Stone-cutter at work.
The blocks having been quarried, the stone-cutters cut them exactly to the required shape and polished them almost as smooth as glass with the chisel and incessant rubbing. The accompanying pictures fully illustrate and explain this. In the accurate chiseling and planing of the angles the Egyptians have never been surpassed. As for the material used in the manufacture of the tools that were to cut the hard Egyptian rock which bends even our iron and steel tools of to-day and makes them useless, we must profess a deep ignorance. Either the Egyptians employed chemical compounds and emery, or else they possessed a wonderful knowledge of tempering bronze and iron tools which has been completely lost. It still remains for our advanced civilization to rediscover what the ancient Egyptians already knew.
Chiseling, planing, polishing, and inscribing statues.
Transportation of a colossus.
§2. We know almost less about the transportation than the quarrying of obelisks. We have only one picture on the monuments, at Bersheh, to guide us. In this the dragging of a colossus by workmen is represented in vivid outlines. The accompanying picture shows the man in charge of the work, the servant greasing the runners of the sledge, and the multitude of toiling people, but it tells us very little about the manner of transportation for a distance of more than one thousand miles between Syene and Lower Egypt. That the removal of such monoliths from the quarry to the place of erection was a matter of some importance is fully brought out by many inscriptions, where this task is intrusted by Pharaoh to a loyal subject, and where the latter expresses his gratification that his mission was completed to the satisfaction of his master, who rewarded him quite handsomely. From some inscriptions it would appear that the blocks, when ready for transportation, were rolled to the river's edge, or perhaps placed on rollers and then pushed or else dragged down on an inclined plane. The Nile, ever ready to extend his welcome help to the children of his soil, aided them again in their efforts. Large barges or rather floats were built where the water of the inundation would reach the blocks, and where they, when once on the floats, would be carried on that great Egyptian highway to any part of the vast empire. Many monuments, however, were transported overland, in which case the aid of the Nile must have been dispensed with. The Colossi at Thebes, the two statues of Amenophis III., and the statue of Ramses II. in the Memnonium at Thebes, which weighed as much as 1,800,000 pounds, are instances of this. Such masses of rock were moved along on sledges by human hands, as shown in the above picture. The inscription of Hammamât makes mention of the men who died while handling such sledges with their enormous loads. Possibly the Egyptians already used besides rollers and levers also pulleys to facilitate their work. At all events the transportation by human hands of obelisks and other monoliths of enormous size and weight without the most powerful appliances of modern times is such a wonderful feat, that we cannot at present fully comprehend it. All we know for certain is the fact that those men of old have succeeded, and therefore accomplished what we would regard as almost impossible.
§3. The method employed by the Egyptians in the erection of obelisks has to this day remained a profound mystery. Of course, just as with regard to the quarrying and transporting them, many conjectures have been advanced which, however plausible they may seem, give us no definite solution of this problem. That the Egyptians must have possessed some mechanical means, with which to lift these colossi into their exact place, cannot be disputed: otherwise the time consumed in setting them up would have been equal to that of quarrying them. They had undoubtedly some unknown facilities for doing work of this kind, and being great mathematicians, they may have constructed agents more powerful than those of the present day.
