ABSTRACT
Much discussion has taken place as to how ancient Egyptian artisans worked the hard stones. These included granite, basalt, diorite, porphyry and quartzite (all igneous stones of hardness Mohs 7, except for quartzite, Mohs 6-7, the Egyptian variety being a sedimentary stone, not the normally metamorphic type). The experiments evaluated in Chapter 2 indicated that even calcite, a relatively ‘soft’ stone of hardness Mohs 3-4, cannot efficiently be cut with copper alloy tools. In particular, the cutting of bas and incised reliefs and hieroglyphs into the hard stones (Figure 3.1), together with the fashioning of hard stone vase exteriors and sculptures, have been the subject of much speculation. It is also apparent that other technical practices owed their development to the existence of a hard tool material that could be given exceptionally sharp edges; the engraving of copper is an example. The main intention of this chapter is to demonstrate how these stonecutting, carving and engraving functions could have been accomplished by the manufacture and employment of particular stone tools. The tremendous amount of ancient hard stone working required a tool material that was plentiful and very hard, and yet tough enough to withstand to some degree the stresses imposed upon it, even though by definition a very hard substance is likely to be brittle.
