Could the Ancients have used glass to cut stone?

Ancient Egyptian City Yields World's Oldest Glassworks
James Owen
for National Geographic News
June 16, 2005
Glass was a scarce and highly valued commodity in ancient times, so those who knew how to make it possessed a powerful technology.

Glass fragments unearthed in modern-day Iraq suggest that glassmaking began around 1500 B.C. in Mesopotamia and was kept a closely guarded secret for many centuries. Or so it was thought.Now a new study suggests the ancient Egyptians mastered the art of glassmaking very soon after the Mesopotamians, using the technology to extend their influence throughout the Mediterranean and the Middle East.


Could they have used glass to concentrate the Sun like a Magnifying glass to Heat/Cut Stone? That would explain why some of the stones look like they have been heated/Poured. The 1500bc date I have to dismiss I believe our dating system is way off IMO.

It's possible ..... yea I know it's YouTube but this guy is melting rock.

www.youtube.com...

a reply to: Gargoyle91

It may well have been. My ponderings on the subject of the Egyptians and their stone cutting have leaned toward the use of a combination of the use of chemicals and possibly diamonds. I settled on the "chemical" idea because it is apparent, I'd think to everyone, that the ancients had a pretty good grasp on some rudimentary "natural" chemical processes, such as mixing lime with soda to make an acid. They might have then used crude glass lenses to enhance the process to soften the stone and then used diamond tipped instruments to do their carving.

a reply to: Gargoyle91

Possibly, hmm, when thinking about Egypt and glass, i wonder how the pyramid with its shafts, would work as an observatory.. if there was glass lenses installed..

-Edit, i once tried to chip away pieces from a chunk of obsidian, did not go well at all, could not damage it, eventually i put it on a piece of steel plate and hit it with a sledge hammer, third hit was the charm, and it exploded in to a million sharp pieces.

I like it, but theres no contemporary source for this, all hieroglyphics Ive seen show masons working the stone with recognizable tools.

a reply to: Gargoyle91

It's possible. But not plausible.

All it takes is someone to find a rock that is 'harder' than the stone they are working on and you're set, not that difficult.
It's the same in metallurgy, 'harder' metals are used to shape and cut softer metals. Hence why tool steel exists.

A lot of these ancient technologies are far over thought, sometimes it's just the simple explanation is the easiest. And you have to remember, back then when someone was good at something that's what they did for their entire lives pretty much, what else did they have to do other than work, eat, sleep, spend time with family and have some down time here and there.

a reply to: Gargoyle91

Glass was not used this way to cut stone.

www.quora.com...

Our Tracey sums it up very nicely there;

Based on study of the "unfinished obelisk" in Aswan,[1] it is believed that a combination of diorite pounder balls and the power of expanding timber were used to fracture the rocks into shape, in the quarry.[2] Whilst the object available for study is an obelisk, the blocks of the pyramid are of the same order of magnitude, and it is assumed that the techniques evidenced at the site of the unfinished obelisk were also used to make the granite blocks of the pyramid, which were quarried at the same site. (About 90% of the pyramid's blocks, however, are limestone, which was quarried just across the river from the pyramids.)

Smoothing was achieved by placing hot bricks on the granite, and rapidly cooling the bricks with water, causing any sections protruding above the smooth surface to flake off.

That is why there is evidence of heat.

The Chinese used to used diamond as tools, long before anyone else discovered it apparently.

www.quora.com...

The biggest steel cutting lasers can barely do 12" of steel and they're US Navy shipbuilding grade. So no way you could cut multiple feet of stone in a pass. The focal point can't be stretched that much. Abrasive and water-based cutting methods are still the best with stone.

Obviously it is an area of interest thought. Magnification of the Sun on a huge level would unleash some serious heat. I don't know the physics of it, what circumference and thickness the lens would have to be, but your included video shows very clearly there is great energy there.

Even if plausible on small objects, it does nothing to explain any structure in the ancient world. There are many, many unexplainable structures on earth, therefore, glass is out of the question. There are many theories of how, who, when, but nothing solid, there is a lot of sand there which is the primary component of glass but it was small potatoes....

Remember some years ago (25) watching a docu on Easter island about how they moved the statues and they used logs, pulleys and manpower and did the job, recently somebody studied the local legend about the statues "walking down the road" and figured it out putting two ropes and two teams of people and "rocking" the statue and they moved quite fast and effortlessly.

Probably it took the ancients a long time to figure how to do it and it will take us "modern" time to figure out how they did it....

Not sure about glass, but they did use hemp rope like a bow saw.

I read somewhere they would slide the rope back in forth while pouring a slurry of sand and water on it.

The abrasives in the sand cut the rock, the water cooled the rope, and kept the cut clean.

They would take giant crosscut across stone in the quarries.

Pretty cool.

originally posted by: Gargoyle91
Ancient Egyptian City Yields World's Oldest Glassworks
James Owen
for National Geographic News
June 16, 2005
Glass was a scarce and highly valued commodity in ancient times, so those who knew how to make it possessed a powerful technology.

Glass fragments unearthed in modern-day Iraq suggest that glassmaking began around 1500 B.C. in Mesopotamia and was kept a closely guarded secret for many centuries. Or so it was thought.Now a new study suggests the ancient Egyptians mastered the art of glassmaking very soon after the Mesopotamians, using the technology to extend their influence throughout the Mediterranean and the Middle East.


Could they have used glass to concentrate the Sun like a Magnifying glass to Heat/Cut Stone? That would explain why some of the stones look like they have been heated/Poured. The 1500bc date I have to dismiss I believe our dating system is way off IMO.

Glass is made of sand. They used sand to cut rock... so yes in a sense they used glass to cut rock.

They didn't have glass that was pure enough to make much of a lens. If they'd been able to make lenses, they would have had glasses for nearsighted and farsighted people. That's one of the first inventions that comes with making lenses.

originally posted by: solve
a reply to: Gargoyle91

Possibly, hmm, when thinking about Egypt and glass, i wonder how the pyramid with its shafts, would work as an observatory.. if there was glass lenses installed..

None of the shafts reach the outside, so the answer is "very badly."

a reply to: Mandroid7. But would that be equalivent to cutting huge boulders with sandpaper? That's a lot of cuts...what happened to the remnants you think??? They must have grown a lot of hemp? If smoke was created by the friction, did they score a hit or two??? Munchies....doritos are pyramid shaped when viewed from the side...the glass cutter theory is tough, need more evidence....S&F...

a reply to: Byrd

Are you absolutely sure?

What about the upper southern shaft, or the mankiller?

Besides, i believe that there was stone plating over the sides originally, so they would have to have holes also, in the hypothetical observatory thought..

The notion that hot bricks placed on rough blocks of limestone to smooth their surfaces would make them look like they had been originally molten or at least their surfaces softened is ludicrous. Hot bricks would merely burn the surfaces - they could never melt them because they cannot retain sufficient heat.

There is no way that ancient Egyptian craftsmen could have used just bronze chisels and dolorite hammers to cut and shape rose granite blocks, sometimes with beautifully curved surfaces. They had to have used other tools that archaeologists have never found. The evidence for the use of drills and large saws on stone blocks scattered over the Giza plateau is overwhelming and beyond argument. One can clearly see tell-tale signs of re-cut surfaces where the blade of the saw being used was at a different angle.

But this would have required the skill of iron smelting, and archaeologists point out that they have found no evidence that the ancient Egyptians had this skill to make iron tools. We don't need hypothetical skills in glass/lens making on an industrial scale in order to account for the blocks used in the pyramids. Anyway, sunlight focussed by lenses cannot account for the deep, sharp cuts and perfectly bored holes found in some blocks.These indicate a tool technology that is far beyond anything that archaeologists feel comfortable with, which means that it would have been far easier to cut limestone blocks to size with hand saws than to melt roughly hewn chunks with hypothetical lenses and then cast them into molds.

originally posted by: solve
a reply to: Byrd

Are you absolutely sure?

Yup. Description of shafts here

What about the upper southern shaft, or the mankiller?

Ended about 20 feet short of the surface.

Besides, i believe that there was stone plating over the sides originally, so they would have to have holes also, in the hypothetical observatory thought..

I've been inside the pyramid. Believe me, there's no way it could have ever been used in that manner.

The descent is long and slippery and negotiating it carrying oil lamps would have been tricky (you'd spill oil all over yourself and possibly burn yourself) and once down there in the main chamber (where the main ramp leads) there's no easy way up into the other chambers. Falling and injuring yourself (particularly if you're trying to climb while carrying a light and writing materials) is a very high possibility.

Without modern technology, it gets stuffy very quickly particularly if you're carrying an oil lamp which uses up oxygen.

Then there's the difficulty of climbing out with your data.

There are ancient observatories, but they are easy to get into. They are built so that the astronomers/astronomer-priests can just walk right in, as you do with any modern observatory) and easy access means that it's easy for these people to carry recording materials (lamps, scrolls, ink, water) both in and out of them.

originally posted by: micpsi

There is no way that ancient Egyptian craftsmen could have used just bronze chisels and dolorite hammers to cut and shape rose granite blocks, sometimes with beautifully curved surfaces.

I think you're confusing material from later times (when they had harder chisels) with earlier times. Although this photo of the hieroglyphs in the Pyramid of Unas shows the excellent work of the best craftsmen, it does not come near the detail of later works such as this detail from the Rose Chapel

They had to have used other tools that archaeologists have never found. The evidence for the use of drills and large saws on stone blocks scattered over the Giza plateau is overwhelming and beyond argument. One can clearly see tell-tale signs of re-cut surfaces where the blade of the saw being used was at a different angle.

I think that it's unlikely they had unique tools that haven't been discovered or found... we have paintings of workshops using tools and we've found a number of workshops with discarded and broken tools.

The idea that heat can be used to cut through granite or limestone is baseless anyway.
How could you heat up a straight line through a stone without causing the stone to break apart due to the thermal expansion? And how do you get the melted stone off the surface, even if you could somehow keep the stone from fracturing?

Harte

a reply to: Byrd

Let me ask a question I've been searching and I can't seem to find any writing/hieroglyphs depicting the actual work being done have you seen anything like this? I would think they would have been very proud of the work.

a reply to: Harte

My thoughts were heat it up chisel it out rinse and repeat, It would have made it a lot easier/faster then just pounding away . With a lens they could pinpoint a very straight line.

originally posted by: Gargoyle91
a reply to: Harte

My thoughts were heat it up chisel it out rinse and repeat, It would have made it a lot easier/faster then just pounding away . With a lens they could pinpoint a very straight line.

You could do the same thing, only much faster and easier, with fire - which btw is a current theory for some applications in Ancient Egyptian stoneworking.

Harte