Dolerite pounders for working granite
Percutores de dolerita para labrar granito
- Date
- c. 1470 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Unfinished Obelisk quarry, Aswan, Egypt
- Credited to
- Ancient Egyptian quarrymen
- Field
- Tools
What it is
Balls of dolerite, a rock harder than granite, were hand-held and pounded against the surface to crush granite and cut trenches around a block. It is the tool with which single-piece obelisks were quarried, as at the Unfinished Obelisk of Aswan.
Engelbach (1922) documented the pounders and the method at the Unfinished Obelisk, attributed to Hatshepsut or Thutmose III. Dolerite pounders are already used for granite in the Old Kingdom; the range reflects that long use.
What it led to
- quarrying of obelisks and colossal granite statues without steel tools
- the Aswan quarries as the centre of Egyptian hard stone
- a method preserved as experimental proof of Egyptian engineering