I was watching a documentary about the Old kindom of Egypt (ca. 2500 BC). The stonework that these people did was impressive-the carvings (on rocks including very hard granite) is amazing-the details are sharp and clear, after almost 45 centuries.
Now, these people only had bronze chisels and hammers-how could they do such fine work? And, in shaping a large column, how did they keep things straight? (the diameters of the columns in the Temple if Karnac are amazingly consistent-less tha 1% variation).
How could they make sch good carvings with tools so soft? Iron did not become available till 500 BC or so, and even that was not too hard.
When you go to places such as the British museum and see these items for real, it’s even more impressive, such precision, and power in the statues.
How did they carve out those stone sarcophoguses? You have a stone chamber, made from something like marble, all carved out of a single piece of stone, and into that goes the rest of the phaoroah’s coffin.The width of the stone can’t be more than a few inches, they must have removed literally tons of hard rock to get the shape.
It really is impressive, I too would like to know, thousands of little heiroglyphs, all carved out with beautiful precision, on all the outside, must have taken years to produce just one of them.
Imagine carving out a stone coffin, then engraving all these thousands of characters, and making a spelling mistake somehwere near the end of the process.
For the spelling mistakes, the trick is to draw what’s to be engraved and then have more than one other person proof read it.
For the rest, no clue. At small scale, it would make an interesting re-creation project, though.
Just because it looks really impressive to us modern folk doesn’t mean it was that difficult for the people of the time. Remember that stone cutting was an important trade throughout history and that people trained for years and years to become skillful enough to take on these kinds of high-profile projects.
Also, although I don’t have a cite, I don’t think these jobs were done by one or even a small handful of laborers. It would take dozens of people working many months or years to complete a large sarcophogus, so if you divide up the effort it’s not that hard to imagine getting it done.
Finally, if all you did, and all your father did, and all your family did was carve stone you would get pretty good at it… even with “primitive” stone working tools. They obviously took pride in their work, or their taskmasters made sure they did high quality work. My guess is that if you screwed up often enough you would be taken off any important task and would be relegated to digging footings or some less precise job.
It’s also amazing what can be done if you have a large number of skilled people working for months or years on a task. So you have to resharpen your bronze stone-cutting chisel after every twenty strokes - this was just an everyday part of the job at the time. Many of the modern improvements in tools and techniques are time- or labour-saving improvements rather than ways of doing things previously impossible.
It was actually possible to alter carved inscriptions. See the infamous helicopter glyph.
"What is the opinion of the Egyptologists? The consensus is that there is no mystery about this wall panel, which is simply a re-carved inscription of a royal name. But whilst it may be true that King Ramesses II overlaid the panel of his predecessor King Seti I with his own inscription … "
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/egipto/esp_abydos03.htm
How fitting it should be in the temple of SETI spooky musical interlude
To paraphrase Lister from Red Dwarf, “Whips. Massive, massive whips.”
The secrets of Egyptian stone carving were simple - percussion and abrasion. This page gives a good overview, including examples of unfinished vessels etc.http://www.gizabuildingproject.com/art_solenhofen4.php
It should be noted, though, that it is mummies, not zombies, that Egypt is famous for.
Actually, no. The people who built the Egyptian pyramids were free men, not slaves as Herodotus falsely claimed long after the fact. Further references.
I wouldn’t think hard stone would be much of an issue - sure, they’ll wreck soft tools in short order, but all you have to do is have a good tool supply chain to take care of that problem. It’s just a matter of patience.
I’m more impressed by the work they did on soft and brittle stone (such as limestone). Can you imagine putting the finishing touches on a complicated bit of hieroglyphs, striking the weakened slab juuuust a tad too hard and have the whole piece just crack in two ? Wonder how many stone carvers rage-quit.
Folks seem to underestimate what can be done by hand and just how skilled people can be with the simplest of tools. And although we consider it unbelivably slow work, with tools that had to be sharpened annoyingly often, the folks back then probably did not. They had no knowledge of hardened steel chisels or power loading machinery to compare it to. To them, it was probably just a matter of employing X number of chisel sharpeners per Y number of carvers.
Just have to remember eye before reed, except after seed.
This. There would have been people dedicated to sharpening the tools on-site.
Rats. And here I was thinking that Lister on Red Dwarf was a reliable source of information on ancient Egyptology.
Bravo.
Since we’re talking about the wonderful things that artists can create from stone, I have to mention the astonishing works found in Napoli in Cappella Sansevero.
In particular, Sanmartino’s sculpture of the Veiled Christ and Queirolo’s depiction of a figure struggling in nets entitled Disenchantment.
Yes, I know these examples are from much later on and a completely different culture, so apologies if this is a hijack, but any excuse to mention these items is a good one in my opinion.
Modern stone carving has not advanced terribly from the ancient techniques. Most of that is, as Hypno-Toad mentioned, in the area of improving tools and time-saving. Today we use steel tools, and diamond or carbide coated rasps and sanding equipment. This cuts production time down significantly. In older times though, carvers worked collectively on pieces with apprentices doing the majority of the heavy labor, tool sharpening, and annoying finish work. THAT hasn’t changed much today either. Granites and basalts are hard rocks, but cleave, and chisel well if you pay attention to the fault lines. Lime and sandstones can be carved easily and finish quickly even using sharkskin and water. The egyptians no doubt also utilized skilled slave laborers for the heaviest portions of the work, such as moving and installation processes. Lastly, remember that carving such monuments was the primary occupation of the people who created them. They were not obligated to do other things like farm their own food, make their own clothing etc… They were paid for and supplied by the wealthy.
hehe. I remember an old cartoon in Playboy that had two ancient Egyptians carving glyphs on a tomb wall. One is asking the other, “Is ‘virile’ spelled with one testicle or two?”
Wow. Did you coin that? It’s awesome.