ANCIENT EGYPTIAN STONE-DRILLING
More than most technical procedures in the ancient world, drilling of hard stone such as quartz and granite has evoked awe and puzzlement.
Neither wall paintings, nor textual information, nor excavated material has provided complete answers as to how drilling was done.
As a consequence, there has been scholarly controversy. One such disagreement occurred between two eminent Egyptologists, A. Lucas and Sir Flinders Petrie.
Their argument revolved around a difficult and important question, namely, how did the ancient Egyptians of the 3rd millennium B.C. drill granite?
The purpose of our paper is to present experimental evidence which partly resolves this disagreement. Our evidence resulted from the functional analysis of a drilled granite lid from an Old Kingdom sarcophagus ca. 2500 B.C., now in the Brooklyn Museum It probably belonged to Prince Akhet-Hotep of Dynasty IV. The sarcophagus weighs about four tons, the lid two tons.
The lid has two holes on each end that were (probably) used to raise and lower it. The holes are 24 cm. long; their diameter on the outside is 5.3 cm. and tapers to 4.3 cm. on the inside.
Source:
penn.museum/sites/expedition/ancient-egyptian-stone-drilling