King Tut's Chariot a Marvel of Ancient Engineering

astroengine writes "King Tutankhamun, who ruled Egypt over 3,000 years ago, looks as if he was chauffeured around the desert in one of the earliest-known high-performance vehicles. Tut's chariots surpass all monumental structures of the pharaohs in engineering sophistication. Discovered in pieces by British archaeologist Howard Carter when he entered King Tut's treasure-packed tomb in 1922, the collection consisted of two large ceremonial chariots, a smaller highly decorated one, and three others that were lighter and made for daily use. 'These vehicles appear to be the first mechanical systems which combine the use of kinematics, dynamics and lubrication principles,' said Alberto Rovetta, professor in robotics engineering at the Polytechnic of Milan."

Comments

Exaggeration of Ancient Greece that is ....

[Anonymous Coward]

in modern western philosophy, literature and science, we are all thought about how great the greek civilization was, how they invented most of the concepts we use today, and ideas and principles, how glorious it was in that cesspit of ancient history, this and that.

however, when one takes up history as a hobby, and reads up by himself/herself, it is a soon made discovery that for centuries before and during the climax of ancient greece, greeks went to egypt to study. the schools and learning in egypt encompassed practically everything, classified in two different school genres : school of life taught matters related to physical world - medicine, architecture, geometry and so on, school of death taught matters related to the otherworld. one finds out that a goodly number of the greek prominent figures, at least those who could afford it, went to egypt to study, or studied material transferred from egypt.

it is an even more stunning discovery to find out that, most of the spiritual and philosophical concepts we use in everyday life today, even extending to some customs, originate from egypt.

but, due to the most free material that is being free of church influence that was available in renaissance and baroque being ancient greece material that the byzantine scholars brought from istanbul when they fleed the ottoman conquest, western literature and science has developed by a misplaced influence of greece. which is quite natural actually, because until the end of 18th century, there wasnt any awareness of existence of a civilization like egypt.

what is appalling though, is, that still goes on ....

Ancient Egypt had good engineers

[smellsofbikes]

I recently saw the travelling King Tutankhamen exhibit and got to reading a bit about their technology. Besides being able to organize and motivate well enough to build the Great Pyramid, which required cutting, transporting, and installing twelve 3 ton blocks per hour, every hour, for 20 years, they knew about prime and perfect numbers, the Sieve of Eratosthenes, first-order linear equations, and summing linear and arithmetic sequences. They knew about pi and calculated it to about five digits, and could calculate the surface area of hemispheres and the volume of frustrums, which means they could do integral calculus (although they didn't realize that's what they were doing.)