

Petrie was born in Charlton, Kent on 3 June 1853. He was the son of an engineer, and grandson of Matthew Flinders, the explorer of Australia. Petrie had no formal education, but became interested in Egypt after reading a book about the Great Pyramid when he was thirteen. He first went to Egypt to survey the pyramids in 1880.



Petrie excavated in Egypt for the Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF) from 1884 to 1886, but felt he needed more independence. In 1894, he founded his own archaeological body, the Egyptian Research Account, which later became the British School of Archaeology in Egypt. Later, Petrie rejoined the EEF and excavated for them between 1896 and 1905. In 1892 he was appointed as Edwards professor at University College London, the first person to hold a chair in Egyptology in Britain. He later abandoned Egypt to work on Hyksos sites in Palestine and Gaza. Flinders Petrie died in Jerusalem in 1942.

Petrie's methods were revolutionary for his time. He placed great emphasis on the observation of everything found, and the typological study of all objects. He probably made more major discoveries than any other archaeologist, and his vast collection of antiquities is now at the Petrie Museum, London. Petrie published over a thousand books, articles and reviews.



Petrie was not the first excavator in Egypt. But he was severely critical of the shoddy work done by his predecessors. He wrote, "Nothing seems to be done with any uniform or regular plan, work is begun and left unfinished; no regard is paid to future requirements of exploration, and no civilized or labor saving devices are used. It is sickening to see the rate at which everything is being destroyed and the little regard paid to preservation."



For example, a bowl-maker attained curves of "exact circularity" by rotating the bowl around a fixed blade, and formed a lip by shifting the centring of the bowl. Another round-bottomed vase had walls of such uniform thickness that it balanced perfectly on a curved base like the tip of an egg. In 1995 Christopher Dunn, a machining technologist, concluded from the tool marks on sarcophagus lids that only machine-lathing could have achieved such precision and gloss, especially on hard stones such as granite and slate.



How Lathes Work

Lathes have been used throughout history for shaping wood, metal or stone.

A stone lathe holds and rotates a block against a cutting tool that chisels it into shape. It usually lies horizontally, but larger Egyptian workpieces probably stood upright. Egyptians used hard stone, such as granite, as well as softer alabaster, onyx and limestone, and needed flint or jewel blades that could cut anything. Sand slurry helped abrade a smooth surface. A picture on the tomb of Petosiris, dated to the fourth century BC, shows two Egyptian craftsmen working a vertical lathe, one turning while the other chiseled. However, no earlier depictions of lathes have been found, and earlier designs may be different.



Sometimes copper saws were used, where the sawing action was due to quartz sand particles embedded in the metal.

Sand was also used as an abrasive for boring and drilling. No coring drills have been found, but apparently hollow copper drills in conjunction with quartz sand were used extensively(2), though whether they used bow-drills [2] or drills with cranks similar to the stonedrill on the right is uncertain. At times tubular drills of various diameters were applied concentrically(3), so that the remaining cores could be broken off cleanly(4), creating a big hollowed-out space. Another option was to drill five or six holes around a central core which could then be removed.

Stonedrills, similar to the hieroglyph on the right, consisted of a wooden shaft(a) with a fork(b) at the bottom which held the stone drill(c), a crank(d), and two stones(e) serving as weights. This kind of drill allowed the drilling of holes which were wider at the bottom than at the neck, as, after creating a hole with a coring drill, a drill bit somewhat wide.

Hi there, I have an avid interest in Christopher Dunn's work in the research of Egypt's stone work. There are some very interesting oddities that he has found over the years. Now I leave it up to the reader to believe in his work or not, your choice.What I want to do here is present some intriguing evidence about the stone vases of Egypt. For me, one of the greatest mysteries of all time is the stones vases of Egypt. Thousands of stones vases have been found in and around the pyramid of pharaoh Djoser in Saqqara, about 30 km south of Cairo. These stone vases originate from before 2800 BC. They are made of hard rock materials such as diorite, gneiss and granite and require heavy-duty machinery such as diamond drills, diamond saws, cylinder bores, grinders etc., all of which did not exist in those days. The wheel had not yet been invented and iron was still unknown. Yet many of these vases are perfectly shaped and are often fully symmetric. In 1880 Professor Petrie, who has done excavations in Egypt for years, noted that the ancient Egyptians really must have had these tools and pointed out saw and drill marks which undoubtedly prove this. However, only a few of Petrie's investigations were followed up. These mysterious vases are now housed in prominent museums such as the Louvre, the British museum and the Petrie museum.So first off, about Professor Petrie:Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942)Source: www.britishmuseum.org... He investigated the Great Pyramid and developed dating techniques, especially, "Sequence Dating," which he first used in Palestine, and is still used by archaeologists. Petrie used potsherds previously discarded as rubbish to help with dating. By means of potsherds Petrie identified two Greek cities in the Nile Delta, Naukcratis and Daphne. He made other important Egyptian discoveries, including royal tombs of the first dynasty at Abydos, the palace of Akhenaten at Tell el-Amarna, Roman period mummies, and a Middle Kingdom town.Full in depth article on William Flinders Petrie: www.touregypt.net... Books by Petrie:The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh www.ronaldbirdsall.com... Links for his other books(full versions)Now on to the stone vases he found. In 1880 Sir William Flinders Petrie realized that only lathe-turning could have produced the symmetry and balance he found on thousands of bowls and vases at Gizeh and Saqqara.Source: www.ehow.com... While metal chisels could be used to shape soft limestone, the metals available to the ancient Egyptians, copper, bronze and during the first millennium BCE wrought iron, were far too soft to work igneous rock. Hard stone vessels were given their form by pounding them with hammerstones (See Drawing 1 in the diagram below) made of stone harder than the work piece itself. Source: www.reshafim.org.il...