In a rarely seen part of the ancient granite quarry in Aswan, Egypt, there is evidence for a gigantic block, possibly larger than the unfinished obelisk being extracted in ancient times. What’s more, there are strong indications here that this was done in pre-dynastic times, before the Ancient Egyptian civilization ever begun their own quarrying operations on this site.
Join me as we investigate the so-called ‘harbor’ area of the quarry, and examine the evidence for pre-dynastic quarry operations, and the removal of a massive block of granite in antiquity.
Many thanks to Simon Reynolds of Kinetik for the awesome new intro animation!
Links:
Investigating Scoop Marks at Aswan Quarry: https://youtu.be/8tnrkahCLHw
Quarrying and Logistics: https://youtu.be/rQwWtEHE5FE
Colossal Statues of Ancient Egypt: https://youtu.be/uYjXO_ZI75g
The Largest Stone Statue Ever Made: https://youtu.be/LrPZM8ee690
Snake Bros, Unfinished: https://youtu.be/EiwW8TipA8o
Upcoming events:
Cosmic Summit Tickets (In-person and LiveStream): https://howtube.com/unchartedx
MegaFloods of Montana with Randall Carlson: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/montana-megafloods-with-randall-carlson-and-bradley-young-2nd-annual-tour-tickets-445768895767
Primordial Egypt Tour (Oct 28-Nov 10): https://www.khemitology.com/primordial-egypt-tour/
Executive Producers:
Matt Beal
Cortes Studio Tom Knoblauch
Chris Martin
Joe Horstman
James Champion
Associate Executive Producers:
Joel Day
James Dickie
Jeremy Hinman
John Drummond
Daniel Dewey
Daniel Monnig
Mike Malcham
Anthony Levine
Craig Howland
Richey Morgan
Hello. Enjoy your series and the profound questions that it asks. I’m puzzled about an aspect in your recent video about the Aswan quarry. If after the titanic megalith was removed in the Pre-dynastic period,and the images of birds and other animals were painted on the surrounding walls,weren’t those same walls underwater for a thousand years as part of the harbor system for removing dynastic era quarried granite blocks ? Even if the area was eventually filled in with soil and sand how could the bird paintings retain their colors after being submerged for so long ? The paintings seem to be in what would be the lower part of the so-called harbor. Thank you for your time and the work you do. Hope my question leads to more questions about these paintings.
If it were flooded (and it’s a big ‘if’) then it would have only been during the inundation period. I’m not convinced it was ever a harbor, it’s just the explanation offered by the standard model to hand-wave away the logistical challenge of moving immense blocks. There are other quarries (for basalt or black granite for example) that are a long way away from any river, so it’s still a problem that needs solving. Today the Nile is at least at mile away and downhill from the quarry at Aswan.
Thank you.Appreciate your insightful reply. I didn’t know that the Nile was downhill from the site. That makes the “harbor ” claim even more unlikely. Seems somehow in the past humans had a process to move multi-ton objects with seeming ease. As with the immense stone at Balbeck still laying in the quarry, the damn thing is almost 80% finished and refined. Smoothed and trued out. Why would you put that vast amount of manpower into the finishing part of the project,if you didn’t have an almost foolproof method ,and supreme confidence that the stone wouldn’t crack during movement. That’s the chink in the academic armor. Even Michelangelo didn’t carve his statues in the quarry. Will continue watching.
Hello, I’m watching your last video on the obelisk as I write this. Those notches on the ground in the harbor with the flat channel next to them look like notches for a gigantic gear or wheel with teeth. It would run back and forth with a shaft in between if such notches were on both sides.
Hi Ben
Regarding the continuous debate over the methods
used by ancient Egyptians for granite drilling, it could
have been Stone Softening Liquid implemented at first phase, then saw drilling at ease..
“stone softening liquid” is pure imagination. we have machining and tool marks, not imagination.
It must have been done by copper tube and abrasives.
High quality abrasives like corundum which actually
found at the bottom of drilled holes.
There are plenty of independent videos showing that process.
The core comes out exactly as ancient cores found, like
Petrie core no7.
They also left depictions showing them drilling that way.
I wanted to believe in advanced technology used, but no need for that.
Sagi
No, they don’t come out anything like Petrie’s core 7. That fact has been documented by actually reputable people, many times.
You’re also incorrect that they left depictions of the work. There are depictions of woodwork tools (like grinding with tubes), not stone. Go back to the books. None of it explains deep spiral grooves on cores (and holes) like Petrie core 7. Grinding with all sorts of abrasives was tested by Penn State University, Christopher Dunn, Dennis Stocks and others, and the results are NOTHING like the ancient examples. It was not the technique used and cannot be used to explain the ancient examples. I suggest you watch my video on the topic.
Lastly, may I give a except regarding the subject:
Evidence for the use of corundum abrasive in Egypt from the Great Aten Temple at Amarna:
A small fragment of indurated limestone from Amarna, now in the Met’s collection, contains several vestiges of what resemble drill holes, cut at slightly different angles. The main drill hole is about one centimeter wide and has a protruding stump at the bottom left by a broken drill core. Lightly consolidated material, the possible remains of an ancient abrasive powder, is deposited around the stump. Scientific analysis identified the material as a mixture of predominant angular grains of corundum with jagged edges and a few other minerals such as quartz, rutile, feldspar, apatite, ilmenite, augite, biotite, and chromite, usually smaller in size and with high angularity. Very fine particles of calcite surround the bigger particles, which are most likely remains of the indurated limestone that had been drilled. Several particles of corroded bronze and green copper corrosion products are intimately dispersed among the above-mentioned particles, imparting the light green color. The remains at the bottom of the drill hole consist of a mixture of the abrasive, the powdered limestone, and corroded fragments of the bronze drilling tool. The presence of abundant corundum particles conveys high abrasive efficiency to this material, and strongly suggests that this mixture was deliberately used in the drilling process of the hard limestone fragment. All together, these findings suggest the use of a bronze tubular drill in conjunction with a corundum-rich abrasive mixture.
Limestone. No one ever claimed the grinding technique wasn’t used, it was. It just wasn’t used to create the holes in granite and basalt, which we know from the spiral groove and toolmarks. Nice strawman though.
The ancient Egyptians were brilliant,
they had massive amounts of knowledge
in the fields of engineering, physics, chemistry
and probably mathematics and science.
Its just that they participated in a low tech Era.
makes perfect sense. academic butt flap wearers, got it. Inane.
Don’t you think with that amount of knowledge they would have conquered the world instantly? Oh wait, no, they still only fought with arrows and bows and tiny little copper daggers.
It’s all poured formwork concrete.
That is the lost ancient civilization high technology,
they managed to melt hard substances without changing
their basic properties and structure.
No it’s not, and stupid empty assertions like yours don’t mean anything. Go watch my video on the topic and address the issues with this dumb idea, or go somewhere else. You don’t understand geology, nor how granite is formed. you ignore quarries, material veins, quartz crystal formation, and just make up nonsense.
The sheer idiocy of suggesting this theory on a video about a granite QUARRY is breathtaking.
Go away.