THE TOOLS OF THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 
337 
edge, and by careful observation, and the collection of a number of samples, 
mostly half-finished articles damaged and rejected in manufacture, he has arrived 
at the most unexpected and startling conclusions that the hard stones employed 
by the Egyptians — the diorite, basalt and granite — were cut with jewel-pointed 
tools, used in the forms of straight and circular saws, sohd and tubular drills, and 
graving tools, while the softer stones were picked, and brought to the true plane 
by the aid of trial or face plates. 
Mr. Petrie has embodied the results of his novel and most interesting re- 
searches in a paper read before the Anthropological Institute; and on this we have 
drawn for the following account of the specimens and results, which will also be 
described in Mr. Petrie's forthcoming volume on "The Pyramids and Temples 
of Gizeh." 
The first and most important point is that the principle of action of the tools 
was by plowing out the stone by fixed cutters, as in a planing machine, and not 
by grinding, as with a lapidary's wheel. The proofs of this are that the cut sur- 
faces do not show a smooth ground surface as a stone shced with diamond dust 
does, but a grooved surface, like free-stone cut by a toothed saw, or like rough- 
sawn timber ; and that this grooving is not due to the action of any loose powder, 
is proved by the grooves being just as deep in hard stone (Uke quartz) as they are 
in softer stone, (like feldspar), when both occur side by side in the same speci- 
men. Two examples of this grooving we illustrate here. The first (Fig. i, one- 
^■^iS^I?^ 
Fig. I. 
Fig. 
half actual size, as are all the illustrations of this article) is a core from a tube- 
drill hole in granite ; on this, in one part, a continuous spiral of the lines of cut- 
ting may be traced for a length of three feet, passing five times around the core ; 
and though, owing to rocking of the drill, it cannot be traced from end to end, 
yet no shallowing or widening of the grooves, indicating wear of the cutting 
point, can be seen in the course of the continous spiral. The second (Fig. 2) 
