Forbidden History: Prehistoric Technologies, Extraterrestrial Intervention, and the Suppressed Origins of Civilization

33 Petrie on Trial

Have Arguments for Advanced Ancient Machining Made by the Great Nineteenth-Century Egyptologist Sir William Flinders Petrie Been Disproved? Christopher Dunn Takes On the Debunkers

Christopher Dunn

If there is one area of research into ancient civilizations that proves the technological prowess of a superior prehistoric society, the study of the technical requirements necessary to produce many granite artifacts found in Egypt is it.

My own research into how many of these artifacts were produced started in 1977, and my article Advanced Machining in Ancient Egypt was first published in Analog magazine in 1984. It was later expanded to fill two chapters in my book The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt.

As this body of work became more popular and well known, it was only a matter of time before the orthodox camp attempted to diminish the significance of the artifacts and thereby discredit my work.

Albeit ineffectual, this they have done in both subtle and obvious ways:

Documentaries have been produced that attempt to reinforce Egyptologists’ views that bashing granite with hard stone balls produced fabulous granite artifacts.

A stonemason named Denys Stocks was taken to Egypt to demonstrate how the use of copper and sand, along with a tremendous amount of manual effort, can produce holes and slots in granite. This he succeeded in doing, much to the satisfaction of orthodox believers.

Two authors who claimed to be onetime supporters of alternate ideas such as mine switched camps and wrote a book entitled Giza: The Truth. Though unschooled in the mechanical arts, Ian Lawton and Chris Ogilvie-Herald were determined to take an antagonistic approach to the ideas I have presented and to support the orthodox view.

In each of the above cases, the limited perspective and incomplete analysis of all the evidence, though probably passing muster with their own peer reviews, do not pass muster with my own peers, who consist of technologists involved in such work today. In fact, the consensus among the latter group is that the former are dead wrong. However, none of us is perfect, and everyone has his Achilles’ heel.

In retrospect, I will admit to having probably taken my analysis too far when I proposed that ultrasonic machining produced the artifact known as Core #7. My theory of ultrasonic machining was based on Sir William Flinders Petrie’s book Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh. In this book, Petrie described an artifact with marks of a drilling process that left a spiral groove in granite indicating that the drill sank into the granite at .100 inch per revolution of the drill.

My conviction was shaken when I read, in Giza: The Truth, that two researchers, John Reid and Harry Brownlee, had effectively dismissed my theories of how the ancient Egyptians had drilled granite. After a physical examination of this artifact, they testified that the grooves were not spiral grooves but individual rings, and were common to cores found in any modern quarry in England. A photograph of this core in Giza: The Truth was positioned in a way that seemed to support their contention; however, I was unable to disprove them because I had not even been in the same room as the core, let alone physically examined it.

Until I had the opportunity to perform a detailed inspection of the piece, which requires more than mere visual scrutiny, I was forced to defer to the observations of Reid and Brownlee. Nevertheless, even in so doing, if they were basing their observations on the photograph in Giza: The Truth, I had questions about those observations. What we have is a photograph that shows the frustrum of a cone (Core #7) with grooves cut into it. After reading this report, I immediately posted, to my Web site, a statement to the effect that I suspended any assertions I have made about ultrasonic machining of these holes and cores and I also asserted that I was prepared to examine the core for myself.

On November 10, 1999, I flew out of Indianapolis heading for England. My Webmaster, Nick Annies, had arranged, with the Petrie Museum, for the inspection of the core while the museum was closed for academic research. Nick and I took the train to King’s Cross on Monday, November 15, 1999. A short walk to the University College, London, found us, at 10:30 A.M., standing on the bottom step of the Petrie Museum, looking up at a gregarious doorman who advised us to have a cup of tea while we waited for the museum to open and then pointed us in the direction of a cafeteria. Not only a cuppa did we find there, but a wonderful English breakfast as well!

Then it came time to inspect the infamous Core #7. Although I had talked and written about this core for more than fifteen years, this was not the reverent visit to a holy relic that one might expect. I was not especially breathless with excitement to take the artifact into my latex-gloved hands. Nor was I impressed with its size or character. To tell the truth, I was profoundly unmoved and disappointed. With the old Peggy Lee song “Is That All There Is?” bouncing around in my head, I peered at this insignificant-looking piece of rock that had fueled such a heated debate on the Internet and in living rooms and pubs across the globe.

I was thinking to myself as I looked at the rough grooves on its surface, “How do I make sense of this?” And, “What was Petrie thinking about?” I looked up at Nick Annies standing over me. He had a look on his face that reminded me of my mother, within whose face I sought comfort when, at the age of eight, I was lying on the operating table having a wart burned out of my palm by a long, hot needle.

Not a word passed between us as I formulated my ultimate confession to the world. I had made a huge mistake in trusting Petrie’s writings! The core appeared to be exactly as Reid and Brownlee had described it! The grooves did not appear to have any remote resemblance to what Petrie had described. With the truth resting where a wart once grew, I was frozen in time.

With resignation I proceeded to check the width between the grooves using a 50X handheld microscope with .001 gradated reticle to .100 inch. At this point, I was certain that Petrie had been totally wrong in his evaluation of the piece. The distance between the grooves, which are scoured into the core along the entire length, was .040–.080 inch. I was devastated that Petrie had even gotten the distance between the grooves wrong! Any further measurements, I thought, would just be perfunctory. I couldn’t support any theory of advanced machining if Petrie’s dimensions of .100 inch feed-rate could not be verified! Nevertheless, I continued with my examination.

The crystalline structure of the core under microscope was beyond my ability to evaluate. I could not determine, as surely as Petrie had, that the groove ran deeper through the quartz than through the feldspar. I did notice that there were some regions, very few, where the biotite (black mica) appeared to be ripped from the felspar in a way that is similar to other artifacts found in Egypt. However, the groove passed through other areas quite cleanly without any such ripping effect, though again I support Brownlee’s assertions that a cutting force against the material could rip the crystals from the felspar substrate.

I then measured the depth of the groove. To accomplish this I used an indicator depth gauge with a fine point to enable it to reach into a narrow space. The gauge operated so as to allow a zero setting when the gauge was set on a flat surface without any deviations. When the gauge passed over a depression (or groove) in a surface, the spring-loaded indicator point pushed into the groove, causing the needle to move on the gauge dial, indicating the precise depth.

The depths of the grooves were .002 and .005 inch. (Actually, because there were clearly discontinuities in the groove at some locations around the core, the actual measurement would be between .000 and .005 inch.)

Then came the great question. Was the groove a helix or a horizontal ring around the core? I had deferred to Reid and Brownlee’s assertions that they were horizontal and I was, at this juncture, painfully assured that it was the correct thing to do. It was Petrie’s description of the helical groove that made Core #7 stand apart from modern cores. It was one of the principal characteristics upon which I had based my theory of ultrasonic machining. But what I held in my hand seemed to support Reid and Brownlee’s objections to this theory, for they said that the core had an appearance similar to any other core one may produce in a quarry.

White cotton thread was the perfect tool to use when inspecting for a helical groove. Why not use a thread to check a thread! I carefully placed one end of the thread in a groove while Nick secured it with a piece of Scotch tape. While I peered through my 10X Optivisor, I rotated the core in my left hand, making sure the thread stayed in the groove with my right. The groove varied in depth as it circled the core, and at some points there was just a faint scratch that I would probably not have detected with my naked eye. As the other end of the thread came into view, I could see that what Petrie had described about this core was not quite correct.

Petrie had described a single helical groove that had a pitch of .100 inch. What I was looking at was not a single helical groove, but two helical grooves. The thread wound around the core following the groove until it lay approximately .110 inch above the start of the thread. Amazingly, though, there was another groove that nestled neatly in between!

I repeated the test at six or seven different locations on the core, with the same results. The grooves were cut clockwise, looking down the small end to the large—which would be from top to bottom. In uniformity, the grooves were as deep at the top of the core as they were at the bottom. They were also as uniform in pitch at the top and bottom, with sections of the groove clearly seen right to the point where the core granite was broken out of the hole.

These are not horizontal striations or rings as trumpeted in Giza: The Truth, but rather helical grooves that spiraled down the core like a double-start thread.

To replicate this core, therefore, the drilling method should produce the following:

A clockwise double helical groove from top to bottom with a .110 to .120-inch pitch.

A groove between .000 and .005 inch deep.

A taper from top to bottom. Some ripping of the quartz is acceptable.

I was quite impressed with the deepness of the groove, so after returning home I walked out to the tool room and talked to toolmaker Don Reynolds, who was working on a surface grinder. I asked him if he had a sharp diamond wheel dresser. (These are used to dress carborundum and other types of grinding wheels.) He did in fact have one; it had been barely used, and had a nice sharp point. (These industrial diamonds are set into a steel shank, which is then fixtured so as to sit on a magnetic chuck.) I asked him how deep a groove he thought he could scratch into a piece of granite with the diamond.

He said, “Let’s find out!”

We walked over to a granite surface plate while I jokingly admonished him not to try it on the work surface. He pressed the diamond point into the side of the plate. Bearing down with all the weight he could throw behind it, he scoured the side of the plate with a scratch about four inches long.

We both felt the scratch. “How deep would you say that is?” I asked.

“Oh, between .003 and .005 inch,” he said.

“Let’s check it out then!” I said.

Don fixtured an indicator gauge in a surface gauge and zeroed the fine needle point on the surface. As he passed it over the groove, the point dropped into the groove and the dial read only .001 inch!

The reason I bring this up is that it has been suggested that if the core did have a spiral groove, it would have been created by the lateral pressure of a spinning drill as it was being rapidly withdrawn from the hole. Bringing all my thirty-eight years of experience to bear, for the following reasons I cannot imagine that this is remotely possible:

This idea relies on centrifugal force to cut the groove, as the drill is being withdrawn and passing over a widening gap, and to achieve greater centrifugal force, the drill would need to spin faster.

There wouldn’t be sufficient lateral force to cut a groove in granite to a depth of .001 inch, let alone .005 inch. It is as simple as that.

With a spinning drill shank that has the freedom to roam inside an oversized bearing, the drill will seek the path of least resistance, which is away from the granite.

Petrie’s observations were valid when he claimed that this was not a viable means of creating the groove, because of a buildup of dust between the tube and the granite.

Why such a commotion regarding a small, insignificant core? Because it was seen as the weakest area of my work, and therefore easily disputed. It also served to obscure and divert attention from other, more significant artifacts that I have described. Thus, I would challenge the orthodox camp to forget about Petrie’s Core #7 for now and provide explanations for all of the other artifacts I describe in my book. I would challenge them to demonstrate, with the tools they have educated us with for centuries, how the ancient Egyptians created such awesome precision and geometry in hard granite, diorite, basalt, and schist.

They can’t.

For these, my friends, are the products of a highly advanced civilization.