During the reign of the pharaohs, life in Egypt
was pretty good — at least compared with
nearly every other place at the time. The ancient
Egyptians had ample food, lived among some of
the most elaborate architecture and buildings to
be found in the ancient world, and even enjoyed a
fair amount of leisure time.
They also had a lot of sand. Sand blew into
the cities of Egypt on hot winds from the desert
in enormous quantities. Its presence was a part
daily life. There was sand in people’s homes,
in their public buildings, and even in their food.
Research done on the teeth of mummies shows
that most people’s teeth became quite ground
down due to the sand invariably mixed into their
daily bread.
Sand was also used in construction of their
tombs, temples, and pyramids. Not for making
concrete, as concrete was invented far later,
but as an abrasive in the process of drilling
holes in walls, monuments, obelisks, and vases,
all made of rock. Numerous descriptions in
hieroglyphic writings show craftsmen drilling
holes with a stone drill using sand. In fact, it was
such an important tool that stylized stone drill
was itself a hieroglyphic character (Figure
A
).
COPPER, GRIT, AND MUSCLE
The Egyptian stone drill consists of a large
wooden dowel tipped with copper pipe (copper
was mined, smelted, and formed into tools
as early as 5,000 years ago) and turned with a
hand crank or bow. The general idea is that as
the copper pipe rotated against the hard rock,
abrasive particles such as quartz sand, placed
around the copper, slowly scoured away at the
rock, making a hole. Heavy weights such as
stones, suspended from the drill shaft, kept
the pressure on. The stone mason needed only
to keep turning the drill’s handle, spinning the
abrasive grit in the ever-deepening hole, until
he completed the hole. Then the cylindrical rock
core could be split off and, if needed, drilling
could continue.
A straightforward process certainly, but it
was immensely time consuming. In limestone,
the material from which the pyramids were
constructed, progress was slow but steady.
From my experiments, it takes a couple of hours
TIME REQUIRED:
A Weekend
DIFFICULTY:
Moderate
COST:
$75–$80
MATERIALS
» 2×6 boards, 18 long (2) for vertical frame
pieces
» 2×6 boards, 14 long (2) for horizontal frame
pieces
» 2×4 boards, 6 long (2) for frame feet
» 1×2 boards, 7 long (4) for corner braces
» 2×4 scrap, about 4 long for drill guide block
» Flat chunk of limestone rock, about
4×4×1½ thick
» Copper pipe, 1¼ diameter, 6 long for drill tip
» Round wooden dowel, 1¼ diameter, 40
long for drill shaft
» Round wooden dowel, ½" diameter, 14 long
for crank
» Bolt, ⁄ diameter, 3 long, with nut and 2
washers to hold sandbags
» Sandbags (4)
» Sand, 50lbs
» Construction screws, 3 long (1 box)
» Abrasive powder: quartz sand, emery,
or other abrasive I used aluminum oxide
sandblasting media. A pint or so should suffice.
TOOLS
» Drawknife or other knife for whittling the drill
shaft dowel to size
» C-clamps (2)
» Hole saw, 1½ diameter for drill shaft holes
» Drill bit, ½ for the crank handle
» Driver bit for construction screws
» Electric drill
The stone drill was so important to Egyptians that its
hieroglyphic character came to represent art or craft
itself, as seen on this funerary cone of Ptahemhat
(called Ty), high priest of Ptah in Memphis during the
18th Dynasty reign of King Tut. Ptah, a creator god, was
the patron deity of craftsmanship.
105
make.co
Nina M. Davies; Louvre/Wikimedia Commons
Wood Frame
A
M85_104-7_RemHist_F1.indd 105M85_104-7_RemHist_F1.indd 105 4/10/23 2:10 PM4/10/23 2:10 PM
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