Building in stone

The tools

    Masons used stone tools such as hammerstones which were partially superseded by copper and later bronze saws, drills and chisels, and during the Late Period by iron implements.

Hammerstone
Photo courtesy Clair Ossian

    Not all mason's tools were made of metal or stone. Mallets and floats for applying plaster were carved from a single piece of wood [1]. Wooden cramps were found at Kahun and signs of their use were left in the pavement at Hawara. A simple tool consisting of three pegs of equal length (boning rods), two of which were tied together with a string was instrumental in achieving flat rock faces. The edges of the stone block were given their final flat draft, the connected pegs stood on end on opposite edges with the string taut between them. The amount of stone to be trimmed could then be measured with the third peg.

Square, plumb and square level (its right leg is broken off)
Source: D. Arnold: Building in Egypt; Pharaonic Stone Masonry, Chapter 6

Line drawing after a New Kingdom ostracon [6].
Two masons are carving with hammer and chisel while sitting on a scaffold, four labourers are removing debris. There is a pile of debris near the tomb entrance.

The stone

    In the same building they often used different kinds of stone [5], though generally the bulk consisted of limestone or, in Upper Egypt, of sandstone:

• The outer casing of Menkaure's pyramid was pink granite.
• In Sahrure's pyramid complex the walls of the buildings were made of limestone, in the main buildings on top of basalt dados, columns and architraves were of granite and floors of alabaster or basalt.
• In Seti I's temple at Abydos columns, architraves, transoms and lintels were sandstone.
• The same elements in the temple of Ramses II were granite, sandstone or Egyptian alabaster [3].

The mason's craft

    The myth of Egyptian perfection is widespread. Without belittling their achievements we should accept the fact that Egyptian builders were as prone as their modern counterparts to cut corners, use inferior materials or employ unproven building techniques, often in an attempt at saving labour and time.

Marks left by hammerstones
Photo courtesy Clair Ossian

    Working with stone was enormously laborious. In order to pry a granite obelisk from the bedrock for instance, trenches had to be excavated all around it, wide enough for the quarry-men to work in. With hammerstones the rock was slowly ground to dust. This back-breaking work was seemingly performed by gangs, probably working in unison and accompanied by chanting. Simultaneously masons shaped the surface. Then the workpiece had to be split from the bedrock by cutting holes underneath it and wedging well dried pieces of wood into them. After wetting them the wedges expanded causing the rock to crack. Finally it was hauled out of the quarry by large numbers of workers, loaded onto a barge and shipped downriver.

    On relatively weak foundations Egyptian masons built their stone walls relying often only on the weight of the blocks to give firmness to the structure. At times metal cramps or sycamore dovetails were used. But generally the blocks were bonded together with mortar, which was mainly pure, crumbly lime, sometimes with sand or crushed bricks added.
    The size of the blocks could be considerable. The beams in the Karnak hypostyle were more than nine metres long, weighing 60 tons. But ordinarily handier blocks were used with volumes of about one to two cubic metres. Ease of handling smaller blocks was offset by the greater exertion needed for extracting them. One may suppose that the block sizes they chose optimised their efforts.

    The Egyptians were of course capable of producing large numbers of blocks of equal size and stacking them in straight layers.

Wall of the Crow, Gizeh
Excerpt, photo courtesy Jon Bodsworth

• At Luxor the great columns have cores filled with a kind of crumbly concrete.
• The inner layers of thick walls and stone pyramids were seemingly made of rather crudely shaped blocks. Gaps were filled with debris and mortar and then covered with a layer of perfectly cut stone blocks fitting together so well, that the blade of a knife cannot be inserted between them.
• Middle Kingdom pyramids were built of mud bricks over the rock tomb chamber and covered with casing stones which were removed by later kings, leading to the erosion of the brick structure.

Unfinished granite casing stones, Menkaure pyramid
Excerpt, photo courtesy Jon Bodsworth

    For the raising of the blocks ramps were built of compacted soil or mud bricks, up which they could be pulled. Some of these ramps are partially extant. In the case of high structures like the Great Pyramids these ramps would have to have been very long in order not to be too steep. It has been suggested that they were built as spirals hugging the pyramids and that the limestone quarries adjacent to the Great Pyramids were filled in with their remains. There is however no evidence for the spiral theory, nor is there any for the use of levers and the like apart from Herodotus' account:

This pyramid was made after the manner of steps which some called "rows" and others "bases": and when they had first made it thus, they raised the remaining stones with machines made of short pieces of timber, raising them first from the ground to the first stage of the steps, and when the stone got up to this it was placed upon another machine standing on the first stage, and so from this it was drawn to the second upon another machine; for as many as were the courses of the steps, so many machines there were also, or perhaps they transferred one and the same machine, made so as easily to be carried, to each stage successively, in order that they might take up the stones; for let it be told in both ways, according as it is reported. However that may be the highest parts of it were finished first, and afterwards they proceeded to finish that which came next to them, and lastly they finished the parts of it near the ground and the lowest ranges.

Herodotus, Histories II, 125

Aerial photograph of Khufu's pyramid
Excerpt, Ikonos satellite image [4]

Sir Flinders Petrie noted a distinct hollowing of the core masonry in the central portion of each face of the Pyramid. Though the hollowing amounts to as much as 37 inches on the north face, it is not directly observable unless special lines of sight are taken. Petrie found no evidence of hollowing along the lower- level casing stones running along the base of the Pyramid, which have now been completely uncovered. A recent survey by two Italian scholars, Maragioglio and Rinaldi, indicates the casing stones above the base line may have been slightly sloped toward a central line.

P. Tompkins

Working conditions

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