Lower Palaeolithic
handaxe from the desert near
Thebes (Garstang Museum,
University of Liverpool, E6581;
14 x 10cm); this artefact is
typical of the earliest phase of
tool use in the Nile Valley, c.
400,000-300,000.
Bird’s eye view of a ground loom, from the Middle Kingdom tomb of Khnumhotep
III (BH3) at Beni Hasan.
Scene from the tomb of
Ty at Saqqara (no. 60), showing
a potter using a wheel to fashion
a vessel.
Vertical looms depicted in the
18th-Dynasty tomb of Thutnefer at Thebes
(no. A6).
Scene showing a carpenter turning wood on a lathe,
in the early Ptolemaic tomb of Petosiris at Tuna el-Gebel.
We must accept that from time to time the Egyptians producedfigures of great intellectual ability responsible for major changesin traditions. Yet the Egyptians remained without the means toconceptualise this. Past innovators were remembered, but as ‘wisemen’ (Kemp 2006: 159).
Problem no. 10 in the
Moscow mathematical papyrus,
showing the method for calculating
the area of a semi-circle.
Problem no. 57 in the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus: the height of a pyramid is
calculated from the base-length and the sḳd (slope).
