous quality and exactness.

  Plate 5. A happy coincidence and interplay between ancient geometry and art

  Plate 6. Divine harmony and iconic art combine in a symphony cut into stone.

  Plate 7. Ramses at Memphis provides further evidence of uncompromising precision with ancient three-dimensional profiling.

  Plate 8. The Ramesseum Ramses inspires those in his presence to pay respect and understand what they behold.

  Plate 9. The shadow cast along the face of Ramses at Karnak reveals the path of ancient tools.

  Plate 10. Though unseen by the visitor, these ancient tool marks are revealed with the help of a telephoto lens and a computer’s digital zoom.

  Plate 11. The path a modern machine would take to craft a human head

  Plate 12 (above and below). Modern tools against ancient surfaces reveal a level of precision that should not exist.

  Plate 13. Inspecting the corners of the inside of the box in Khafre’s pyramid and finding unnecessary precision for the stated purpose of the box

  Plate 14. While Ramses’ face held a benign and almost joyous look, Nefertari holds visitors at bay with pursed lips and a haughty stare.

  Plate 15. Wax impression taken of an undercut where Amun’s buttock meets the bench on the Amun Mut statue in the Luxor Museum

  Plates 16 and 17 (above and below). The columns in the hypostyle hall at Denderah represent a unified assembly of manufacturing, engineering, and architectural brilliance. Connecting individual capitals, solid red and blue lines cross where the cornice and cowl intersect. Green dashed lines define the straight-line geometric elements of the cornice. Ellipses define the bottom of Hathor’s tresses.

  Plate 18. Views of one of several deep shafts in the Unfinished Obelisk trench

  Plate 19. A view from the top of the pyramid at Abu Roash

  Plate 20. The curved granite stone at Abu Roash

  Plate 21. Measuring the stone at Abu Roash

  Plate 22. Using a milling machine to replicate the curvature cut into the stone at Abu Roash

  Plate 23. The Giza Saw Pits. These long trenches have been labeled “boat pits” by Egyptologists and are considered to be the symbolic transport of the dead king into the afterlife.

  Plate 24. Did megamachines once cast their shadow on the Giza Plateau? There are some who believe they still do.

  Plate 25. Petrie’s Core 7. The left photograph shows it tilted on an angle, while the right photograph illustrates the core in a vertical orientation.

  Plate 26. Geometry of a spiral groove on the unfolded latex impression of the Petrie’s Core 7

  What we find in Egypt, therefore, are examples of ancient ingenuity and technology that up to now have had no place in academic understandings of Egyptian history. Moreover, we have become so effective at convincing the world that the Egyptian civilization was not as technologically advanced as the Greeks or Romans, and certainly not the West, that many modern Egyptians themselves believe our story and are loath to accept any other.

  It has been a common theme that the ancient Egyptians used simple, even primitive, tools and methods—so revisionist historians cast their eyes around the world to give credit to another culture. For instance, it has been speculated that these accomplishments were created by Atlanteans or aliens, because the prevailing view is that the ancient Egyptians could not possibly have done the work. I do not support such views. It is my firm belief that the work was performed by Egyptians—but Egyptians who possessed much superior knowledge and tools than we have heretofore credited to them. Consider the simple fact that these hidden symbols of technology became evident and understandable only through the use of modern technology and its standards of exactness and consistency.

  Conception, execution, and verification are the phases of manufacturing. The ancient Egyptians must have used all three, with the last phase—verification—confirming the success of the first two. The only phase available for us to study is the last phase. From what we have learned from Ramses’ crowns, we can determine that cle
arly the ancient Egyptians’ level of technology must have been higher than what is revealed by the archaeological record. The question we are left with, though, is this: What technology did they possess? While the results of the ancient Egyptians’ technology are now revealed by modern tools such as digital cameras and computer software, this does not mean that these tools were available to them. There is still a huge question mark regarding this facet of ancient history. In order to understand more about the technology used to create the crowns, we must take our studies further and look at how the rest of the statues were made. In the next chapter, complexity reaches a new level as we come face to face with the astounding results of an even more difficult challenge: Ramses’ head.

  2

  The Shadows of Ramses

  Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

  SHAKESPEARE, HENRY IV, PART 2, ACT 3, SCENE 1

  Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.

  This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of the Unattainable, the flying Perfect, around which the hands of man can never meet, at once the inspirer and the condemner of every success, may conveniently serve us to connect many illustrations of human power in every department.

  RALPH WALDO EMERSON, ESSAY ON CIRCLES

  The symbols left behind by the ancient Egyptian culture, a civilization that was brought down by a force of nature we tremble to imagine, have been the inspiration of countless scholars, artists, and ordinary laypeople. When it comes to studies of ancient Egyptian art and sculpture, the images we see evoke admiration and wonder and spark the imagination about what the Egyptian civilization found important. Resoundingly, what emerges is that the ancient Egyptians were deeply immersed in the mysteries of life and the survival of the soul after death. At the same time, they were not so submerged in spiritual matters that they eschewed materialistic comfort and pleasure. They acknowledged the hand of superior forces in the universe, and they spent a considerable portion of their wealth paying homage to the fickleness of gods as nature was interpreted by them and appeasing and preparing to be affected by nature’s cycles on both a personal and community level.

  Figure 2.1. The Cosmic Egg

  From what we studied in chapter 1, we can gather that as a community, the Egyptians must have had an education system that taught citizens to understand geometry, and that they used geometry in a sophisticated way. The crowns in the Luxor and Karnak temples provide insight into a heretofore hidden school of design and manufacturing that started on the drawing board and resulted in finely crafted, very exact, and exquisite artifacts. Though they have been severely damaged by unknown forces, a sufficient amount of evidence remains that allows us to gather data with which to make an accurate analysis. Scattered on the ground from Alexandria to Cairo to Aswan, the evidence tooled into granite, diorite, quartzite, and basalt—the hardest substances the ancient Egyptians could find in large amounts—may be all that is left to tell us how technically advanced these people were. To seriously consider replicating their accomplishments is a step toward understanding their advancement.

  Continuing with the Ramses challenge, in this chapter we will study the head on the Ramses statue that sits outside the Temple of Luxor just a few feet from the obelisk. We don’t know what forces separated the head from the body, but for our purposes, it seems quite fortuitous, in that it allows for a close inspection.

  The ancient Egyptian engineers and craftsmen were more than capable of designing and manufacturing elegant, sophisticated, and precise shapes out of difficult-to-work granite, and they crafted impressive Hedjets and Pschents—the crowns of Egypt. It goes without saying—and, as we will see, the evidence shows—that the designers of the Ramses statue used the same talent to set about designing and crafting the pharaoh’s head. As we can see by reviewing the process, this proved to be even more of a challenge than the crafting of the crowns.

  During my visit in February 2006, I took photographs of the Ramses head after I photographed the crowns. At the time, I had not analyzed the crowns and was not expecting the symmetry and exactness that I saw in them. Similarly, from the perspective of a manufacturer, I pondered the symmetry of the Ramses head without really expecting the results that I ultimately gathered. It seemed highly improbable to me that a complex, three-dimensional surface profile could be replicated with exact precision from one side of the head to the other without employing some fairly sophisticated manufacturing techniques. I took my photographs not knowing what I would later uncover.

  Ramses’ exaggerated smile cannot be seen on the faces of normal people. I have looked for examples of such a smile and have not seen one on even the happiest face. Certainly, there are mouths that curl up at the corners, and a smile from such a mouth is a pleasure to behold. Ramses’ face, however, is relaxed, and only the mouth appears to be smiling; there is no effect on the eyes and cheek muscles. We might wonder whether such a mouth was seen in ancient Egypt among the citizenry or whether the designers were trying to please their gods by presenting an idealized image to them that they would find pleasing.

  When I imported my original image of the head into the computer (see figure 2.3), I struck a horizontal line across the face and rotated the image until the line was barely touching the underside of the bottom eyelid. I then duplicated this image and flipped it horizontally so that the left cheek became the right cheek. I then made a 50 percent transparency of the image and lined it up with the jawline. As shown in figure 2.3, there is no variation between the left jaw and the right jaw.

  Thinking about only this correspondence in the geometry of the face made me sit up and take notice. This symmetry means that the face was crafted so that a mirror image of the outline of the face was transposed to the opposite side. It is an incredible accomplishment that this exact line moved in three-dimensional space to create a perfect mirror image when viewed in two dimensions. My mind was racing at this point. What did the ancient Egyptians use to create such perfection? How did they inspect the geometry of the face? The same questions I asked when I studied the crowns flashed into my brain—though with more force and consternation. A human face is by far more complex and sophisticated than an ellipsoid that is blended with another form to form a crown (which we examined in chapter 1).

  Of note, also, is the close alignment of the ears. Figure 2.2 shows clearly Ramses’ left ear with some of its upper portion missing. In figure 2.3, this is evident, but at the same time, the ear cavity is very close to a perfect match. To be able to define the geometry of the ear is a challenge. To reproduce the geometry in three dimensions on opposite surfaces with 3 feet of granite in between these points—and to control their positions as precisely as these photos indicate—dispels forever the notion of ancient sculptors chipping away with stone hammers and stone or copper chisels.

  Close your eyes and imagine a line that bisects your head vertically down the center, and then lightly touch the same point on your left and right ear with your index fingers. The touch of each finger feeds through pathways to the brain, the ears, and the fingers to create a sense of orientation. While undertaking this exercise, notice how your index fingers move slightly until you have a sense of equilibrium between the two. Yet how close is each fingertip to the imaginary axis bisecting your head? It’s impossible to tell! Even though the left hand does know what the right hand is doing and both fingers provide sensory feedback to the brain—through the fingertips and ears—the brain cannot determine how precisely each ear was placed in relationship to the central axis of the head. Even the visual benefit of performing this exercise in front of a mirror will leave you lacking accurate data.

  Figure 2.2. Ramses Head

  Figure 2.3. Reverse transparency overlay matching the jawline

  Figure 2.4 shows Ramses from two different angles and provides a view of each ear that is close to perpendicular to the face of the ear. I set
up the camera to capture an image that was the same angle from the central axis. To accomplish this, I made adjustments so that the tip of the nose seemed barely to touch the far cheek from both angles. It should be noted that I could not achieve absolute precision under the circumstances because of the terrain and the lighting: I took the image on the right at a lower elevation than the one on the left, and this causes a misalignment with the statue, because the camera angle is tilted up more for the right shot than when I shot the left side. Nonetheless, the results are quite intriguing.