The corpus of vessels in granite, diorite, gneiss, schist and other hard stones produced in Egypt before and around the First Dynasty, numbering in the tens of thousands, with large collections in the Cairo Museum, the Petrie Museum and the Metropolitan.
The live argument
Since 2023 a group outside Egyptology, most visibly Ben van Kerkwyk, has published structured-light and CT scans of selected vessels and argued that they show rotational symmetry, wall thicknesses and internal geometries that imply lathe work and a level of metrology inconsistent with copper tools and abrasive sand. The claim is specific, it is quantitative, and it is checkable, which distinguishes it from most of the ancient-technology literature.
What the field says
That the sample is self-selected from an enormous corpus and that the best pieces are not representative; that the documented tradition of Egyptian stone-vessel making, including the tube drills and borers Denys Stocks reproduced, covers the methods; and that the metrology has not been done to a standard that would let anyone else replicate it. The honest position in 2026 is that the measurements have been published by advocates and not yet independently repeated, and that the question Christopher Dunn opened at Giza has had its most serious second life here.
Connections
Ben van Kerkwyk · Christopher Dunn · Ancient Machining · Denys Stocks · Core No. 7 · The Giza Power Plant · Serapeum of Saqqara · Flinders Petrie