In my two previous posts about science in Ancient Egypt, I gave you a short introduction to Astronomy & Mathematics, and Geography, Geology & Biology. In this article I wanna show you the power of innovation and technology of this advanced ancient culture which will cover in the same time the subjects of Physics and Chemistry and will also give you a more detailed view into the work of archaeologists and how they come to their conclusions about the historical cultural development in past times.

Archaeological Sources

Egyptologists today divide the ancient egyptian past into several periods as you can see in the picture below.

Scholars often refer to the intermediate periods as the "dark ages", because we as archaeologists have to deal with a lack of reliable historical sources. A few years ago there was a common opinion that in those times the creativity of people decreased. Theories have been put forward that, for example, the pottery was less "beautiful" because people had been busy surviving the crises. As we know now, the opposite was often the case (but not in general). We cannot distinguish between the ancient periods by simply judging about the artistic quality of the remains we found. There is one important phrase we use now which is the basis of our archaeological evaluation: The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. In other words – even if we do not find an artistically shaped jar dating back to one of the intermediate periods, we cannot conclude that there haven't been there such vessels at all.

The Ancient Egyptians were proud people. They accumulated an advanced knowledge over the millennia in their collective mind and they knew that this was one of the keys to their success. Their "resurrection" after social downfalls in the intermediate periods, was only possible by a strong solution-oriented thinking. Creativity and a progressive mind are necessary to "restart" on a higher level after the chaos. In my opinion, the Ancient Egyptians were no exception to that.

Innovation, technology and the progressive principle of "trial and error"

_{The unfinished obelisk of Memphis. Picture credit: Gérard Ducher Source}

Today we often sharply distinguish between the scientific subjects and only talk about "interdisciplinary teamwork" or similar when it comes to touching or overlapping of the subjects. But in Ancient Egypt, there was no such strict separation and they did not "study" in order to gain more knowledge in an experimental way. We instead have evidence of a "trial and error" principle that runs through the epochs. The best example is the "unfinished obelisk", a huge monument that was probably meant to be placed in the Temple of Karnak in Memphis (today Luxor).

The obelisk is showing marks of stonework that "shaped" the form of the object directly out of the granite on the ground. But due to static problems, it broke suddenly and could not be used in the determined way. So it was left abandoned there until archaeologists rediscovered it. This quite rare example was subject to many archaeological experiments that tried to find out which stoneworking technique the Ancient Egyptians used. Until today there is no satisfying theory of how it was really possible with the assumed tools they used: was it copper chisels or other, much harder stones? It is still an enigma even to Egyptologists and will be studied further with our progressing knowledge.

Pyro-Technology

When you hear the term "pyro-technology" you probably think first of something explosive, right? ;) But in a scientific context pyro-technology refers to the burning process of a product or produced material. In the following paragraph, I will describe to you a few technological innovations of the Ancient Egyptians.

Pottery and ceramics

Pottery, as whole vessels or plates or even as sherds, is the most common finding in Egypt. When you arrive at an archaeological site the first you will probably see is a huge amount of pottery, especially in areas of human settlement. The site "Umm al-Qa'ab" for instance is named after its appearance - it stands for the arabic phrase "Mother of the Pots". It is a huge area almost completely covered with broken pottery dating back to the predynastic time, which is around 3200 BCE. And it is not an exception. There are numerous places like this all over Egypt. As a beginner in archaeology, you will feel some kind of "respect" of not trambling on the ground in order to avoid breaking more of the precious sherds from where you know – they are proofs of thousands of years old history. You take a sherd in your hand and can't believe it - this piece of a bowl was once touched by an Ancient Egyptian and you are touching it again now. At that moment you feel that unimaginable time span shrinking to a second...

_{Umm_el-Qaab – the "Mother of Pots", an area fully covered with ancient pottery sherds.
Picture license: Public Domain Source}

You could think now – oh pottery...how boring. I admit, especially those sherds without any decoration are in general not sooo interesting, but from a scientific standpoint we mostly look for sherds with (parts of) a rim or a bottom. They can be counted and analysed in quantity, but also in quality. But the most important issue of ancient pottery is their function as a marker for dating. The age of the site, the settlement or tomb can be determined quite precisely. For this we have several methods:

The Ancient Egyptians used different types of clay and almost every village had their own, specific sort of "temper". They used rests of crops (chaff) to mix it with the clay in order to make it more robust after burning or drying. And this kind of technology progressed over the millennia in a clearly visible way and leave to us archaeologists a huge collection of time witnesses.

Today we can examine the material with (as an example) the so-called thermoluminescence analysis. This is a difficult procedure that measures the energy in the crystalline structure of burned material like pottery. It is such a complex area of research that there were even excellence cluster topoi built in "archeoceramology".

Beside this we can analyse the contains of chaff. Those plant remains give often a great insight even into agricultural issues.

_{Sir William Flinders Petrie,
Picture credit: Public Domain Source}

And the third archaeological method is one of the methods that were "invented" already by the first professional archaeologists in Egypt, such as Sir Flinders Petrie, who created a very differentiated sequence of pottery for the predynastic period. His classification has been the role model for many Egyptologists of today to precisely classify an object regarding its sort, its shape, its colour and its creation process and put it in a serial row within a time frame. An interesting view into the work of Petrie can be seen here in this public document "A Corpus of Prehistoric Pottery and Palettes (http://www.etana.org/sites/default/files/coretexts/15280.pdf)" from 1917. Modern Egyptologists also often refer to the so-called "napf-index", which is a similar sequence of bowls in a certain time period.

_{Sequence Dating: a series of pottery from a certain time period collected and drawn by Petrie.
Picture license: Public Domain Source}

Glass Production

Another very interesting field of research is the glass production in Ancient Egypt. You probably don't know that they were able to create vessels and decorative objects on a very advanced level already in the earliest times?

_{A piece of natural libyan desert glass.
Picture credit: H. Raab Source}

The Ancient Egyptians already knew natural desert glass. This is the result of a phenomenon that is taking place when certain conditions in the desert were coming together: quartz sand and the impact of a meteorite 30 million years ago. Very high pressure and temperature led to melting the quartz sand into natural glass. The explosive effect of the impact had thrown those molten pieces into the air which caused their fast cooling and leave them appearing shiny and translucent. This is one theory. The other theory says, it must have been an effect of hydro-volcanic activities: an explosion of SiO2-gel caused the same effect as described above. However, for producing glass you also need these three conditions: high temperature, high pressure and a fast cooling.

_{The famous pectoral (huge ceremonial necklace) contains a scarab (shape of a beetle) made of libyan desert glass.
Picture credit: Jon Bodsworth, Public Domain Source}

So the procedure of artificial glass seems quite more difficult when you consider the tools and machines we need today. Glass, in general, is made of quartz sand that is molten in a high temperature of around 1700°C. By adding a flux you can decrease and therefore control the temperature which was necessary in ancient times when nobody knew how hot the oven really was. Additional calcium was put to the molten mixture to stabilize the final product. Today we know that this procedure strengthened the molecular network of the glass.

It is unknown in which way the glass production technology was imported into Ancient Egypt, but scholars assume it came from Ancient Syria or Palestine at around 1500 BCE as these areas were known for trading raw glass chunks. Pliny the Elder wrote in his "Historia naturalis" that the sodium bicarbonate that was used in the burning/melting process as a flux came from the egyptian "Wadi Natrun", a dry desert valley with a huge natural deposit of this material.
To create colourful glass in different shades the Ancient Egyptians used several minerals and metal oxides, such as Mangan for producing glass in purple colour to mimic the gemstone Amethyst which was very rare in Egypt. Beside the emulation of gemstones for further processing into jewellery, glass was used for vessels, bowls, vases and even for decoration. Below you can see a small collection of Ancient Egyptian glass artworks.

_{Left: A translucent glass vase from Edfu, Picture Credit: Public Domain Source
Right: A white vase with coloured elements, Picture Credit: Public Domain Source}

_{A beautiful decorative vessel in the shape of a fish. On display at the British Museum in London EA55193, 18^th dynasty (New Kingdom), Picture Credit: British Museum Source}

Faience

Regarding faience, I refer to one of my previous articles in which I only scratched the surface of this fascinating technology that continued the development of glass production in a very advanced way at around the 10th century BCE. And "scratching the surface" is a good keyword to emphasize the most apparent characteristic: the smooth, shiny surface of faience in its many shades of blue was determined to mimic the colour of turquoise which was a rare and therefore expensive gemstone in Ancient Egypt. It was – from a modern viewpoint – a difficult creation process. But the Egyptians refined this technology more and more. And here is how it worked:

The basic substance was a normal ceramic material made of quartz sand, metal oxide and calcite and the object was produced like normal pottery. But the trick was now to create a glaze that was sparkling like a mirror. After burning the basic object the Ancient Egyptians mixed fine powdered sandstone, chalk, soda and copper oxide together with water and then dipped or covered the object with that fluid. The last step was a second burning with a lower temperature at around 600 °C. The chemical reaction of the ingredients with the temperature caused that amazing blue colour and the Ancient Egyptians tested their mixture in different proportions of the ingredients to create faiences in shades from blue to turquoise.

_{A scarab with wings made from Egyptian Faience. Graeco-Roman period, Brooklyn Museum.
Picture credit: Public Domain Source}

_{Another very fine piece of egyptian faience artwork: inlays with the shape of lotus blossoms.
Picture credit: Public Domain Source}

Conclusion

Although this is still a short summary of the fascinating technologies in Ancient Egypt I apologize for this long article to read. ;) Please keep in mind that there are many more highly interesting aspects of technology to discuss but this would go beyond the scope of this. However, feel free to ask any questions in the comment section below.

In one of my next articles, I will cover a subject that takes a great space in the scientific research especially of the German Egyptology: writing & language. So follow me on this blog for more interesting facts about Ancient Egypt!

_{Sources and further reading:}

_{• Barras, Heather, Archaeological Heroes: An evaluation of Flinders Petrie’s contribution to Archaeology, in: The Post Hole Issue 49, pp. 1–6. ONLINE

• Clayton, Patrick A., Spencer, Leonard James, Silica Glass from the Libyan Desert, in: Mineralogical Magazine 23 (1934), No. 144, pp. 501–508. ONLINE

• Flinders Petrie Biography: ONLINE

• Glass production (german article): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glas

• Petrie, William Flinders, A Corpus of Prehistoric Pottery and Palettes, London 1917. PDF-Link

• Sequence Dating: ONLINE

• Thermoluminescence Dating: ONLINE

• Umm al-Qa'ab: Shaw, Ian, The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, Oxford 2000, p. 67.

• Zimmermann, Martin, Glasherstellung im Frühmittelalter. Zusammenfassung der Dissertation: https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/arch-inf/article/viewFile/26241/19957}

_{Licenses of the pictures are CC BY-SA 3.0 or CC BY-SA 4.0 with the corresponding author credited appropriately below the picture. Image used in the editorial picture by British Museum EA55193.}

If you liked this article, please follow me on my blog Hive account@laylahsophia. I am a German Egyptologist writing about ancient and contemporary Egypt, history of science, philosophy and life.

EGYPTOLOGY: Science in Ancient Egypt, Part #3