Top Engineer Discovers How Ancient Egyptian Vases Were Actually Made

I don't know if you want to talk about the vase project or not but I pretty much closed the book on it. I think I know how they were made and I can tell you. You think you know how the vases were made? Yes. All of the vases? Like these ones? I know how two classes of vases have been made and I have a pretty solid judgment about which vases are genuine and which are fake. Yeah and unfortunately for the ancient tech I think the explanation is trivial but let me show you a few actually. I brought a few. This is Matt's vase by the way which is very representative from the vases that I studied personally at the Petrie Museum and in Matt's collection. Is this one, have you measured this one? Yes. How precise is this one? It's consistent with manual precision. It just looks like it was made with clay like someone pinch potted it. Yes. Especially these little whatever these little handles are. I would say it's made by grinding and I'll show you another one. You know this one I bought so this is mine and this is also like finely made. Where did you buy it? This one I bought on eBay believe it or not and I was able to run some tests on it to show that it's genuine and I'll talk about it. To show that it's genuine. Where is it allegedly from? Egypt of course. From underneath the step pyramid? I don't know where it was found. It's got like a provenance that lists the gallery that sold it but I ran some tests so I know this is pretty nasty. This is an example from a private collector his name is Jordan Morris he lives in Australia. He bought like seven or eight of these and he sent a few of them to me to study. I think this is limestone. This is also pretty nasty so I was able to determine that and this is very finely made and of course you've seen this one right which was also bought and I'll show you two more. So one is modern and one is ancient and I'm pretty sure you'll be able to tell which one is modern and one is ancient. Yeah and both are alabaster which is not really alabaster it's called alabaster but it's travertine or calcite. This one's ancient? Yes because it's better made. I picked out the one that looked more perfect. Yeah and the other one is modern. You can feel the outside of this how it's kind of crude. Yeah and of course you know this is like 20 bucks so in Egypt it costs even less than that but there is an industry where they make alabaster vases using the same ancient technique you know they used for thousands of years and they're making the tourist vases and some are better some are worse but I bought a real cheap one you know just to get the quality. Yeah. But long story short I would ask Steve to to pull up a few pictures if you wouldn't mind. Is it that slideshow? Yes if you wouldn't mind. So you know I was really inspired by this whole you know vase talk to really dive deep into it because I don't know it's just something about it really ignited my interest because I like math and to me it's a mathematical problem you know you can answer the question of how these were made by looking at the mathematical properties of the 3d scans and I was fortunate that you know Matt Bell agreed to work with me and he shared you know a bunch of CT scans of his vessels you know with me that I was able to study and develop a metrological technique basically a mathematical algorithm that can tell me what's happening as far as how this vase was made and the first thing I've done I've determined or rather defined a quality metric is when you look at a vessel let's say you know this modern vessel or let's say this ancient vessel you know how can you characterize it and the typical metric that we use when we machine is tolerance right and we say that something is machined to a certain tolerance and I think it's not a particularly useful thing for archaeological objects because we don't know what the blueprint for it was right so was it precisely made not precisely made it's impossible to tell unless I have a blueprint so what I did instead I developed a quality metric which is a combination of concentricity and circularity which is by slicing the 3d model of a vessel if it's like rotational symmetric you get more or less circles yeah and how circular those slices are that's your circularity right how well aligned they are and what I've done I've scanned like almost 200 vessels about 60 or 70 modern ones you know like this one like this granite vase you know which is run of the mill you know from China for 40 bucks made out of solid granite how is that made turned on a lathe uh but not using like a metal cutter diamond coated wheel oh wow so for carters they use diamond coated wheels okay and this one was turned on a lathe because this is like calcite this is um this is called like Pakistani onyx but it's it's really you know not onyx it's calcite it just looks like onyx but this was turned on a lace using metal cutter and this was turned in using a diamond wheels so I scanned about a hundred of modern objects you know some like this some like this right some handmade so I bought like 30 handmade objects just to get a sample so this was on done on a computerized cnc type deal okay this was done manually on a lathe but you know manually without cnc this was cnc this was in a manual lathe work got it and this is like an entirely manual production okay and uh I've built a chart so let me see let's uh scroll down oh you okay uh there is a chart there I think slide number 13 there you go yeah I think that's a pretty telling chart so what you see here is uh three types of objects yellow blue and red and yellow are all of the modern objects you know these vases that are made on cnc or on life red are all of the you know manual you know this uh that I bought from Egypt or made by other artists by hand so I know for fact you know the thread triangles are made by hand okay and the blue ones are all of the objects I measured in the Petrie museum and what we see that the blue blue squares are entirely you know the same distribution as the red triangles yeah and completely is not matching at all in the distribution of yellow dots so what it tells me you know without any doubt is that the you know machine made quality is clearly distinguishable from a handmade quality in terms of you know concentricity and circularity when you represent it this way so this chart is basically is able to expose or tell apart machine work from you know manual work right because on a machine your circularity is concentricity is far greater and that's why you know your yellow points are grouped you know towards the lower corner okay so it tells you it's higher quality and none of the Petrie museum objects is you know nearly is remotely in that area okay which uh if we go down you know one slide there is a another interesting observation it's a slide 14 yeah oh good so this uh is a map of how the outer surface was ground or made you know versus the inner surface okay and once again the yellow area is the you know machine made objects made on a lathe the red are you know the manual objects that are made by you know Egyptians and other artists by hand by just grinding and turning an auger and the blue one is the Petrie and you can see that the blue is you know separate from everything else and without you know going into too much detail what you know the left chart i think is for the outer surface and the right one is for the inner surface yeah that's how they're grouped it's telling us that the in the case of the outer surface the object was turned so when they were so take this pretty nasty object so when they were making the outer surface they were turning this object and they were grinding it against a grinding block and that's what you know this first chart is telling us because the circularity is poor but concentricity is okay and that's what you get when you turn an object because the entire object is on the same axis it's turning as a whole right so good concentricity but poor circularity because it's rubbing against you know a rubbing stone that's just set next to it and it's not like a particularly precise you know setup and that's what you get the situation is more interesting with the inner surface because we see very good circularity and poor concentricity which is consistent with grinding using a grinding bit because grinding bit you know turns on the axis you know and pretty regularly will give you a very nice circle but as you move the bit because it's manually positioned every time it repositions and you lose this initial alignment so therefore you know from from these charts the inescapable conclusion is the outer surface is shaped by turning the rock or the object itself against the grinding block whereas the inner object is surface is shaped by turning the grinder you know against of the object so then i took the mats vessels and i you know ran them you know through this chart okay and you can see they broadly group into two categories you know one category is at the bottom left corner that is you know 100 you know consistent with modern machining there is no difference whereas the rest of the object you know is you know pretty much consistent with manual labor or with what i found at the petri these are all mats vessels yes yeah those they were then those that i was given okay now what is the pre-dynastic the blue what is that that's that's the you know petri museum objects that's how i classify that type of stone work okay i call it pre-dynastic because that's where it's originated the mats are also pre-dynastic right majority of his majority right so i'm able to so by applying you know this metrological technique that i developed i'm able to testify that the vast majority of his objects are genuine because they align with the pre-dynastic quality okay however unfortunately for you know the proponents or advocates of the ancient machining hypothesis i also submit and and submit on the basis of of my findings that the most precise objects from his collections and for that matter from the other collections i was able to look at are entirely consistent with modern machining so i believe that those aren't genuine objects i believe that those are made in modern times meaning interesting lasting 100 200 years okay because you know when i look at them you know they group the bottom left yeah the bottom left they group exactly separately you know they group exactly as modern objects are and they're not at all consistent you know with the rest of the okay and you know granted i haven't scanned every single you know object in a museum right so i cannot yeah say you know i've looked at every single one right how many roughly did you did you look at i scanned 20 museum objects and i looked at overall like nearly 100 objects in private collections okay in a majority from matt's collection but a good deal from you know jordan morris's collection and okay another gentleman i met on on internet also sent me his collection which are also scanned okay and every time the objects you know fall into two categories if there is like nothing in between it's either like the bottom left corner where it's like modern machining or it's you know this general you know cloud that coincides with both manual made or you know pretty nasty quality and i think the conclusion is inescapable the finely made objects they you know they are on provenance so we don't know where they came from right they are alleged to be of the bottom left you know of ancient egyptian origin but you know we don't know we don't know where they were found and when they look like modern i think they are modern it's basically when it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's you know to be a duck