Ancient Egyptian technology
[21] There has been some dispute among archaeologists over whether the abrasive was quartz sand or a harder mineral such as corundum, emery or diamond, and whether it was loose or embedded in the metal.
In some late myths, Ptah was identified as the primordial mound and had called creation into being, he was considered the deity of craftsmen, and in particular, of stone-based crafts.
The Nile valley has been the site of one of the most influential civilizations in the world with its architectural monuments, which include the Giza pyramid complex and the Great Sphinx.
The mostly ruined Black Pyramid dating from the reign of Amenemhat III once had a polished granite pyramidion or capstone, now on display in the main hall of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
Obelisks were a prominent part of the Ancient Egyptian architecture, placed in pairs at the entrances of various monuments and important buildings such as temples.
[30] In 1902, Encyclopædia Britannica wrote: "The earliest temple obelisk still in position is that of Senusret I of the XIIth Dynasty at Heliopolis (68 feet high)".
The obelisk symbolized the sky deity Ra and during the brief religious reformation of Akhenaten was said to be a petrified ray of the Aten, the sun disk.
The inclined plane permits one to overcome a large resistance by applying a relatively small force through a longer distance than the load is to be raised.
And I ordered to build twelve warships with rams, dedicated to Amun or Sobek, or Maat and Sekhmet, whose image was crowned best bronze noses.
And blocked Our Majesty ship inside three partitions (bulkheads) so as not to drown it by ramming the wicked, and the sailors had time to repair the hole.
and they have (carried) on the nose three assault heavy crossbow arrows so they lit resin or oil with a salt of Seth (probably nitrate) tore a special blend and punched (?)
and long ship seventy five cubits (41m), and the breadth sixteen, and in battle can go three-quarters of iteru per hour (about 6.5 knots)...When Thutmose III achieved warships displacement up to 360 tons and carried up to ten new heavy and light to seventeen catapults based bronze springs, called "siege crossbow" – more precisely, siege bows.
[50] According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Necho II sent out an expedition of Phoenicians, which reputedly, at some point between 610 and before 594 BC, sailed in three years from the Red Sea around Africa to the mouth of the Nile.
He suggests that "It is extremely unlikely that an Egyptian king would, or could, have acted as Necho is depicted as doing" and that the story might have been triggered by the failure of Sataspes' attempt to circumnavigate Africa under Xerxes the Great.
[65] Construction of drainage canals reduced the problems of major flooding from entering homes and areas of crops; but because it was a hydraulic civilization, much of the water management was controlled in a systematic way.
They were made by winding molten glass around a metal bar and were highly prized as a trading commodity, especially blue beads, which were believed to have magical powers.
[72] Even before Upper and Lower Egypt were unified in 3000 BC, observations of the night sky had influenced the development of a religion in which many of its principal deities were heavenly bodies.
In Lower Egypt, priests built circular mudbrick walls with which to make a false horizon where they could mark the position of the sun as it rose at dawn, and then with a plumb-bob note the northern or southern turning points (solstices).
Meanwhile, in Upper Egypt, a lunar calendar was being developed based on the behavior of the moon and the reappearance of Sirius in its heliacal rising after its annual absence of about 70 days.
An astronomical ceiling in the burial chamber of Ramesses VI shows the sun being born from Nut in the morning, traveling along her body during the day and being swallowed at night.
The temple complexes built by Niuserre at Abu Gurab and Userkaf at Abusir have been excavated and have astronomical alignments, and the roofs of some of the buildings could have been used by observers to view the stars, calculate the hours at night and predict the sunrise for religious festivals.
[75] This has been disputed however on the grounds that pre-Hipparchus texts do not mention precession and that "it is only by cunning interpretation of ancient myths and images, which are ostensibly about something else, that precession can be discerned in them, aided by some pretty esoteric numerological speculation involving the 72 years that mark one degree of shift in the zodiacal system and any number of permutations by multiplication, division, and addition.
"[76] Note however that the Egyptian observation of a slowly changing stellar alignment over a multi-year period does not necessarily mean that they understood or even cared what was going on.
For instance, from the Middle Kingdom onwards they used a table with entries for each month to tell the time of night from the passing of constellations.
Among the treatments are closing wounds with sutures,[84] bandaging, splints, poultices,[80] Immobilization is advised for head and spinal cord injuries, as well as other lower body fractures.
[81]: 1 The procedures of this papyrus demonstrate an Egyptian level of knowledge of medicines that surpassed that of Hippocrates, who lived 1000 years later,[85]: 59 and the documented rationale for diagnosis and treatment of spinal injuries can still be regarded as the state-of-the-art reasoning for modern clinical practice.
[94] According to Michael D. Parkins, sewage pharmacology first began in ancient Egypt and was continued through the Middle Ages,[93] and while the use of animal dung can have curative properties,[95] it is not without its risk.
[96] Frank J. Snoek wrote that Egyptian medicine used fly specks, lizard blood, swine teeth, and other such remedies which he believes could have been harmful.
[98] Lathes are known from at least 1300 BC,[99] but Flinders Petrie claimed that they had been used as early as the 4th Dynasty, based on tool marks found on stone bowls from that period.
[102] The comment about lightning appears to come from a misunderstanding of a text referring to "high poles covered with copper plates" to argue this[103] but Dr. Bolko Stern has written in detail explaining why the copper covered tops of poles (which were lower than the associated pylons) do not relate to electricity or lightning, pointing out that no evidence of anything used to manipulate electricity had been found in Egypt and that this was a magical and not a technical installation.
