Posted on 12/03/2019 12:54:33 PM PST by wildbill
It probably looked much more impressive when they were fresh off the quarry.
Bingo! They used thousands of odd shaped blocks and made them all fit together, nothing uniform like what you’d expect from modern craftsmen.
And as for that great unfinished granite obelisk, if they weren’t taking forever slowly chipping it away, it would have been finished!
A lot of the stone they worked was/is limestone or calcareous rocks like dolomite. I saw a documentary where their masonry technique was demonstrated: They wet the rock to soften it and used used copper tools and water as cutting fluid.
For granite, they probably used two granite pieces: one granite block to sand and polish the other. You can create very flat and straight surfaces this way.
It looked more impressive because they covered the final foundation of odd shaped blocks with a more attractive outer substance. But time has not changed the rather haphazard Construction method.
I think I saw that documentary.
It’s very arrogant of us to think that ancient people were not clever & resourceful. The default doesn’t have to be aliens!
The most popular theory is an earlier much more advanced civilization. Much much earlier than allowed to be suggested, and that these oldest works were already there when the later cultures came there. They just claimed them as their own and continued to build over them. But the later technologies just cannot rival the previous technologies and this is the hard part to explain, and because it cannot be explained it is just denied. But the same is found in South America also, with very striking differences of technology from the older to the newer.
Very intriguing especially that “famous schist bowl or disk”. Very hard to imagine how it was made or what it was for.
Yes it is... and the same is found in South America also.
Bfl
No, most of it was perfectly preserved.
But now that I think about it, they were fond of more rudimentary woodworking tools like the adze, chisels, and reamers (holdovers from Neolithic times), despite having the capability for better tools like brace & bit or wood lathe. The adze in particular was used in their "opening of the mouth" ceremony - they really liked it a lot.
You can see Egyptian woodwork with dovetail joints alongside chairs with rawhide lashings from the same period.
I only know of one Origen, the early Christian theologian and Biblical scholar.
It’ is illogical when you have a culture hellbent on creating their own very very fine artistic works yet the older works are even more advanced? Did they all of a sudden “forget how” to create the previous much finer works? They decided to go backwards in skills and pride of craftsmanship rather than advance?
I have been to Egypt, and seen the artifacts up close. The craftmanship in ancient Egyptian art greatly exceeds a lot of the crap being pushed out today. A great example is the Avenue of Sphinxs over 1300 Sphinx statues, every few feet, on each side of the street, for 3 KM. Each statue is 10 feet tall. Even with millenia of weathering, there is still great detail in many of them.
Welcome to 2019
Regardless of the jokes one can see that rotary tools were used on many relics. Some are are level as modern truing tables. Such work cannot be done with stone chisels.
Those were made for the pharaohs or dedicated to gods. The stuff I refer to are everyday items like combs, ointment jars, chairs, senet boards, sandals and such.
Well put -- they worked in stone because they were rooted in the Neolithic. They used stone to cut stone, and the discarded, worn out tools looke like, well they're bits of stone. The job was extravagant of labor and time, but a large number of workers accomplished a lot by each doing a little simultaneously. The finer work was done by a smaller number who were just better at it.
Even tomb-painting got done that way -- the text was roughed in, and the corrections were made by the master, who proofread the work. The corrections are found over the originals, seen now because the final painted versions have flaked off.
This isn't a criticism of the ancient Egyptians -- they did magnificent work, even if it isn't all the gleaming perfection seen in those coffeetable books. The fact that they did it with sweat and effort makes it even more impressive. I'm also glad I didn't have to do the work.
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