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Obelisk making technology in ancient Egypt is an archaeological matter that is quite well understood

today. Ancient Egyptian Obelisks are tapering stone pillars which have a square cross-section, were

used for ornamental purposes in temples and had religious or socio-political connotations. They

were generally made from granite coming from well-known quarries located near the banks of the

Nile, mainly in the region of Aswan. In a quarry in this area, the northern quarry which is now an

open-air museum, there is the famous unfinished obelisk of huge proportions. It has been partially

carved out of the rock, but its bottom face is still attached to the ground. When it cracked,

unsuccessful attempts were made to salvage some of the effort by carving a smaller obelisk from it.

It is only crudely carved, marks are left which hint to the technology employed in its extraction.

Contents

1 The carving procedure

2 The transportation

3 Raising obelisks

4 See also

5 External links

The carving procedure

Tip of the unfinished obelisk with clearly identifiable "scallop" marks

Symmetrical marks at the quarry of the unfinished obelisk showing the perforation to be filled with

wood in order to detach the stone pieces from the bed

The carving of the cartouches was done on granite directly on the surface of the stone at the ground,

on all four sides. It is not known what technique was employed for carving the granite from thequarry bed-rock and there are very unusual regularly-spaced "scallop" cuts all down the cut surfaces

which cannot be explained by the current, frequently repeated, but quite unproven statement that

they were "pounded out" by hitting with small balls of diorite. No scientific explanation of these

scalloped cut marks has ever been published. Once the sides were cut down into the rock, the stone

piece had to be separated from the bedrock. A series of cuts were made, again using the unknown

scallop-cutting process. The existence of the hundreds of nearly-perfectly spherical diorite balls, and

almost all of the same size, led to the erroneous conclusion that they were used as "pounders", but

the most probable use of these balls were for "ball bearings" to roll the obelisk around for

movement and transportation, not for "pounding". Obelisks made out of softer rock (i.e. sandstone)

were extracted from the bedrock by first drilling holes in the rock and then driving in wooden spikes.The wood was then wetted with water until saturated. The wood expanded with the water thus

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preferentially cracking the rock along the line of the wooden spikes. Many residues left at the rock

beds and measuring nearly the size of many famous obelisks (for example the Cleopatra's Needles)

are now known to exist at the Unfinished Obelisk open air museum.