Ancient Precision Vases are Fakes Again?

Max Fomitchev-Zamilov has made several podcast appearances recently, as well as publishing numerous articles both on his website and elsewhere, claiming that he has conclusively shown the category of ‘precise’ hard stone vessels from ancient Egypt to be modern fakes. I quite disagree. Let’s discuss.

Generally, I have a strong inclination against “reaction” content, and I already have 10-plus hours of researched content dedicated to the topic of ancient precision vases on my channel. However, seeing as I am specifically named in Max’s latest article, I do want to spend a little time to share my perspective on his claims.

I’ve met Max, and we’ve been quite cordial. I’ve spent a couple of days with him in total, so I wouldn’t say I know him well. I’m generally thankful for his interest and work on these topics, but some of his claims and statements made recently in his work and on social media I’ve found to be a little…strange.

Most of Max’s work on Ancient Egypt can be found on his website. I will mostly be referencing his latest article of April 22, 2026, but also his prior research and articles, some of which I have previously referenced in my vase focused content.

Let’s establish some baselines, and lay out my understanding of what’s happened here.

Background

• Ancient Egyptian, precision made hard stone vases are remarkable artifacts. There are many thousands of them spread across both private and museum collections. They are typically attributed to pre-dynastic times (Naqada cultures, thousands of years prior to Dynastic Egypt) as well as the early ‘Archaic period’ (Dynasties I-II) and into the early Old Kingdom (Dynasties III-IV). This is not controversial, examples of these vessels exist in the pre-dynastic sections of many museums. It is however, very problematic from a technological perspective. For example, the Naqada cultures were very primitive, technologically speaking. No wheel, their pottery was hand formed (not spun or thrown) and they used bones, sticks and rocks as tools. There is a huge amount of background context on these artifacts that I’ve explored extensively in my content. I will assume that most people reading this are aware of this context surrounding the vases.

• Max’s own research has shown that there are both precise, and non-precise categories of ancient hard stone vessels. This matches what I (and others) have generally observed and said about these artifacts. In fact it fits my ‘tale of two industries‘ hypothesis quite well. Some vessels are obviously not precise, but damn if some of them clearly are, and there is a wide and obvious technological gap between the categories. Anyone who’s seen my ‘tale of two industries’ will also know that this extends to many other categories of (generally far larger) Ancient Egyptian artifacts and architecture.

• Max’s own research has also shown that attempts at making vases by hand results in vessels very much in the ‘non-precise’ category. As in, you can’t make precision vases by hand with primitive methods (specifically those ascribed to the predynastic and Old Kingdom ancient Egyptians), or get even remotely close to it. This includes Olga Vdovina’s ‘2 years of blood, sweat and hate‘ effort in which she claimed to hand-make a diorite vessel but documented herself using a modern rotab with ball bearings in an attempt to mark down high spots and make it more circular. The tools available to the pre-dynastic and old kingdom Egyptians, according to academia, were limited to rocks, sticks and sand. I’m pretty sure modern bearings weren’t part of the deal.

• Max’s ‘quality metric’ that he used in his articles to measure precision and rank the vases is limited to, essentially, the mean of the roundness and concentricity of both inner and outer surfaces. Let’s call it ‘circularity focused’ for brevity’s sake. This isn’t a criticism, indeed, any measurement of ‘precision’ needs to start somewhere, and this was a good start. It clearly delineated the categories of precise and non precise vases. When it comes to supporting the sort of conclusions being made however, I happen to think it is quite a limited definition of precision. (We’ll discuss broader aspects of precision later.)

• Max, with crowdfunding resources, had several ‘replica’ stone vases made by a Chinese stoneworking company. These vases were not a replica of any specific, existing vase in Matt Beall or Adam Young’s collection, or any other as far as I know. My understanding is they are of a design that he created in concert with the manufacturing company. Per his article, they were turned on a lathe, then the bullnose or rim was ground down with power hand tools to leave the lug handles.

On “Impossible” Vases

If the goal was to satisfy the circularity focused definition of precision, then a modern lathe is certainly capable of doing so, which indeed seems to be the result. Max’s new vases are pretty circular, according to his subsequent scans and quality metric. Congratulations, I suppose? None of the many other aspects of precision, nor the complex, interrelated geometries of scanned ancient vases (that we will discuss below) has been replicated here. I do however think that any effort to make these under any method to better understand what it takes is a good thing, and this definitely falls into that category. It’s what Max says about why he undertook this effort that has me somewhat scratching my head.

In his article of April 22, 2026, Max specifically claims that I (and my supporters) have made numerous claims that these vases are ‘impossible’ to make today. The effort of his article is, as he states, in response to this claim made by me (and my supporters). Max has also made the same statement repeatedly on social media that my position (and presumably that of others involved in this topic, Chris Dunn, Adam Young, Matt Beall etc) is that these are ‘impossible to make today.’

This is, without putting too fine a point on it, nonsense, and a complete misrepresentation of my position. A textbook strawman logical fallacy – putting words in my mouth to then argue against a position that I don’t hold. Of course we could make them today with our tools and technology. I’ve said as much plenty of times, and also said that it would be difficult and expensive, which is why we generally don’t, or haven’t. We do nano-level machining and engineering today, as I’ve referenced in several videos. I’ve shared NIST machining and tolerance standards literally in my vase videos, and these deal with exponentially tighter tolerances than what we are generally talking about with the vases.

Of COURSE we could make them today if we wanted to – I think we could replicate anything from the ancient world using modern technology, given enough motivation and money – which is generally why we haven’t built another great pyramid. It would be bloody, stupidly, expensive. That has been my consistent perspective for as long as I’ve been discussing these vases, as far as I can recall – and I believe it is a perspective shared by many other, more qualified than I machinists and engineers whom I’ve spoken to about this, like Chris Dunn. Ultimately though, I can only speak for myself. I can’t, and certainly don’t speak for the ambiguous ‘supporters’ Max references here.

Despite both myself and several others pointing this out to Max (months ago in my case) he seems to continue to clutch to the idea that my position is that they’re impossible to make. Which is a position I don’t hold -and I personally find this a bit strange. Adam Young similarly emailed Max asking him to stop misrepresenting his position as “they couldn’t be made today,” and received no reply.

On the Petrie Museum

Other supporting data for Max’s conclusion that precision vases are modern forgeries comes from his scans of vases made at the Petrie Museum, located on the University College of London. He claims that his scans show those vessels are not precise, therefore any precise vase must be a modern forgery as he hasn’t found a ‘precise’ vase in that collection.

The Artifact Foundation has, similarly, made several visits to the Petrie Museum to scan artifacts. I note that the extensive conclusions from the Artifact Foundation‘s work disagree with Max, in that they did find some artifacts in the ‘precise’ category at the Petrie Museum, including one jar with an internal circularity within 1/1000th of an inch (>25 microns). Additionally, the Artifact Foundations data set from Petrie included two vessels that Max did not scan, both of which showed median RMSD (root mean square deviation) of less than 100 microns (<4 thou). In general however, while the Petrie collection certainly does contain some vessels with precision attributes, it’s nothing mind blowing, or quite at the level of the OG vase in terms of overall precision and sophistication. Which I think is understandable once you read the below context.

Max states he visited the Petrie Museum three times, and I know that the results from his first visit were only partial scans of vessels, as he could not scan the bottoms. I don’t know how he scanned artifacts on further visits. This is interesting, as how can you determine a true ‘quality metric’ consisting of both inner and outer surfaces with only partial scans? The openings of several vessels are also very narrow, making it very unlikely that an external scan will get any reliable results for the inner surface (the Artifact Foundation used an endoscope on each vase to map internal surfaces).

I am certainly no scanning technology expert – but I can spot the differences between these two results above. I have discussed the technical differences between the approaches being taken by the different parties with experts – things like using mean vs median, different precision metrics, scanning resolutions, centering methods etc, and I leave that technical response to them, I believe it is forthcoming.

Let’s address Max’s claim on twitter that my statements made about the Petrie Musuem artifacts are ‘lies.’ What exactly are my statements? That the artifacts in the Petrie museum represented, essentially, the bottom percentage of Flinders Petrie’s stock of vases in terms of quality. This was Petrie’s ‘teaching stock,’ and that his high quality vases were most likely gifted to his sponsors, sold, or kept in private collection. Let’s dissect. Where did I get this information from which I make this assertion?

• From Adam Young, Karoly Poka, and Kyle Allen (of the Artifact Foundation) who heard it directly from curators at the Petrie Museum during their multi-day research appointments, and whom have repeatedly told the story of their account on various podcasts of their own. In short, it came from people who’d know.

• From logic. The collection at the Petrie museum – which is built on a university campus, as a teaching resource, where anyone with a reason can book research appointments – consists, quite literally, of Petrie’s teaching stock. He absolutely would have reserved ‘high quality’ vessels and other artifacts for other purposes, this isn’t difficult to understand. Max cites the book ‘Scattered Finds’ by Alice Stevenson as a source for saying that the claim Petrie gave away his best artifacts to private collectors/sponsors is “simply not true.” Very well, let’s examine a couple of quotes from ‘Scattered Finds’:

Petrie “came to rely on the private patronage of two wealthy industrialists, Jesse Haworth (1835–1921) and Henry Martyn Kennard (1833–1911), leading to a three-way split of all objects permitted to leave Egypt in the late 1880s and 1890s.”

• “The large sums of money that could be invested by these wealthy patrons also meant that many fine objects were sent to the regions, in addition to the more frequently allocated sets of amulets, shabtis, beads and pottery.”

• Regarding the high-quality “Treasure of Lahun” (including gold jewelry): Petrie “accepted an offer from the Metropolitan Museum ‘reluctantly’, as it was the only institution then capable of providing the appropriate financial recompense for such a sensational find.”

• “The EES conveyed to [the restorer] Young the desire of Assistant Keeper of Egyptology, Winifred Crompton, for ‘very first class specimens’; anything less was pointless and should not be sent.”

Max seems to imply that donors/supporters of Petrie would not have wanted vases because “The truth is, nobody cared about the stone vases until Ben popularized them. Mummies, jewelry, and other large and fancy artifacts were highly coveted, not stone vessels or pottery.” Why then do so many exist in private collections, in large numbers, collections that often go back a century or more? Why were they kept in museums, even during Petrie’s time? Why do they keep turning up in estate sales or auctions of rich or aristocratic western families with roots going back to the 1800s? Why were stone vases given as gifts by Egyptian authorities to dignitaries and ambassadors before, during, and after Petrie’s time?

I’m sure statuary, jewelry and objects with writing on them were more highly prized, but undamaged and beautiful hard stone vases were certainly not worthless. They would have been, as they are today, prized antiques.

Also, trying to bundle stone vessels in with ‘pottery’ in this statement above seems somewhat manipulative, equating them as similar artifacts, to essentially devalue the stone vases. There is a vast chasm of technological deltas between hard stone vases and the relatively primitive, unspun pottery of dynastic Egypt, as I’ve documented extensively in my work – yet there seems to be an attempt made here to bundle them together as if they are the same category of thing. They’re not remotely the same category of thing. To be fair, I am a bit twitchy about people calling these vases ‘pottery’ or ‘stone pottery,’ but I’m certain that Max, as educated and technical as he is, understands the difference.

• From personal observation. I have been to many museums over the past decade, some repeatedly, specifically investigating, observing, and recording stone vessels as one of several primary foci. From both my visit to the Petrie museum and my browsing through their online catalog, as well as from the photographic and video recordings of the detailed inspections made there by the Artifact Foundation (of which I have copies), it is blindingly obvious to me that far superior, and much higher quality examples of stone vessels exist, in large quantities, in other museums. I have spent many, many hours observing and documenting them in institutions such as (but not limited to): The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Metropolitan Museum in NYC, the Turin Museum, the British Museum, the Ashmolean, the Imhoptep Museum of Saqqara, the Luxor Museum, the Alexandria Museum, the Cairo Museum, and the Grand Egyptian Museum. In contrast, the Petrie Museum collection pales in comparison to the stone vessels housed in these institutions.

While we’re on the museum topic, another main supporting point for Max’s conclusion is:

“The surfaces of the ‘precise’ vases from the private collections look pristine, as if they were made yesterday. This is in very stark contrast with the museum vases, which show significant weathering and look their age.”

Survey says: I strongly disagree. I’ve been lucky enough to spend quite a bit of time handling both Matt Beall and Adam Young’s collection, up close and in person. The surface of the vases in question are not remotely ‘pristine.’ Pristine would be, lets see, something like the surfaces of his recently manufactured vases – that seem very smooth, and reflect light almost like a mirror.

The surface of the OG vase, as well as that of others in these private collections, is in excellent condition considering their age, no doubt, but nothing close to the examples above. From first hand experience, and handling, I can report that their surfaces are pitted in places and dulled. I could report that the vase owner as well as several people who handle these frequently agree with that report (they do) but you can see it for yourself in the below image. In my opinion, while well looked after, vases like the OG clearly show the effect of time on the intractable and hard stone. Several of them (the OG for example) have damage and the surfaces are chipped. I don’t think you could find a single one without some sort of defect. Surface pitting and variation was a noticed attribute when ‘we’ put these vases through a physical inspection in the precision lab of Danville Metal Stamping, as documented here.

Max says these (the precise vases) are ‘in very stark contrast to the Museum vases, which show significant weathering and look their age.’ Which ‘museum vases’ is he talking about? I can only presume he’s talking about the Petrie Museum vases. In which case, I generally agree, as these are, as we discussed, Petrie’s bottom-of-the-barrel teaching stock – which kinda proves the point – they certainly do show weathering and their age.

There are however, many examples of incredibly well finished and preserved vases, with as good if not better surface finishing and condition than the OG or other precise vases held in private collections. These vases are in museums, and I’ve documented them extensively in the footage on my channel. One just has to visit any of these well-established institutions with large vase collections (like the Cairo Museum) to see that for oneself.

I’ve addressed provenance concerns extensively in my work on this topic, and I’m not going to repeat my reasoning here. Well, maybe just a wee bit. There is little difference between ‘museum collections’ and ‘private collections’ when it comes to provenance; it comes down to the existing documentation of individual artifacts. Max states “each excavated object has a paper trail in archives, including records of transfer to a different institution, individual, or collection.” This might be true for some artifacts, but by no means is it true for all, or even a majority of artifacts – it’s more like a small fraction.

Most people would find it shocking if they truly understood the history of antiquity acquisitions over the last couple of centuries and how boundaries are mingled between ‘museum’ and ‘private’ collections, and for how long sites like Saqqara have been plundered. Petrie sourced plenty of his artifacts from locals peddling them on the streets of Giza. You can find dozens and dozens of artifacts in museums with unknown provenance, put there only because they have been classified by form, or stone type or the like.

This is even the case with the Petrie Museum collection. Again, according to the curators, Petrie’s own artifacts were not documented until after they were unpacked, in England. Which was sometimes years after the fact. Petrie would then try to remember where they came from, and sometimes would forget, such was the huge number of artifacts. They (the curators) said this occurred to “a lot” of the artifacts, which I interpret to mean a “significant number of them.”

According to Karoly Poka of the Artifact Foundation, most of the ‘best’ vases they scanned in prestigious museums like the Museo Egizio in Turin, or the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, generally have histories of coming from private collection, or being acquired from antiquities markets. Of the 22 vases scanned by them in the Turin Museum, only 4 had documented provenance going back to excavation details. People who think that only museum pieces can be authentic and that only authentic pieces have full histories going back to excavations are demonstrating their ignorance of the topic of antiquities.

It is also logically inconsistent to suggest any of these privately held ‘precise’ vases were made as modern forgeries in the period spanning 1960-1980. Anyone holding this opinion should address the economic reality of trying to make them as fakes and then sell these sorts of antiquities in the 60s, or the 80s, which is the known timeline for the 2-3 vases in question. I’ve covered the economics of this proposition in my content. Back then, in the 20th, unadorned vases weren’t worth a fortune on the antiquity market (as they seem to be today). In fact, it’s only quite recently that they’ve gone up in value. Adam Young has been collecting vases for more than 10 years, and while some of them were over $10,000, most were in the $2000-$6000 range, at least until my videos came out. As quoted above, Max states in his article that interest in them (and consequently their prices) only went up after I popularized them.

In one of his articles, Max writes: “There might be a more nefarious side to this, too: the antiquities market (like any market) is easily manipulated by hype and speculation. From what I hear, the prices of stone vessels shot up by 4,000% in recent years, with some Predynastic stone vases going for as much as $20,000, up from $1,000-2,000 just a few years ago. Follow the money, they say.” I’m clearly not a very clever grifter, as I didn’t get in on the game, I don’t own any vases to re-sell at inflated prices, (even if they are fakes). In fact, between him and I, there is only one of us who owns, makes, and is selling vases for 4 figures. And it isn’t me.

Further, if they’re fake antiquities intended to be sold on antiquity markets, black or otherwise, why even bother to make them precisely? No one was measuring them back then or cared about their precision. Why embed such elegant ratios of π and φ² all over them? Why make them with precision not only in the circularity attributes (as measured by Max and others), but with the many other aspects of precision on them that engineers and metrologists have discovered, and that I’ve documented in my work (and discuss below)?

Seems a bit like overkill to me, just to make some fake antiques to sell for not much money in the 1960’s, or 80’s. The ‘fake’ argument falls apart when considered logically. If they are fake, and if they were not intended to be sold for profit, then just what were they made for? Some sort of decades long practical joke? A joke with the fore-knowledge that several decades into the future, precision laser scanning technology would be invented so that ancient history nerds can argue about it on the (also not even conceived of) thing called the internet? Jokes on me I suppose, look at me go.

Further, if you look into the documented provenance of some of the vases in question, you could get the idea that they -just might possibly- have longer stories. Let’s see, what’s out there in the public domain… A couple of these ‘precision’ vases were acquired from Barakat, who I understand is the largest antiquity dealer in the world.

Per their documentation, they came to Barakat from the Teddy Kollek collection. Teddy Kollek was an Israeli politician, the long time mayor of Jerusalem, and who was, according to his wiki page, involved in the Israeli military in the 1940’s and 1950’s, serving as the deputy head of the Jewish Intelligence agency. He was the founder and director of the Israel Museum. The provenance of these vases at Barakat go back to ‘acquired from the Teddy Kollek collection in the 1960s‘…. The Kollek collection has quite a storied, and well established provenance from what I understand. My point is, there is probably a lot more to the story of these vases, and it seems like they could well have been museum pieces of their own in the past. Where they were sourced from, how Kollek acquired them, in the middle east, in the middle decades of the 1900s, is open to speculation – but probably not hard to guess at if you can recall the history of that region. According to Max however, these vases are conclusively modern fakes. Maybe Teddy had them made as fakes prior to the 1960s? I leave this line of inquiry there.

I even made a shorter cut of my last 2 hour documentary on the vases that deals exclusively with the ‘provenance’ topic:

Here’s the full 2 hour version that sums up my perspective at the time of publishing (Feb 2025):

On Other claims

Let’s briefly discuss some of Max’s other claims from his article.

“Ancient Egyptians did not commonly use red Aswan granite for stone vessels.” To which I say, so what? ‘Not commonly’ does not mean “did not,” and other red/pink granite examples exist. I’ve seen them in museums, and they’re listed in small but consistent numbers in resources like Ali el-Khouli’s extensive survey of over 8000 vessels from predynastic till dynasty III (of which I own both digital and paper copies.) This claim is meaningless as regards the conclusion that precision vases are modern fakes. His assertion that Beall’s and Young’s vases “are not even Aswan granite” is unqualified and in opposition to the opinions of professionals who, for one thing, have actually been to Aswan.

“The shapes of the ‘precise’ vases from private collections deviate significantly from the known forms of genuine ancient Egyptian vases.” No, they don’t. There’s a pretty good match for the spinner shape in the images above, it’s one of many – the vase being scanned in the video thumbnails above is an OG form vessel at the Petrie Museum. In my work on this topic I have reported on numerous vessels, in museums, that are very similar to the OG vase. There are several examples below, and I’ve seen plenty that make me think that only actual scans and analysis of these forms will be able to truly identify any differences. The private collection vases in question were dated and sold by experts at antiquity dealers based on their form matching vessels attributed to known time periods like predynastic Egypt!

I am asked if there are ‘identical’ vases all the time – my answer has consistently been “the data set isn’t big enough to tell yet, but certainly the form seems consistent, if not the exact scale.” These forms, that match the vases in private collection, are also documented in el-Khouli’s work, referenced above.

“Because I have not scanned every single vase in existence, my conclusions are premature.” I approve of the sarcasm, even if it is an attempt to dismiss a valid argument. Max’s conclusions ARE premature. Beyond the Petrie Museum, he claims to have scanned a further 15 artifacts from the little-known Manchester Museum, and has access to a further 18 scans from a Russian museum, sourced from a (my opinion) quite disreputable group with a known axe to grind in this space. Presumably, none of these scans passed his ‘precise’ metric, although I don’t know for sure. I’m happy to assume that none did.

Although discussion on this topic tends to center itself around the OG vase, and a couple others (the ‘spinner’ and the ‘thin walled’ vases), there are considerably more from the private collections of Adam Young and Matt Beall that are in the ‘precise’ category. Adam reports that he has around 15 that have been scanned, analyzed, and that could be considered ‘precise.’ For the sake of brevity (lol) lets say ‘precise’ in this context means far, far beyond anything anyone could or has shown to be capable of creating by hand. I believe Matt Beall has 20+ that have likewise been demonstrably shown to also be in this category. Several of these vases have excellent and very well documented provenance going back to the early 1900s, even the 1800s, which in and of itself presents quite an issue for the ‘fake’ narrative.

We’ve discussed the Petrie Museum already – and as noted above, Max’s conclusions on the results from the Petrie Museum are in conflict with those published by the Artifact Foundation. Further, the Artifact Foundation (AF) has scanned over 100 artifacts now, including high quality examples from much larger collections, at much larger museums – like the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. I was there with them for that one, and I can tell you that the vases from that collection appeared vastly superior to anything in the Petrie Museum – and while they only had a few vases on display, they had thousands of them in storage, a collection that AF members were granted access to, although they were unfortunately limited by only a single day of access.

In addition, vessels from the Turin Museum (largest collection outside of Egypt) and the Brooklyn Museum have been scanned by the AF. In the coming summer, the AF will be scanning vases at an extremely well known and prestigious institution across the pond (I’ll leave the announcement to them). After that, the wheels are turning for the AF to gain access to the largest collection there is – that of the Cairo Museum in Egypt.

The metrological analysis and scan results from these other, larger museums have not yet been published, but they’re coming. These things take time, but my personal suspicion is we’re going to see some data that once again might be in conflict the assertion that ‘precision vases must be modern fakes.’ Time will tell – I am waiting for this data before revisiting the vase topic in my video work. (I have lots of other stuff to do.)

My personal opinion aside, between the slim overall size of his data set, the conflict with AF results on Petrie Museum artifacts, and the fact that it’s public knowledge the AF will be releasing results from far larger museum collection in the near future, does that not make Max’s conclusion here look just a little premature? I don’t think he’s addressed the AF at all in his work (but again, I could be wrong, I don’t claim to have read or listened to every word). I think the AF are doing excellent work, and as I know the parties personally I also know they are going to extreme lengths for transparency on methods and surety in their results for each step in their work.

I also know there have been some… disagreements that have happened behind the scenes between various parties that I’ve been witness to (sadly, this extends beyond just the parties I’ve mentioned in this article so far) and it does make me (personally) question possible motives about being ‘first’, but again, to be clear – that’s just my personal opinion. This article “On Plagiarism” in Max’s Ancient Egypt category certainly seems like he may have had someone specific in mind. It’s all a bit grubby and I’d rather not expound on it further. My hope is that all parties working on these remarkable artifacts could do so in a civil, if not co-operative manner, but alas, we don’t always get what we want, and I’m the boss of precisely no-one.

On Precision

Circularity, or concentricity, is not the be-all, end-all of precision measurements, yet it’s completely central to Max’s conclusion of ‘modern fakes.’ There are many, many other attributes and possible vectors to define ‘precision’ on these artifacts. My initial vase videos with metrologists Nick Sierra and Alex Dunn went over this extensively. What about wall thickness? Petrie measured 1/40th of an inch in a diorite vessel. We have measured less than 2mm (<1/14th of an inch) in vessels and fragments – and not just ones in private collection. Presumably, Petrie didn’t have the diorite vessel he measured made on a ‘modern’ lathe in the 1800’s, and I’m pretty sure the extremely thin and delicate vase fragments I’ve personally measured that exist in the extensive tunnels and galleries beneath the 3rd Dynasty Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara weren’t put there as some sort of practical joke.

Just to further put these artifacts, and Petrie’s work into perspective, it is commonly believed that the first time modern machining tolerances reached levels around 0.005″ (5 thou) and below was in the very late 1800s, with respect to machined rifle and artillery barrels. Petrie and others were finding these artifacts (with better precision) anywhere from 10-50 years before this time.

In Max’s latest article, he has a photo of one of his newly made vases with a narrow, partially translucent section around the middle, and seems to declare victory by stating that it “replicates the effect of Matt’s thin-walled vase.” I agree that the manufacturers in China got the granite pretty thin by using a modern lathe. It’s also obviously to me that Beall’s ‘thin walled vase’ is noticeably thinner, and with a much wider and more translucent section. And as good as it is, it is still more than double the width of fragments documented by Petrie.

Or how about consistency of wall thickness? During physical inspections of vases in a precision workshop in Danville, measuring the wall thickness at various points around the vase at the same height resulted in deviations of 1-2 thousandths of an inch, sometimes less! See the below video for real metrologists, doing real inspections, in a real metrology lab:

For anyone who believes these vases can be and were made by hand, well, here are some of the bars you need to clear.

What about geometric relativity? How precisely oriented are different sections of the vase relative to each other? Parallelism, perpendicularity of centerlines? How precise are the lug handles on Max’s new vases relative to each other, or to the centerline of the vase, given they were partially shaped by hand? What about the precision of the vase body area between the lug handles (that was ground off by hand) relative to the precision of the rest of the vase shaped on a lathe? These were all aspects explored and documented on the OG vase in the earliest phase and videos of the ‘precision vase’ investigation, and then on other vases later. All were generally found to be very precise indeed. Yes, these are complex topics, and yes, the measurements and analysis takes time to do – but they conclusively speak to the sophistication and overall precision of the artifacts. None of these metrics have been addressed by those claiming these precision vases are modern fakes.

One of Max’s central claims here is that he’s proven that the vases can be made today; because he’s had them made. The bar for success behind this was making them such that they met his quality precision metric – which, as a reminder, is circularity focused. It doesn’t include any of the other documented attributes or vectors of precision found to exist on the scanned vases. If you took a micron accurate scan of the OG vase, presented that to a granite manufacturer, and said “I want you to make this to within a couple thou of the model” then they are most likely going to say they don’t want the job.

Indeed, from what I understand, this exact scenario has been tested. A sophisticated CNC operation in Australia has been attempting to make just such a replica of the OG vase, in metal, on a 4-axis mill, for quite some time. Metal is a far, far easier substance to work in when you’re trying to hit the tolerance levels found to exist in the granite vase. From their direct account, it was incredibly difficult and very time consuming for their CNC machine to make an accurate replica (again, in metal) but they gave it their best effort. The metal replica is currently being scanned by the Artifact Foundation who will publish the results.

It’s not that manufacturers can’t do the job in granite- it’s that the job would be extremely expensive, onerous, and require much more than just a lathe and an angle grinder. Likely it would need a 5-axis mill, costly machine setup, and possibly some other custom tooling to meet the precision metrics. But yes, it undoubtedly could be done, it just hasn’t yet.

Max’s bar for precision in his replicas was set far lower in comparison. The goal was to achieve similar circularity results that he found on the scanned vases. The manufacturer then achieved those circularity results by using a machine (a modern lathe) specifically designed to deliver precision in circularity applications…. (Lets all do a victory lap now, and sell the vases for $1000 a pop!) His article makes vague references to ‘transparent and thin walls’ on his newly made vessels but does not provide measurements, nor address any of the other well-defined and measured aspects of precision found on the vases in question. Why not measure the replica vases against these additional yardsticks, or try to make actual replicas of real vases? The data is available.

Bottom line, there’s lots of ways to measure precision, and while Max’s circularity-focused quality metric is a good start, that’s all it is, a start. I think it’s far too narrow a definition of ‘precision’ upon which to base the sweeping conclusion that ‘they’re fake’. Particularly when combined with the other, more contextual issues here, but again, that’s just my opinion. As always, I encourage people to do their own research and make up their own mind.

On Blinkers

The vases, as a category of ancient Egyptian artifacts, do not exist in isolation. There is a huge amount of context surrounding these artifacts, that extends well beyond purely the ‘hard stone vases’ topic. It is nuanced, detailed, and complicated, and I’ve spend decades now investigating it, trying to untangle and explain this context. As you might be able to tell, I have trouble with keeping a narrow scope or making short content, and the fact is I don’t believe you can adequately account for these artifacts without this context.

I didn’t watch all of Max’s podcast appearances nor have I read every word he’s written on the topic, but I’m led to believe the logic chain to conclude that ‘precise vases are fake’ included the following elements: We can only achieve ‘precise’ vases by using modern machining, things like a lathe. Replica vases were then made on a lathe, and they’re precise, and they have lathe/machining/turning marks. Beall’s and Young’s vases are precise, and also have machining marks, therefore they must be modern fakes, or at the very least, if they’re ancient vases, then they were worked over with modern machines that created the precision and the machining marks.

This logic, I’m afraid to say, generated a Homer Simpson sized ‘DUH’ from me when I first heard it. It seems that we’ve come full circle – as the evidence for both precision and machining/turning marks is one of the primary mysterious aspects of some ancient Egyptian artifacts that make the topic so interesting, and so controversial. Precision, in several forms, as well as machining marks and the evidence for powerful tools, exists extensively across multiple categories of ancient Egyptian artifacts and architecture. That’s not to even mention the logistical challenges associated with moving massive objects, thankfully we’re staying away from that in this article. These artifacts, their precision, and the witness marks cannot be explained by the known toolbox of the ancient Egyptians. (I feel like I might have written that sentence somewhere before.)

Flinders Petrie extensively documented both precision and turning marks in multiple artifacts, in the 1800 and early 1900s. I, along with others who have investigated these mysteries, have in turn referenced him extensively. These examples include vases and vase fragments, but are by no means limited to them. This is where the entire mystery began – with Flinders Petrie being the first to apply the engineering principles of the Industrial Revolution to the evidence written into the stone in Egypt – and being astonished by the results.

So, if we follow the same logic that seems to have been applied to get to Max’s conclusion on the vases, anything that shows precision (or machining marks similar to those of modern machines) and that cannot be explained/replicated by the primitive toolset of the ancient Egyptians, must therefore be fake.

I leave one example here of how that logic falls apart, one of a possible very many. The granite box beneath the pyramid of Lahun, housed in an amazing granite room, that is too big to have been moved in as a ‘modern practical joke,’ and must therefore be contemporary with the structure. Hell, Flinders Petrie was the one who discovered and documented it, a long while back, and it’s quite amazing, having visited it myself several times. Less than 5 thou deviation across wide surfaces, and Petrie, in his documentation, extensively notes the ‘proportion of scale’, referring to the complexity of its geometric relativity, and the difficulty in achieving this result in a single slab of, funnily enough, Aswanian pink granite. I did a whole video on it:

Closing remarks

Max has said he’s not an academic, and neither am I. I’m grateful for his interest and work in this space. I don’t agree with his conclusion, I think it is premature with not enough data behind it. I do not think he is measuring apples to apples, rather he is creating extremely narrow definitions of ‘precision’ to measure against with his newly fabricated vases, and then declaring victory over positions that I don’t even hold. I leave any criticism of his technical methods and techniques of scanning and analysis to others, which I believe will be forthcoming.

I do not agree that just because Max had a few stone vessels made, with modern machine tools – tools that deliver precision of circularity – and then measured them against a metric that only involves circularity, that he has then ‘replicated’ the technical achievements represented by the vases in Beall’s and Young’s collection. As a reminder, these vases have a well-documented and extensive array of precision metrics that extend far beyond just circularity, as documented in my work.

Further, just because Max did not find ‘precise’ examples in the Petrie collection does not mean that such examples do not exist in museum collections – or even in the Petrie Museum. His findings are in direct conflict with findings made by others groups who have scanned artifacts from the same collection, and did find vessels with ‘precision’ attributes. It’s public knowledge that (much) more data is coming, from much larger, and higher quality collections.

Concluding that precise vases can only be made with machine tools (that deliver precision) and cannot be made by hand, only serves to illustrate, validate and support the ‘Tale of Two Industries,’ and cement the fact that these vases (and the many other out of place artifacts across Egypt) are both mysterious and an huge contradiction to the established technological timeline and our assumptions on the capabilities of ancient civilizations. For that support, I thank Max for his work. I do not think we are dealing with modern fakes here.

Max has, in the past, suggested that these ‘precision’ vases might have been the product of some form of as-yet not invented nuclear machining techniques. He has also suggested that they were all made by hand. He’s claimed to have measured increased levels of thorium decay products and other radioactive isotopes in, specifically, precision vases (when compared to non-precision vases and base rock samples.) Now he’s insisting that the precision vases are not mysterious at all, but simply some sort of modern fakes, made on modern machines. Which is it? Are his previous findings incorrect? How does the radioactivity of these vases fit the ‘modern fake’ theory? I covered Max’s research in my work on these vases in 2024 and early 2025 – and presumably as a consequence of the attention my work garnered, I also vetted and recommended him to the podcast hosts who’s shows he has appeared on. Yes, Danny Jones called me and asked if I should have Max on, to which I said “yes.” You’re welcome.

I could go on, but this article is far too long already. People have been finding ways to disparage and deny the reality of what these vases represent ever since the research and results started coming out, and I fully expect that to continue, it’s just the nature of the beast. I personally think the evidence for ancient precision is overwhelming, and the idea that anything precise must be a modern forgery to be plain silliness. I eagerly await the results of the scans conducted by the Artifact Foundation, and I expect that will form the basis for my next major update on the vase topic. To be frank, I spent much of 2023 and 2024 focused on the vases, and I’ve got lots of other topics on my plate. After all they are only a part of ‘The Tale of Two Industries’ (albeit a strong one) and I’m also trying to get that book written.

I am not a fan of ‘reaction’ content. This article is something of an aberration for me – I typically address concerns and criticisms in a general fashion, in my work, usually without naming names, in order to prevent the endless cycle of stupidity that is ‘reaction content’ on the Internet. It’s not likely that I’ll addressing this subject any further, unless and until I revisit the topic in my work, most likely when the AF results are released. I’m sure this article may generate some ‘reaction’ content in turn, but I really don’t care either way. I do not enjoy social media, twitter is a cesspool, and I don’t do public ‘beef.’ Plenty of people say plenty of things about me – this is ok, I understand it’s all part of the game, and many of them are doing it for clicks, I understand the business model.

I will generally stay well away from such criticism, particularly as it typically, primarily consists of logical fallacies, and lots of ad-hominems. That’s also ok, I got over people calling me mean words as child, but I certainly don’t feel an obligation to respond to it. I do not accuse Max of this (other than the one bizarre strawman I documented above) and I’m thankful that although he seems to be targeting me in his work, he is doing so in a civil fashion. It’s pretty much all I ask for anyone who wants to have an actual dialogue. Although I’ve possibly been a bit sarcastic in this article I’d like to think I’ve stayed within the same lines, but for me, this is the end of my engagement with Max on this particular topic. I trust that my audience and anyone interested in these topics can read the articles, watch the videos and podcasts, and make up their own mind.

Post Script: On the Radial Traversal Pattern

While we’re here, lets discuss the other development that sometimes comes up on the vase topic, and concerns my previous videos. Has Mark Qvist recanted his claims about the radial traversal pattern in the vases? Yes, it seems he has. I have no problem with this. I don’t think it means very much in relation to the precision of the artifacts in question. I stand by my reporting at the time, after all, I was primarily quoting and referencing Mark’s work. However there is also a little bit more to this story that is relevant, but not obvious.

First, the radial traversal pattern. Stine Gerdes published this article that, essentially, refutes the Radial Traversal Pattern, but confirms the presence of elegant, embedded ratios like π and φ2 in the OG vase, and confirms its overall extremely ‘precise’ nature.

Not being a statistical mathematician myself, here’s my layman’s understanding of why the radial traversal pattern doesn’t fit. It boils down to “extracting a radius measurement from a curve that only fits a partial section of a circle is bad and could generate inconsistent results.” Now, this is, admittedly, a simplification. It’s quite a long and technical article dealing with a complex topic; best fitting geometric curves to scan results (that may have their own minute errors) and all sorts of statistical modeling of results- but, to my understanding, that’s the core of the reasoning to dismiss the pattern. Partial curves bad, can’t trust the radii measurement. Okay, fine.

Note that this does not refute the fact that the pattern exists in the measurements made in Mark’s original work – only that there could be an ‘unacceptable’ level of error present in those measurements. One might think, if partial curves are bad, this might have been an observation that came up in the initial work. It evidently didn’t, and I was reporting on what Mark said, in my work at the time. I have no problem with the retraction – the fact is I don’t need the radial traversal pattern to prove my point; that these vases cannot have been made by hand, and that they must have been most elegantly designed. The confirmation of overall precision and the other embedded ratios only serves to support it.

I do not know if this same retraction applies to the other vases in which the radial traversal pattern was found, that I have reported on in my work. Not my vases, not my reports (although I had permission to mention them in my work), but only the OG vase is discussed in Stine’s article. Those other vases with the radial traversal pattern were also found to contain deeply embedded significant ratios of π and φ2 , along with significant ‘precision’ and geometric elegance, thus also fitting the ‘advanced technology’ moniker.

There is a touch of further – and quite relevant – context that should be understood however, by anyone interested in this topic.

As you can clearly see in the above tweet, there is beef. Unfortunately, I’ve been witness to the extensive back and forth that happened behind closed doors. It has nothing to do with me, I don’t want anything to do with it, I wish these things didn’t happen, but the reality is, they do, and did. I respect all the parties and am super thankful for all their interest and hard work on this topic. Contrary to what some people seem to think, this isn’t ‘my’ project, I don’t have a ‘research team,’ and nobody is working for me. I function, essentially, as a reporter on these topics, and I use the work of others to help provide context and to support my own ideas and theories. I do not take credit for other’s work, and try to give credit and sources wherever possible. I don’t ‘own’ the vase topic, although I’ll admit to having popularized it, I’m glad people find it as interesting as engaging as I do.

Lastly, and I want to put this as delicately as possible, but in my opinion, it’s definitely relevant, particularly as there is disagreement, accusations, and clearly ‘sides’ are being taken. Anyone reading the above tweet, or Stine’s article here, or Mark’s retraction and postscript on his original vase article here, would likely get the impression that Stine and Mark are completely independent of each other. That they just found each other’s research, were very complementary, with both agreeing to the retraction of the radial traversal pattern. This is, frankly, very much not the case, pretty much the inverse of it. I am in no way contesting the validity of their work or their technical conclusions (I’m not remotely smart enough to do so) but in this situation between parties and conflicting claims, I think context and disclosure matters. Again, I have no issue or disagreement with Mark retracting support for his own Radial Traversal Pattern, I just don’t view it as some sort of dunk on the overall vase topic.

I hope that clears up my opinion and perspective on the Radial Traversal Pattern, and the latest set of claims that ‘these vases are fakes.’ All media has its date of publication, and I stand by what I said about these vases, at the time. My overall conclusions and opinion that they are legitimate, and a real conundrum for our current understanding of history has not changed, and I am confident that more data is forthcoming that will support this position. Either way, I’ll report on it as and when I think it’s relevant, and if it’s something that I want to do. That’s the nice thing about being independent, and not an academic – ultimately the only schedule or standard that I need to live up to is my own. I like not being beholden to anyone. It’s possible that I’ll address the topics in this article in future vase video content, when or if that happens, but, having said my piece here, I also may not.