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Industry : Woodworking
Woodworking
Joiners, carpenters, sculptors, and shipwrights required woods for their work, but Egypt was not well supplied with large trees, and from the early historic period foreign timber had to be imported. Among the places that supplied wood were Assyria; the Hittite homeland; Lebanon; Naharin, the land of the Mitannians; and Punt. There the Egyptians could obtain cedar, cypress, ebony, elm, juniper, maple, oak, pine, and yew. Native Egyptian timbers used by carpenters and joiners included acacia, sycamore fig, and tamarisk as well as the wood of the date palm, dom palm, persea, and willow.
TOOLS
Woodcarving, carpentry, and joinery only became established from the
late Predynastic Period when copper tools first became available for
working wood. These tools are illustrated in tomb scenes and on
Middle Kingdom coffins, and some examples have survived among tomb
contents. Town sites such as Gurob and Kahun have also provided rare
but important examples of tools actually used by local craftsmen.
There was quite a wide range of carpentry tools, which included
adzes, axes, chisels, reamers and saws, awls, borers, knives, rasps,
nails, bow drills, wooden mallets, and sandstone blocks for
polishing. The adzes, axes, saws, and some of the chisels were all
set in wooden handles; for many years copper was used for the blades
but later was often replaced by bronze and finally by iron. Leather
thongs were used to attach the blades to the handles.
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TYPES OF WOOD
Different woods were employed for specific purposes. Sycamore and
sometimes imported cedar were used when large, thick planks were
required for the production of boxes, doors, tables, coffins, and
large statues. If a hard wood was required especially for tools and
tool handles the craftsmen chose tamarisk, while acacia was selected
for planks and masts for boats, weapons, and some furniture. Foreign
woods apart from cedar which was used for ships, the best coffins,
masts of pylons, and temple doors were often employed for ornamental
purposes, especially boxes, chairs, and tables decorated with inlaid
ebony and ivory. These exotic goods were so desirable that native
woods were sometimes painted to resemble the foreign ones.
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THE WOODWORKING PROCESS
To produce their wares the carpenters first used
a handsaw (a large knife with a toothed edge) to reduce the wood to
the required size. The Egyptians employed the pull saw, the cutting
edge of the teeth set toward the handle, whereas the push saw (the
type used today) has teeth set away from the handle and the saw is
pushed forward when it is used. Each piece of wood had to be cut
single-handedly; the wooden beam was placed upright in a simple vice
and held between two posts that were firmly fixed into the ground.
It was kept in place by cords and cut from the top downward. The axe
and the adze were used for rough shaping, and the socket drill,
worked by a bow, made smaller holes. A chisel was employed for
mortises and carving; the carpenter struck the chisel with a wooden
mallet. Finally, the wood was polished with a piece of fine-grained
sandstone (planes were unknown in Egypt). The carpenter also
utilized plummets and right-angled pieces in his work and kept his
bronze nails in a leather pouch. It is probable that lathing was not
introduced into Egypt until the Greco-Roman Period and that, in
earlier times, handworking rather than lathe-turning was the normal
method of producing items such as furniture legs. At first the
Egyptians had employed stone or flint tools for woodworking, but as
metal tools were developed they were used alongside the stone
implements enabling the carpenters to produce properly jointed
furniture. The scarcity of natural timbers encouraged the Egyptians
to develop “patchwork” construction in which they joined together
small or irregular pieces of wood, utilizing dowels, butterfly
clamps, lashing and pegging, and tongue and groove. Although nails
were used to fasten wood to metal as early as the Old Kingdom, they
were only employed from Dynasty 18 onward to fix wooden pieces
together. For lashing and pegging the woodwork joints were secured
to each other by means of hide or leather thongs, linen string, or
copper bands. This technique was used for coffins and furniture.
Mortise and tenon joints occur in many examples, including the tomb
furniture of Queen Hetepheres (Dynasty 4) and that of Tutankhamun
(Dynasty 18). Dovetailing is also found in examples from these tomb
groups, and some other pieces indicate that dowels were also
regularly employed elsewhere in the construction of coffins. Mitered
joints and hinges are also represented, and some interesting boxes
show how they were made secure: The box lid was usually fastened to
the base by tying (and then sealing) a piece of string that was
twisted around the two knobs fixed to the lid and base of the box.
From earliest times veneer and inlay were frequently employed as
decoration. Inferior wood was overlaid with strips of ebony and
ivory, and wooden coffins and boxes were inlaid with colored stones,
faience, and glass to produce attractive designs.
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Industry : Woodworking
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