Everything about Obelisk Building Technology In Ancient Egypt totally explained
Obelisk making technology in ancient Egypt is an archaeological matter that's quite well understood today.
Ancient Egyptian
Obelisks are tapering stone pillars which have a square cross-section, were used for ornamental purposes in temples and had religious connotations. They were generally made from
granite coming from well-known
quarries located near the banks of the
Nile, mainly in the region of
Aswan. In a quarry in this area, the northern quarry which is now an open-air museum, there's the famous
unfinished obelisk of huge proportions. It has been partially carved out of the rock, but its bottom face is still attached to the ground. When it cracked, unsuccessful attempts were made to salvage some of the effort by carving a smaller obelisk from it. It is only crudely carved, marks are left which hint to the technology employed in its extraction.
The carving procedure
The carving was done on granite directly on the surface of the stone at the ground, by cutting four sides. It is now known that the tools employed for carving the granite were small balls of
Dolerite that's a mineral harder than granite. Once the sides were cut off, the process of separating the stone piece from the ground was a bit more complicated but very trivial. A series of perforations were made, again using Dolerite-made tools. These perforations were then filled with wood and these wood pieces were water saturated. The small pieces of wood expanded with the humidity breaking the separations between successive perforations and then effectively separating the carved piece from its bed. Many residues left at the rock beds and measuring nearly the size of many of the famous obelisks (for example the
Cleopatra's Needles) are now known to exist at the Unfinished Obelisk open air museum.
The transportation
The obelisks were conveniently made at quarries situated in the banks of the
Nile so that the heavy weight structures were easily transported by navigating the river in specially built ships that cruised at the flooding days when the river was more deep. This seems to be a very difficult task to perform but the engineers at the time managed perfectly well without modern machinery or steel cranes.
Raising obelisks
i was here
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