Undermines· moderateGEO-E045
Dolerite pounders sourced from dykes within the Aswan granitoids, with Pharaonic tool-production quarries near the obelisk
- what the source states
- The authors state that boulders were worked with hammer stones (pounders) "of dolerite originating from dykes in the granitoids", or less commonly aplitic granite. In the northwestern Northern quarries (S-3) they record trenches in the granite bedrock connected to dolerite and/or aplite dykes, beside which lie roughly shaped pieces of uniform size compatible with discarded pounders, so that these trenches "seem to represent quarries for the production of stone tools" in the Pharaonic Period (New Kingdom by pottery), the closest such tool quarries yet found to the Unfinished Obelisk. Near Philae "a possible new tool quarry was found very close to" the temple entrance in a high-quality dolerite layer, with stone heaps of probable tool blanks.
- what we infer
- GEO-C511 frames the spheres as 'transported to Aswan' for a non-pounding purpose. Kelany et al. place the raw material in dykes within the Aswan granitoids and identify purpose-built tool quarries adjacent to the working areas, i.e. a local pounder industry embedded in the quarry landscape. This weighs against the premise of exotic import (Engelbach's contrary 1922 opinion is recorded in GEO-E002) and, with the association of pounders with extraction debris everywhere, against a non-quarrying purpose. It does not itself test what the pounders struck. My inference.
- limitations
- Tool-quarry identification rests on blank size and associated pottery, not petrographic matching of pounders to specific dykes in the shown text.
- Engelbach 1922 judged the pounder stone not to occur in the Aswan quarries; the disagreement is unresolved here.