-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lloyd wrote:Nick, can you provide evidence or sources for your claims?
I have put my statements in quote boxes and my sources and comments follow
-----------------------------------------------------------
nick c wrote:The problem is that high quality steel does not appear until about 1200 BCE give or take.
Source: Innovation and Adoption of Iron in the Ancient Near East
https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 19-09129-6
Depending on the region, the Bronze Age–Iron Age transition in the Near East (Fig. 1) is usually dated to 1200–1000 BC. As we shall see, however, transformations in iron use began before and continued long after this 200-year period. It is imperative, therefore, to distinguish between the chronological period termed the Iron Age, the origins of extractive iron metallurgy (i.e., smelting), and the periods in which iron achieved widespread usage. In many areas, these events took place at radically different times.
The conventional thinking on iron/steel tools is that they first appear in, as I wrote, "about 1200 BCE give or take". That may be an overestimate on my part as some sources cite an even later date in the early 1st M BCE for high quality steel. However, the last line in the above quote must be taken with a grain of salt because it is based upon conventional chronology, which is prone to dark ages (that is gaps in chronology) which can lead to wrong conclusions about the contemporaneity or sequence of time periods in neighoring nations.
Cardona had countered that iron was known since the beginning of history. He is referring to meteoric iron, which is true, and that the Egyptians could have made saws and drills of meteoric iron. However, the problem is that iron in itself is not able to cut hard rocks unless it is carburized and that is an advanced process, especially since it requires the smelting of iron from ore. To make steel the iron must be heated to about 1000 degrees centigrade or more, in a bed of carbonaceous material like charcoal or a carburized atmosphere which causes the carbon to migrate into the iron.
Meteoric iron is not of a quality that permits it to be produced into hardened steel. From the Encyclopedia Britannica (Chicago 1982) Macropedia Vol. 8:
Meteoric iron is practically carbonless and hence cannot be hardened in the manner of steel.....Much rarer than copper, meteoric iron was often used for jewelry....Small meteorites were the most convenient sources
Yes, meteoric iron was known from the beginning of civilization, but it was not suitable or even plentiful enough to produce saws and drills that could cut and drill through granite, basalt, diorite, and other hard stones.
nick c wrote:The sarcophagus in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid, shows clearly defined saw marks.
On page 200 of the hard copy of Ginenthal's
Pillars of the Past - History, Science, and Technology As These Relate to Chronology Ginenthal wrote:Petrie has made it quite clear that the saw markings are indicative of blades that cut, not with powder, but with hard teeth.
In another part of his book (Petrie, The Arts and Crafts of Ancient Egypt) Petrie suggested that diamonds were used, mounted as the teeth on the saw, but this was shown to be impossible.
footnote: Babara Mertz, "Red Land, Black Land" Revised Edition (1978) p. 217
Barbara Mertz wrote:Saw marks have been found on the granite sarcophagus from the Great Pyramid and on basalt (another hard stone) pavement blocks from the temple of that pyramid, and drills were certainly used for stone statues and vases. [.....]
The use of diamond points in industry is well known[....]
But sad to say, the Egyptians did not have diamonds. Neither did they have topaz (8) or rubies and sapphires (9) or even beryl (8) before the Greek Period.
Note that the numbers in brackets indicate the rating on the Mohs scale. Additionally, Granite is about 7 and Diamonds are 10. Also, the "Greek Period" refers to the Ptolemaic dynasty which began in 330 BCE and ended with the death of Cleopatra. Diamond or jeweled points on a saw are not possible since the first appearance of diamonds and other gems in Egypt is more than 2000 years (by conventional chronology) after the 4th Dynasty and the building of the Giza Pyramids.
nick c wrote:Also, an iron plate was found in between some stones in the Great Pyramid by Vyse, it is believed to be left behind during construction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_VyseColonel Howard Vyse sent the iron plate to the British Museum, with an accompanying letter of certifications:
This is to certify that the piece of iron found by me near the (outside) mouth of the air passage, in the southern side of the Great Pyramid at Giza, on Friday, May 26th, was taken out by me from an inner joint, after having removed by blasting the outer two tiers of the stones of the present surface of the Pyramid; and that no joint or opening of any sort was connected with the above-mentioned joint, by which the iron could have been placed in it after the original building of the Pyramid. I also showed the exact spot to Mr. Perring on Saturday, June 24th-J.R.Hill.
To the above certificate of Mr. Hill, I can add that since I saw the spot at the commencement of blasting, there have been two tiers of stone removed, and that , if the piece of iron was found in the joint, pointed out to me by Mr. Hill, and which was covered by a larger stone partly remaining, it is impossible it could have been placed there since the building of the Pyramid -- J.S. Perring, C.E
We hereby certify, that we examined the place whence the iron in question was takenby Mr. Hill, and we are of the opinion, that the iron must have been left in the joint during the building of the Pyramid, and that it was not inserted afterward -- Ed. S. Andrews - James Mash, C.E.
Metallurgists analyzed the iron plate and determined that it was not of meteoric origin, but was rather smelted at between 1000 and 1100 degrees centigrade from several pieces of iron ore which were hammered and further heated to form a single plate. As Ginenthal points out, this plate was produced by a sophisticated smelting process that was well understood by those who produced the plate.
nick c wrote:Using copper saws with a slurry of quartz is just not practical. The slurry is going to cut into the copper saw faster than it is going to cut the granite.
Several early Egyptologists, including I. E. S. Edwards (wiki link) stated the above method was used in cutting granite and other hard stones by the Old Kingdom Egyptians. This has been repeated so many times that it has become accepted as fact. Actually it is quite wrong. Seems like it would be a simple test for an Egyptologist to prove his case by actually cutting a granite or diorite slab with a copper saw and slurry.
Ginenthal wrote:The problem with this method is that copper is actually softer than quartz sand and also softer than granite, schist, basalt, and diorite. Rather than cutting into stones the quartz sand will destroy the copper blade. While this method will work with soft limestone, it is not possible to use it with these harder stones. This was shown to be simply false in the early part of the 20th century by H. Garland, a metallurgist, who actually tested this methodology with a copper saw and an abrasive harder than the rock to be cut. The method failed to work.
see: Garland H.: "Ancient Egyptian Tools"
The Cairo Scientific Journal,vol VIII, no.84 (Sept. 1913); Garland H. and Bannister,C.O.
Ancient Egyptian Metallurgy (London 1927)
On page 212 of Ginenthal's aforementioned book he cites the testimony of Roger Hopkins, a practicing stone mason, who was invited to participate in the building of a pyramid for the 1991 PBS series NOVA.
Roger Hopkins wrote:I quickly got bored with working the soft limestone and started to ponder granite work. Here in Massachusetts my specialty is working in granite.
When I was asked by the Egyptologists how the ancients could have produced this work with mere copper tools, I told them they were crazy.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A further important resource for these and many other inconsistencies and anomalies in conventional academic chronology:
Dayton, John:
Minerals Metals Glazing & Man (London 1978)
Dayton shows many problems with accepted chronology, and that it has been wrongly stretched back into time. For example, we have discussed steel above, however, Dayton points out that it is impossible for the ancient world to have used bronze tools and weapons much before 1000 BCE.
Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. The problem is that there is no evidence of a source for tin until 1000 BCE. The first appearance of tin is from the British Isles via the Phoenicians. See p174-175 of Ginenthal's aforementioned
Pillars of the Past....
The enigma is that supposedly the Sumerians in the 3rd M BCE used bronze. As we know that the revised chronology requires the Sumerians to be a 1st M civilization (a duplication of the Chaldeans). There is absolutely no evidence that there was any 3rd M BCE trade by the Sumerians with Britain, nor is there any evidence that they were capable of maintaining such a seafaring endeavor, and if so, who in the British isles was there to find and mine the tin? It wasn't until circa 1100 BCE that Phoenicians made the long and costly journey to the British Isles to obtain tin. British tin mining did not exist before 1000 BCE, and why would the Phoenicians make the costly trip to Great Britain to get tin if there were sources or a source for tin already in the Near East? Getting tin from Britain would not be an economically feasible endeavor if tin was already available from mines in the Near East. If so, where are those mines?
The Wiki page for
Tin sources and trade during antiquity goes into a long explanation of how bronze was used in the 3rd Millennium BCE and from where the tin was mined. But after that large dose of word salad and buried in the text, they slip in the following admission:
Wiki wrote:The earliest sources of tin in the Early Bronze Age in the Near East are still unknown and the subject of much debate in archaeology.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[quote="Lloyd"]Nick, can you provide evidence or sources for your claims?
[/quote]I have put my statements in quote boxes and my sources and comments follow
-----------------------------------------------------------
[quote="nick c"]The problem is that high quality steel does not appear until about 1200 BCE give or take.[/quote]
Source: Innovation and Adoption of Iron in the Ancient Near East
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10814-019-09129-6
[quote]Depending on the region, the Bronze Age–Iron Age transition in the Near East (Fig. 1) is usually dated to 1200–1000 BC. As we shall see, however, transformations in iron use began before and continued long after this 200-year period. It is imperative, therefore, to distinguish between the chronological period termed the Iron Age, the origins of extractive iron metallurgy (i.e., smelting), and the periods in which iron achieved widespread usage. In many areas, these events took place at radically different times.[/quote]
The conventional thinking on iron/steel tools is that they first appear in, as I wrote, "about 1200 BCE give or take". That may be an overestimate on my part as some sources cite an even later date in the early 1st M BCE for high quality steel. However, the last line in the above quote must be taken with a grain of salt because it is based upon conventional chronology, which is prone to dark ages (that is gaps in chronology) which can lead to wrong conclusions about the contemporaneity or sequence of time periods in neighoring nations.
Cardona had countered that iron was known since the beginning of history. He is referring to meteoric iron, which is true, and that the Egyptians could have made saws and drills of meteoric iron. However, the problem is that iron in itself is not able to cut hard rocks unless it is carburized and that is an advanced process, especially since it requires the smelting of iron from ore. To make steel the iron must be heated to about 1000 degrees centigrade or more, in a bed of carbonaceous material like charcoal or a carburized atmosphere which causes the carbon to migrate into the iron.
Meteoric iron is not of a quality that permits it to be produced into hardened steel. From the Encyclopedia Britannica (Chicago 1982) Macropedia Vol. 8: [quote] Meteoric iron is practically carbonless and hence cannot be hardened in the manner of steel.....Much rarer than copper, meteoric iron was often used for jewelry....Small meteorites were the most convenient sources[/quote]Yes, meteoric iron was known from the beginning of civilization, but it was not suitable or even plentiful enough to produce saws and drills that could cut and drill through granite, basalt, diorite, and other hard stones.
[quote="nick c"]The sarcophagus in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid, shows clearly defined saw marks. [/quote]
On page 200 of the hard copy of Ginenthal's [i]Pillars of the Past - History, Science, and Technology As These Relate to Chronology [/i][quote="Ginenthal"]Petrie has made it quite clear that the saw markings are indicative of blades that cut, not with powder, but with hard teeth.[/quote] In another part of his book (Petrie, The Arts and Crafts of Ancient Egypt) Petrie suggested that diamonds were used, mounted as the teeth on the saw, but this was shown to be impossible.
footnote: Babara Mertz, "Red Land, Black Land" Revised Edition (1978) p. 217 [quote="Barbara Mertz"]Saw marks have been found on the granite sarcophagus from the Great Pyramid and on basalt (another hard stone) pavement blocks from the temple of that pyramid, and drills were certainly used for stone statues and vases. [.....]
The use of diamond points in industry is well known[....]
But sad to say, the Egyptians did not have diamonds. Neither did they have topaz (8) or rubies and sapphires (9) or even beryl (8) before the Greek Period.[/quote] Note that the numbers in brackets indicate the rating on the Mohs scale. Additionally, Granite is about 7 and Diamonds are 10. Also, the "Greek Period" refers to the Ptolemaic dynasty which began in 330 BCE and ended with the death of Cleopatra. Diamond or jeweled points on a saw are not possible since the first appearance of diamonds and other gems in Egypt is more than 2000 years (by conventional chronology) after the 4th Dynasty and the building of the Giza Pyramids.
[quote="nick c"]Also, an iron plate was found in between some stones in the Great Pyramid by Vyse, it is believed to be left behind during construction.[/quote]
[url=]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_VyseColonel Howard Vyse[/url] sent the iron plate to the British Museum, with an accompanying letter of certifications: [quote]This is to certify that the piece of iron found by me near the (outside) mouth of the air passage, in the southern side of the Great Pyramid at Giza, on Friday, May 26th, was taken out by me from an inner joint, after having removed by blasting the outer two tiers of the stones of the present surface of the Pyramid; and that no joint or opening of any sort was connected with the above-mentioned joint, by which the iron could have been placed in it after the original building of the Pyramid. I also showed the exact spot to Mr. Perring on Saturday, June 24th-J.R.Hill.
To the above certificate of Mr. Hill, I can add that since I saw the spot at the commencement of blasting, there have been two tiers of stone removed, and that , if the piece of iron was found in the joint, pointed out to me by Mr. Hill, and which was covered by a larger stone partly remaining, it is impossible it could have been placed there since the building of the Pyramid -- J.S. Perring, C.E
We hereby certify, that we examined the place whence the iron in question was takenby Mr. Hill, and we are of the opinion, that the iron must have been left in the joint during the building of the Pyramid, and that it was not inserted afterward -- Ed. S. Andrews - James Mash, C.E. [/quote] Metallurgists analyzed the iron plate and determined that it was not of meteoric origin, but was rather smelted at between 1000 and 1100 degrees centigrade from several pieces of iron ore which were hammered and further heated to form a single plate. As Ginenthal points out, this plate was produced by a sophisticated smelting process that was well understood by those who produced the plate.
[quote="nick c"]Using copper saws with a slurry of quartz is just not practical. The slurry is going to cut into the copper saw faster than it is going to cut the granite.[/quote]
Several early Egyptologists, including I. E. S. Edwards (wiki link) stated the above method was used in cutting granite and other hard stones by the Old Kingdom Egyptians. This has been repeated so many times that it has become accepted as fact. Actually it is quite wrong. Seems like it would be a simple test for an Egyptologist to prove his case by actually cutting a granite or diorite slab with a copper saw and slurry.
[quote="Ginenthal"]The problem with this method is that copper is actually softer than quartz sand and also softer than granite, schist, basalt, and diorite. Rather than cutting into stones the quartz sand will destroy the copper blade. While this method will work with soft limestone, it is not possible to use it with these harder stones. This was shown to be simply false in the early part of the 20th century by H. Garland, a metallurgist, who actually tested this methodology with a copper saw and an abrasive harder than the rock to be cut. The method failed to work. [/quote]
see: Garland H.: "Ancient Egyptian Tools" [i]The Cairo Scientific Journal[/i],vol VIII, no.84 (Sept. 1913); Garland H. and Bannister,C.O. [i]Ancient Egyptian Metallurgy[/i] (London 1927)
On page 212 of Ginenthal's aforementioned book he cites the testimony of Roger Hopkins, a practicing stone mason, who was invited to participate in the building of a pyramid for the 1991 PBS series NOVA. [quote="Roger Hopkins"]I quickly got bored with working the soft limestone and started to ponder granite work. Here in Massachusetts my specialty is working in granite.
When I was asked by the Egyptologists how the ancients could have produced this work with mere copper tools, I told them they were crazy.[/quote]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A further important resource for these and many other inconsistencies and anomalies in conventional academic chronology:
Dayton, John: [i]Minerals Metals Glazing & Man [/i](London 1978)
Dayton shows many problems with accepted chronology, and that it has been wrongly stretched back into time. For example, we have discussed steel above, however, Dayton points out that it is impossible for the ancient world to have used bronze tools and weapons much before 1000 BCE.
Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. The problem is that there is no evidence of a source for tin until 1000 BCE. The first appearance of tin is from the British Isles via the Phoenicians. See p174-175 of Ginenthal's aforementioned [i]Pillars of the Past....[/i]
The enigma is that supposedly the Sumerians in the 3rd M BCE used bronze. As we know that the revised chronology requires the Sumerians to be a 1st M civilization (a duplication of the Chaldeans). There is absolutely no evidence that there was any 3rd M BCE trade by the Sumerians with Britain, nor is there any evidence that they were capable of maintaining such a seafaring endeavor, and if so, who in the British isles was there to find and mine the tin? It wasn't until circa 1100 BCE that Phoenicians made the long and costly journey to the British Isles to obtain tin. British tin mining did not exist before 1000 BCE, and why would the Phoenicians make the costly trip to Great Britain to get tin if there were sources or a source for tin already in the Near East? Getting tin from Britain would not be an economically feasible endeavor if tin was already available from mines in the Near East. If so, where are those mines?
The Wiki page for [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_sources_and_trade_during_antiquity#:~:text=Cassiterite%20(SnO2)%2C%20oxidized,a%20more%20involved%20smelting%2]Tin sources and trade during antiquity[/url] goes into a long explanation of how bronze was used in the 3rd Millennium BCE and from where the tin was mined. But after that large dose of word salad and buried in the text, they slip in the following admission: [quote="Wiki"]The earliest sources of tin in the Early Bronze Age in the Near East are still unknown and the subject of much debate in archaeology.[/quote]