American Indians worked granite into axes and beautiful atl atl weights.... without iron or any metal for that matter. They had copper, but it wasn’t used in the manufacture of these stones, as it was too soft.
Instead they worked granite by pecking it with quartz and chert hammerstones and by grinding with grit, water and larger flat stones.
The Egyptians were likely able to use a scaled up pecking method and may have used some basic engineering to make a repetitive striker for larger surfaces.
There should be physical evidence of quartz being used, but there is no mention of any physical evidence.
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.
Yep. You don’t necessarily need something harder than granite to cut granite either. Water can cut granite, and water is certainly not anywhere near as hard as granite. So if people are inventive enough, a lack of iron tools is not an absolute impediment.
No pecking does not work with diorite and other extreme hard rocks, nor does it create mirror-images that are complex, intricate, mathematically proportional, and perspective-driven carvings accurate down to millimeters across many examples of the same carving - even to different sizes.
The whole ancient Egypt did not have iron or now how to make stone cutting tools is dumb. Further, this idea that Old Kingdom Egyptians were stupid does not compute, but does follows the tourist driven Egyptian meme promoted by Lehner and Hawass, which is filled with holes and dating which relies on known forgeries.
There were three periods lasting 100-200 years of chaos between the Old, Middle, and New kingdoms. Iron was valuable and likely iron tools were sold elsewhere or rusted away over thousands of years.
There were also the Arab muslims who invaded and looted the country in comparatively modern times - iron would certainly have been taken and melted for swords and other weapons.
And there is a prohibition on exploration - it must be government approved and many modern tools are expressly forbidden - like bio-thermoluminescent dating (dating when a rock was last exposed to light). There are tunnels and caves all over Giza - even temples - which are not recorded/dated/explored/deliberately prohibited.
Too many people/institutions have vested interest$ in the status quo and any and all attempts to shine lights in dark corners are ridiculed and mocked while at the same time prohibited.
Any thing which does contradict the meme is locked away, locked up, gated, or destroyed.