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by

Christopher Dunn

10/8/01 & 3/2/03

In this article, I will explain in detail why Ibelieve artifacts that I have studied in Egyptwere the products of an advanced culture, ora culture with a significantly different levelof technology for which we have given themcredit. I will focus on one particular aspectof these artifacts: their precision. I could getinto a long drawn out discussion of whatwas necessary to produce this amazing pre-cision, but I will leave that for another arti-cle. For the purposes of this article, what weneed to understand is what manufacturingprecision is and why we create it.

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What is precision?

The word comes from “precise” which Webster‘s defines as “sh-arply or exactly limited or defined as to meaning; exact; definite,not loose, vague or equivocal; exact in conduct; strict; formal; nice;punctilious.” Preciseness is “exactness; rigid nicety; excessiveregard to forms or rules; rigid formality.” Precision is “The state ofbeing precise as to meaning; preciseness; exactness; accuracy.”

To many people, the application of precision in their lives isrelated to their words and actions. We have precise speech, precisetime keeping and the precision of a military drill. We may have thegood fortune to be invited to a dinner party by a “precisian” andfind the tableware in exact order, with nary a spoon or goblet outof position.

The application of precision, as noted above, is part and parcel ofbeing civilized. It is the discipline and order that is necessary forcivilization to function successfully.

Beginning in the late 1800s, a different application of precision wasgaining increased importance and seen to be necessary to ensurethe successful outcome of human endeavors. The machines thatwere invented and used as labor-saving devices depended on pre-cision components to function properly. In the 1800s, the cottonindustry and steam power spawned the Industrial Revolution inthe north of England. The demand for more efficient spinningmills and looms gave rise to a greater emphasis on producingcomponents that functioned precisely. To make products that wereconsistent, variables in the manufacturing process had to bereduced or eliminated. To accomplish this, dimensional variablesthat were inherent in the manufacture of critical components need-ed to be reduced to acceptable levels. However, because of theinaccuracies of the machine tools of that day, skilled fitters wereneeded to scrape, chisel and file components to close dimensionsin order for them to fit properly.

Wars have accelerated the evolution of standardized measure-ments and the elimination of variables in the manufacturing pro-cess. Put yourself in the place of a soldier during the Civil War.

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Their rifles were precision crafted, but when replacing a compo-nent in the field, they had to hand file the pieces to fit. Obviously,this was time consuming, and in war, timing could make you awinner or a loser. Standards were necessarily instituted and sup-pliers had to meet these standards or lose business.

Anyone who has brought home a bicycle or piece of “Ready toassemble” furniture can appreciate the precision that is requiredfor these objects to go together easily. Have you ever found your-self trying to align a bolt in a pre-drilled hole that is off by aneighth of an inch? This is an excellent example of the need for pre-cision, and how the effort to produce precision products can be anexpensive, difficult endeavor.

In manufacturing today, components are made throughout theworld and come together in assembly plants. The exacting stan-dards and precision of the product shipped from thousands ofmiles away ensure that when they go to the assembly line, thecomponents fit together without additional work beingperformed.

Most people will never actually create objects to a high precision.It is understandable, therefore, that most people overlook thisimportant aspect of a civilization’s infrastructure. To laypersons,precision is an abstract concept. This is not a criticism. If you havenot had precision manufacturing experience, either professionallyor as a hobby, an understanding of the concept of precision is aca-demic.

We are end users of powerful precision technologies that fuel ourcivilization and make our lives easier. Without manufacturing pre-cision, cars would not run, planes would not fly and CDs wouldnot play. The precision we create is born out of necessity. We donot create it without good reason, because the costs of producingartifacts today go up exponentially if the demand for accuracy isgreater.

An example of close accuracy and precision is the 12-inch straight-edge that I have taken to Egypt in 1999 and 2001. The edge wasfinished on a precision grinder. Its deviation from a perfect

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straight line was .0001 inch. For the reader who cannot relate towhat that means in real terms, take a hair out of your head, andsplit it equally along its length into 20 parts. One part is approxi-mately equal to .0001 inch. (the average hair is .0025 inch). Or, tocompare it to our “Some Assembly Required” example above, thisstraight-edge is 1,250 times MORE precise than the pre-drilledhole which was off by an eighth of an inch.

If we were to miraculously uncover an unidentified artifact in theSahara desert that had been buried for thousands of years, howwould we determine its purpose? If the speculation arises that itmay have had some technological purpose, the challenge wouldbe to prove it, which would require us to reverse engineer itsdesign to determine its function. Reverse engineering has been apart of industrial competitiveness for years. Engineers would buya competitor‘s product and by studying its design and compo-nents would understand the science and engineering behind itsfunction. This is why the recovery of a potential or real enemy’sweapons of war is important.

If, after a cursory examination of this unidentified prehistoric arti-fact, we determine that it may have been a machine that func-tioned as a tool to create artifacts, how would we know that it wasa precision machine tool? In order to prove the case for our prehis-toric precision machine tool, it would need to be measure for accu-racy. Certain components associated with precision machine toolsare manufactured to a high accuracy. Flat surfaces necessary forthe machine to function properly would be finished to within.0002 inch. This kind of accuracy separates primitive tools andthose that are the result of need and development. The discoveryof this precision would elevate the artifact to a higher purpose. Ifthese components were not precise, the arguments against it beingthe product of an advanced society would be strengthened.

The critical evidence, therefore, is the accuracy of the surfacesbeing measured. Artisans do not create surfaces with such accura-cy unless the artifact they are creating needs to function to exactspecifications. This kind of precision is only conceived of and cre-ated out of need. Unless there is a need, it isn‘t even a consider-ation.

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When looking for prehistoric machines, though, we tend to lookfor artifacts that are made of iron or steel, not granite. Primarilybecause we use iron and steel to construct our machines. We seethings as we are not how they are. Nevertheless, the critical proofthat would be demanded to support the conclusion that a steelartifact was a precision machine is its precision, and the productof the machine. This precision can be found in Egypt—crafted intomany artifacts made of stable igneous rock that would survivetens of thousands of years and still retain their precision. On theone hand we may not have the iron and steel used to create theartifact, but we have the products in abundance. Many of theseartifacts, I believe may have been mis-identified and assigned to a

time period that does not support thehypothesis that the tools used to createthem may have eroded over a much longertime than established dates would allow.There is support for such a speculation if welook at artifacts from purely an engineeringperspective. Though it has been said that tounderstand the ancient Egyptian culture,you have to think like an Egyptian, it wouldbe impossible to reach back in time andknow what what was on the pyramid build-ers minds at any given time. Except, per-haps, for a particular train of thought. Ifthere is anything we can say with absoluteconfidence, the ancient Egyptians spentmuch of their time devoted to the develop-

ment of technical skills that were intended to accomplish some ofthe greatest engineering feats in the history of this planet. So, itwould seem reasonable to assume that in order to understandtheir technological accomplishments, however, you have to thinklike an engineer.

The Serapeum

The granite box inside Khafre’s pyramid has the same characteris-tics as the boxes inside the Serapeum. Yet the boxes in theSerapeum were ascribed to the 18th dynasty, over 1100 years later

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when stoneworking was supposedly in decline. Considering thatthis dating was based on pottery items that were found and not

the boxes themselves, it would be reasonableto speculate that the boxes have not beendated accurately. Their characteristics showthat their creators used the same tools andwere blessed with the same skill and knowl-edge as those who created Khafre‘s pyramid.Moreover, the boxes in both locations are evi-dence of a much higher purpose than mereburial sarcophagii. They are finished to a highaccuracy, their corners are remarkably square,

and their inside corners worked down to a dimension that issharper than what one would expect to find in an artifact fromprehistory. All of these features are extremely difficult to accom-plish and none of them necessary for a mere burial box.

This photograph is of a wax impression taken of theinside southwest vertical corner of Khafre’s box. Thewax impression was fixtured on a 40X J&L comparitor.The existence of such a sharp corner raises the questionof purpose because of the inordinate amount of extratime needed to work the granite down to such a smalldimension.

The following photograph is of the corner radius inone of the boxes inside the Serapeum. I was the only person insidethis dark box when this photograph was taken, so I had to put

down my flashlight to use mycamera. Hence, the photograph,is somewhat out of focus. I cantestify, though, that when I wasgoing through my set of radiusgages in order to select the closestfit, the 5/32 inch radius gage thatyou see in this photograph fitsnugly in the corner.

Inspecting the corner radius

Granite box inside the Serapeum

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In 1995 I inspected the inside andoutside surfaces of two boxes inthe Serapeum with a 6-inch preci-sion straight edge that was accu-rate to .0002 inch. My report onwhat I discovered has been pub-lished in magazine articles, in mybook The Giza Power Plant, andon my web site, as AdvancedMachining in Ancient Egypt.

The artifacts I have measure in Egypt have the marks of carefuland remarkable manufacturing methods. They are unmistakableand irrefutable in their precision but origin or intent will alwaysbe open to speculation. The following series of photographs weretaken inside the Serapeum onAugust 27, 2001. Within theserock tunnels carved out of thenative bedrock, are over 20 ofthese boxes. The majority aremade of granite, which was quar-ried over 500 miles away at theAswan quarries, and one of themis made of basalt. Distinguishingthe rock these boxes are made ofand the rock tunnels within which they are housed, is the level ofdifficulty necessary to cut the material. Granite and basalt areglass-like igneous rocks. The pink granite, found in Egypt con-tains about 55 percent silicon quartz crystal that has a Mohs hard-ness of 7. By comparison, the limestone bedrock where these

boxes are found has a hardness ofMohs 3. Though not impossible towork, granite requires an abrasivethat is as hard or harder to cut it.There are differences of opinionon the level of technology used tocreate these artifacts. Some claimthat hand work with quartz sandand copper is sufficient to explainthe evidence, but there are several

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artifacts, besides the boxes in the Serapeum, that argue againstsuch a simple primitive notion. There are drill cores that indicatethat holes were drilled into the granite at a feed rate of .100 inchper revolution of the drill. To date, no one has produced evidencethat shows that a simple hand powered bow drill attached to acopper tube can accomplish this feat.

In the following two photographs I am inspecting the squarenessbetween a 27 ton lid and the inside surface of the granite box on

which it sits. The precision square I usedwas calibrated to .00005 inch (that is5/100,000 of an inch) using a Jones &Lamson comparitor.

The underside of the lid and the insidewall of the box I found to be square, andfinding that the squareness wasachieved not just on one side of the boxbut both, raises the level of difficulty inaccomplishing this feat.

Think of it as ageometric reality.In order for the lidto be square withthe two insidewalls, the insidewalls would have

to be parallel to one another along the verti-cal axis. Moreover, the topside of the boxwould need to establish a plane that issquare to the sides. That makes finishing theinside exponentially more difficult. The man-ufacturers of these boxes in the Serapeumnot only created inside surfaces that wereflat when measured vertically and horizon-tally, they also made sure that the surfacesthey were creating were square and parallelto each other, with one surface, the top, hav-ing sides that are 5 feet and 10 feet apart

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from each other. But without such parallism and squareness of thetop surface, the squareness noted on both sides would not exist

While it may be argued that modern man cannot impose a modernperspective on artifact that are thousands of years old, an appreci-ation of the level of precision found in these artifacts is lacking inarchaeological literature and is only revealed by an understandingwhat it takes to produce this kind of work. As an engineer andcraftsman, who has worked in manufacturing for over 40 yearsand who has created precision artifacts in our modern world, inmy opinion this accomplishment in prehistory deserves more rec-ognition. Nobody does this kind of work unless there is a veryhigh purpose for the artifact. Even the concept of this kind of pre-cision does not occur to an artisan unless there is no other meansof accomplishing what the artifact is intended to do. The onlyother reason that such precision would be created in an objectwould be that the tools that are used to create it are so precise thatthey are incapable of producing anything less than precision. Witheither scenario, we are looking at a higher civilization inprehistory than what is currently accepted. To me, the implica-tions are staggering.

This is why I believe that these artifacts that I have measured inEgypt, are the smoking gun that proves, without a shadow of adoubt, that a higher civilization than what we have been taughtexisted in ancient Egypt. The evidence is cut into the stone.

The boxes that are off the beaten tourist‘s path in the rock tunnelsof the Serapeum would be extremely difficult to produce today.Their smooth flat surfaces, orthogonal perfection and incrediblysmall inside corner radii that I have inspected with modern preci-sion straight edges, squares and radius gages, leave me in awe.Even though after contacting four precision granite manufacturersI could not find one who could replicate their perfection, I wouldnot say that it would be impossible to make one today—if we hada good reason to do so. But what would that reason be? For whatpurpose would we quarry an 80-ton block of granite, hollow itsinside and proceed to craft it to such a high level of accuracy? Whywould we find it necessary to craft the top surface of this box so

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that a lid with an equally flat underside surface would sit squarewith the inside walls?

There may be arguments against the claims of advanced societies inprehistory. Some may argue that the lack of machinery refutes suchclaims, but a lack of evidence is not evidence. It is fallacious to denyor ignore what exists by arguing for what does not exist. When weponder the purpose for creating such precision, we inexorablymove beyond the simple reasons espoused by historians and areforced to consider that there was a civilization in prehistory thatwas far more advanced and vastly different than previouslythought. We do not need to look for secret chambers or halls ofrecords to know that this civilization existed. It is crafted into someof the hardiest materials with which they worked—igneous rock.

I am indebted to Dr. Zahi Hawass for introducing me to Mr. AdelHussein Mohamed, the Director of Saqqara, who gave me permis-sion to conduct further studies inside the Serapeum. Mr. Mohamedwas extremely hospitable and kind. He accompanied me to the siteand observed as I inspected the granite boxes and took photo-graphs. I especially enjoyed his Egyptian hospitality and hot tea. Iam deeply grateful, also, to Gail Fallen of Grizzly Adams Produc-tions. Without her impeccable diplomacy, these events would nothave transpired.

Adel Hussein Mohamed, Director of Saqqara, Mohamed, Inspectorand Gail Fallen, Producer.