Hand drill (hieroglyph)

Hand drill in hieroglyphs

The Hand drill is a hieroglyph, (and tool), used in ancient Egypt from the earliest dynasties. As a hieroglyph, it can also be used as a determinative for words related to the profession of vase, bowl, pot-making, etc., typically from fine-grained, colorful rare stone, for example unguent jars. The size of drills was small-to-large, small for small unguent jars, and large for more massive, grain-storing pottery. The original jars found in tombs were more often used for ceremonial usages, presumably the reason they are found as grave goods or tomb offerings.

Hand drill-(reconstructed).

Hand drill hieroglyph and tool explanation

The hand drill was a vertical type of weighted, and counterbalanced boring bar, (used today in horizontal lathe-work boring, for example: rifle tubes). The hieroglyph shows the weights used as pictured on temple reliefs; the weight of the stones does the tool work, and the artisan simply supplies the rotational motion of the tool, for boring the hole.

Of note: with the weighted device, the Egyptians were performing a lathe operation long before the invention. Instead of the lathe-(massive metal: weight and forces) doing the work, essentially the Egyptians were using a form of a vertical lathe-using gravity-weights, with the boring bar doing the cutting.

• 
  Base of Ancient Egypt type Old Kingdom funerary cone,
  in finest condition.
  Raised Bas relief, archaic-type hieroglyphs,
  between vertical registers.
• 
  Small, drilled stone vase, with 2-lugs for suspension, Fourth to Third millennium BC

See also

• Gardiner's Sign List#U. Agriculture, Crafts, and Professions
• List of Egyptian hieroglyphs

References

• Budge. An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary, E.A.Wallace Budge, (Dover Publications), c 1978, (c 1920), Dover edition, 1978. (In two volumes) (softcover, ISBN 0-486-23615-3)

External links

Media related to Stone drill (hieroglyph) at Wikimedia Commons