Egyptian Tool Making

Egyptian Tool Making

A lot about the Egyptians and their Tool Making is known and documented throughout ancient history. Egyptian Tool Making and their influences on many different areas such as buildings, jewellery, glass work, agriculture, ship building, and so on reports back to 3400 B.C. Much was learnt from the Egyptians and even some of the tools used today stems back to the ancient Egyptians. For example the tool for determining horizontal direction is called a level. The Egyptians used an A frame to determine this horizontal line. An A frame is a plumb line suspended from the vertex of the A. When the feet of the A were set on the surface to be checked, if the plumb line bisected the crossbar of the A, the surface was horizontal. The A-frame level was used in Europe until the middle of the 19th century.

Egyptian Tool Making and Buildings

Many buildings from Ancient Egypt are still standing today which is one of the main reasons why Egypt draws in so many tourists year after year. The Egyptian buildings are among the largest constructions ever conceived and built by humans and human tool making. Many of the tools used by Egyptians were made from stone and their use of copper. Flint was the first mineral that was collected by the Egyptians and used in tool making. One of the first documented tools by the Egyptians used for the building of their structures are hand axes. Pieces of flint were carefully flaked away to make blades and arrow heads for the use of the hand axes and other tools. Copper was also one of the first materials used in Egyptian tool making and it was one of the most important for their development as it was smelted in furnaces from malachite ore mined in the Sinai. The Egyptians tool making from copper included copper chisels, saws, adze with a copper blade, and copper drills.

Still to this day it has not been found or agreed upon as to how the Egyptians built some of their buildings especially the Great Pyramids and what tool making skills were used to build it.

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