How Ancient Egyptians cut all the hard stone used for their great structures still seems to be a mystery with modern papers showing that they only used copper and stone tools.
From what I have read in modern book on Ancient Egypt they didn't have access to iron tools yet.
In this clip from Lost treasure of Egypt - Season 1 - Episode 2 at about 13:20 a man uses a magnet to pull up iron shavings which he claims shows iron tools were used.
As someone who has worked with shaping stone, the markings on the stone look similar to how my modern chisel would cut.
From what I can gather its currently accepted that the only iron available to Ancient Egyptians would of been meteorites but that is a very hard material to work with due to impurities.
I did some searching with Google Maps and in this photo I circled in red where old volcanoes are located. Would it be safe to assume somewhere with such a large amount of old volcanoes would have large amounts of metal deposits including iron?
I know people ask "if they did use iron tools why can't we find any?". One nice thing about iron is it can be reworked, reused, and/ or reforged. Is it possible that we can't find iron tools from that time because it was reused? Iron tools in that time would of been a very sought after item.
What are your thoughts on this?
Note: If there is a better place to post this question please let me know :)
Hey there,
Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.
If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!