(25) Before leaving the work at the quarry, it remains to be seen how the chiselling of the wedge-slots was done. The apparent impossibility of cutting granite with a copper chisel has struck every student of this question. Many suggestions, some of them grotesque, have been put forward to explain how it might have been performed. Gorringe, in his Egyptian Obelisks, {26} boldly assumes the knowledge of steel. To my mind, the reasons against this are, first: the knowledge of steel would have soon resulted in its use being widespread for daggers, swords and, above all, razors; secondly, it would have had a special name, since its properties are so different from iron. Now all the ancient names for metals have been accounted for, none of which could be applied to mean steel. If we translate Benipet as ‘steel’, then we have no word for iron.
Gorringe’s assertion that iron and steel tools would have disappeared by oxydisation in a few centuries is not borne out by excavations. We know, from the scanty mentions of iron, that it was not very generally used, but quite a number of iron tools of late Egyptian date are now known, and I have myself taken out an iron bill-hook from the filling of a Roman or Ptolemaic grave which was hardly rusted at all, and in the Cairo Museum there is an iron fork of Coptic date from a depth of 5 metres in the sabâkh of Tell Edfù which is almost like new. If the ground is dry and free from certain chemicals, objects such as iron, wood, linen, papyrus, etc., will keep indefinitely, whereas, in unsuitable ground, even copper will disappear and leave no traces, except, perhaps, a blue stain. If steel had been in anything like common use, we should surely have found examples, either in graves or in town sites like Kahûn or Tell el-ʿAmarna. PETRIE, in Tools and Weapons, pl. VI, 187, cites a halberd of iron dated to Ramesses III; had steel been known, we should have expected it to be of that rather than iron. An examination of such broken iron tools as can be spared might give us definite information one way or the other, as steel, though it may lose its temper, will not turn into iron, however long it is left, and should be easily recognized by a micro-photograph.
On the rocks of the Wady Hammâmât, the following inscription is to be seen, together with others having the same title (GOLÉNISCHEFF, Hammamat, II, no. 3, and COUYAT et MONTET, Les inscriptions hiéroglyphiques et hiératiques du Ouâdi Hammâmât, in Mémoires de l’Institut français du Caire, vol. XXXIV, p. 54) : (
)
, etc.
May Amûn give life (to) the worker of iron tools, Pta
