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4th Dynasty lathes - per Petrie


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Mechanical Methods - Petrie's Comments 
"...the lathe appears to have been as familiar an instrument in the fourth dynasty, as it is in the modern workshops. The diorite bowls and vases of the Old Kingdom are frequently met with, and show great technical skill. One piece found at Gizeh, No 14, shows that the method employed was true turning, and not any process of grinding, since the bowl has been knocked off of its centring, recentred imperfectly, and the old turning not quite turned out; thus there are two surfaces belonging to different centrings, and meeting in a cusp. Such an appearance could not be produced by any grinding or rubbing process which pressed on the surface. Another detail is shown by fragment No 15; here the curves of the bowl are spherical, and must have therefore been cut by a tool sweeping an arc from a fixed centre while the bowl rotated. This centre or hinging of the tool was in the axis of the lathe for the general surface of the bowl, right up to the edge of it; but as a lip was wanted, the centring of the tool was shifted, but with exactly the same radius of its arc, and a fresh cut made to leave a lip to the bowl. That this was certainly not a chance result of hand-work is shown, not only by the exact circularity of the curves, and their equality, but also by the cusp left where they meet. This has not been at all rounded off, as would certainly be the case in hand-work, and it is clear proof of the rigidly mechanical method of striking the curves." 
[www.theglobaleducationproject.org] 

Wouldn't this be knowledge of the wheel?

WVK

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The Old Kingdom vessels were sometimes made from exceptionally hard stone material, as well.  The lathe tool itself would necessarily have been strong enough to drill/cut through such stone.  The ancient Egyptians were wonderfully skilled at their stone workings, no doubt.

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A thread started by WVK on the same subject earlier in May at the Hall of Ma'at has much of the needed information.

http://www.hallofmaat.com/read.php?6,611654

This specific post appears to answer the wheel question

http://www.hallofmaat.com/read.php?6,611654,611719#msg-611719

2TE06qI.jpg

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57 minutes ago, Hanslune said:

A thread started by WVK on the same subject earlier in May at the Hall of Ma'at has much of the needed information.

http://www.hallofmaat.com/read.php?6,611654

This specific post appears to answer the wheel question

http://www.hallofmaat.com/read.php?6,611654,611719#msg-611719

2TE06qI.jpg

So no picture or word for lathe then no lathe?

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Wheels and desert sands don't really go well together ... at least not until an equivalent of the Roman Highways up and down the land ...

~

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No problem with wheels in New Kingdom...see chariots, for example, both pictorial (many) and actual (Tutankhamun.)

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9 hours ago, third_eye said:

Wheels and desert sands don't really go well together ... at least not until an equivalent of the Roman Highways up and down the land ...

~

Not when you have perfectly good river near by

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9 hours ago, WVK said:

So no picture or word for lathe then no lathe?

Nope it means no picture or word for lathe - make of that what you will. As noted in the earlier thread - which might want to read it. As noted there Petrie may have simply been wrong.

f5JsC8t.jpg

Edited by Hanslune
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11 hours ago, Khaemwaset said:

No problem with wheels in New Kingdom...see chariots, for example, both pictorial (many) and actual (Tutankhamun.)

No problem with my KTM 990 wheels and the desert either lol :)

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7 hours ago, Hanslune said:

Nope it means no picture or word for lathe - make of that what you will. As noted in the earlier thread - which might want to read it. As noted there Petrie may have simply been wrong.

Perhaps he was.  

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1 hour ago, WVK said:

Perhaps he was.  

It certainly is looking that way or for some period of time a AE genius created a 'lathe' used it for some time then the 'technology' was lost.

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9 hours ago, Hanslune said:

Nope it means no picture or word for lathe - make of that what you will. As noted in the earlier thread - which might want to read it. As noted there Petrie may have simply been wrong.

f5JsC8t.jpg

Not a gripe but those links are not operational.  I'll try and hunt them down.  ;)

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1 hour ago, Khaemwaset said:

Not a gripe but those links are not operational.  I'll try and hunt them down.  ;)

It an image! My mistake and thanks for noting it. I didn't provide the link to original posting. Here it is:

http://www.hallofmaat.com/read.php?6,611654,611753#msg-611753

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Hanslune: many thanks.  ;)

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6 hours ago, Hanslune said:

It certainly is looking that way or for some period of time a AE genius created a 'lathe' used it for some time then the 'technology' was lost.

I personally think if there were an Egyptian lathe, it more closely resembled a pottery wheel and the function would be more for burnishing or easily rotating the piece during chiseling.

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IIRC, after Petrie wrote that about a lathe, he talked to a few machinists about it and decided he was wrong.

I don't know if he published anything like a retraction, but I did read that somewhere.

Harte

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22 hours ago, Hanslune said:

It certainly is looking that way or for some period of time a AE genius created a 'lathe' used it for some time then the 'technology' was lost.

Seems pyramid building technology was gradually lost as well during the 4th dynasty from GP to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mastaba-faraoun-3.jpg

5th Dynasty pyramids are now piles of rubble

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Dynasty_of_Egypt

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Yep perhaps not lost but they went cheap. I suspect Giza absorbed a whole lot of expertise and resources and later leaders decided to create smaller and cheaper versions using cut corner methods.

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Pyramid tech. may have declined after the fourth dynasty, but not advanced stone working otherwise.  Here's a 6th Dynasty vessel inscribed with Teti's name:

592ed493d15aa_avessel.jpg.3667a6429eb5ae9ac0f576959523d0ed.jpg

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23 hours ago, Hanslune said:

It certainly is looking that way or for some period of time a AE genius created a 'lathe' used it for some time then the 'technology' was lost.

I think it's possible that they had tools for which documentation has not been found. For example stone coring tools:

http://www.oocities.org/unforbidden_geology/ancient_egyptian_copper_coring_drills.html

Is that what they used to hollow out these?

https://farm1.static.flickr.com/552/18630730900_d83587b0e5_b.jpg

 

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And there's this old kingdom piece, which may remind us of another, more extremely formed, version:

592f2ab289849_oldkingdomvessel.jpeg.8db6d56486b240734a82d7f7ed01e836.jpeg

this:

592f2c955a026_schistvesselfromtombofprincesabu.jpg.32ce13cfe9154fc736633d1e2468a809.jpg

of course this one's famously curious, and is not really perfectly round at its outer circumference.

208818f2d5f51ac3824a6eea40f8dc52.jpg.181559bf2ee24dca4ac640f730f319aa.jpg

Edited by Khaemwaset
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Drilled shell beads have been dated to 41,000–35,000 years old, so it's not a far stretch to assume that drilling / grinding of materials was known to humanity very early on

What the Egyptians managed was impressive, though

 

 

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On 5/30/2017 at 0:33 PM, Hanslune said:

Not when you have perfectly good river near by

Yeah ... that too ...

Not too sure but I remember reading somewhere that the stretch of the Nile near GIza were off limits to the general populace ... ?

~

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8 hours ago, WVK said:

I think it's possible that they had tools for which documentation has not been found. For example stone coring tools:

http://www.oocities.org/unforbidden_geology/ancient_egyptian_copper_coring_drills.html

Is that what they used to hollow out these?

https://farm1.static.flickr.com/552/18630730900_d83587b0e5_b.jpg

 

  • Those unfamiliar with lithic technologies not uncommonly view the various processes as a matter of singular tooling. This is most assuredly not the case. Even the production of a "basic" projectile point involves a number of selective tools and the considered applications of such.
  • Photographic evidence of internal coring scars associated with sarcophagi are available. A serious search would inform you in this regard. As alluded to in the immediately above, the "bulk" coring material removal was but one stage of a more extensive process.
  • A hopefully informative primer:

https://www.penn.museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/25-3/Ancient.pdf

.

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