How were gemstones cut in ancient times?
Gemstones were cut in ancient times by grinding them with grit: a drill of stone, wood or copper, a copper saw or a small cutting wheel was worked against the gem with a gritty powder such as quartz sand or emery, and the grit did the cutting. The results were beads, seals, engraved gems and polished stones; faceting, with regular flat faces, came only in the late Middle Ages.
What tools did ancient gem cutters use?
Tools softer than the gem, and grit at least as hard. On the scale copper is about 3, bronze 4 and iron 5 to 6, while quartz, the family that includes carnelian and agate, is 7. A copper drill cannot scratch quartz by itself, so the cutter fed a powder into the work: quartz sand, which will grind quartz, or emery, a granular rock made mostly of , which has a hardness of 9. With a metal tool on hard stone, the tool only carried the grit. Pliny the Elder said so about sawing marble in the first century CE: it looks like the iron cuts, but it is the sand. For gems he names naxium, long the favourite stone for engraving and filing them (though he says the name was given to whetstones from Cyprus); it is thought to be emery from the Greek island of Naxos. The kit was a bow drill, a spindle spun by a bowstring, with a stone, wood or copper tip, solid or tubular; saws; and, later, a small cutting wheel.
How did ancient people drill beads?
Slowly, with stone or copper drills. At Mehrgarh, an early settlement in Balochistan, Pakistan, a workshop was making lapis lazuli beads around 4000 to 3500 BCE; Massimo Vidale and colleagues, who have studied its tiny stone drill heads under the microscope, ask whether the bead makers drilled in water to keep the heat down. At Harappa, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer reports, lapis beads were drilled with chert or jasper drills from about 3300 BCE, while carnelian was pierced by pecking with a stone-tipped tool. In the Harappa Phase, from about 2600 BCE, Indus bead makers developed a constricted drill made of a hard stone called Ernestite, and with it they made long, slender carnelian beads that Kenoyer calls unique in the ancient world; some were traded as far as Mesopotamia. A bead could be held in a hole in a block of wood or set in resin, and could be drilled from one end, or from both ends to meet in the middle. At Harappa, from about 1900 BCE, no Ernestite drills are found, and hard stone beads were drilled with a tiny copper tube and abrasive sand. More on the long Indus beads is on our carnelian page.
How were Mesopotamian cylinder seals carved?
With the same drill, plus a cutting wheel. Cylinder seals were engraved stone cylinders, bored through the middle and rolled across clay to sign it. Studying casts of their bores under a scanning electron microscope, A. John Gwinnett and Leonard Gorelick found concentric abrasion rings in seals made between about 3000 BCE and 600 CE, the mark of a drill working with an abrasive such as sand, and holes started from both ends. They also found what they took as early evidence of a cutting disc on a horizontal spindle, on two seals of about 3000 BCE. A cache of bronze borers, engravers and chisels from about 2300 BCE, found at Tell Asmar, fits this picture. Across about 2,200 catalogued Near Eastern seals, soft stones such as steatite and marble (Mohs 1 to 3) dominate the early periods, hematite, lapis and obsidian (4 to 6) dominate from about 2000 to 1150 BCE, and quartz stones (7) from about 1350 BCE. One ancient text gives a seal cutter five years of apprenticeship. Seals were not cheap. Old Assyrian merchant texts of about 1800 BCE record a lapis seal costing 16½ shekels of silver, as much as an ox. More on the stone is on our lapis lazuli page.
How did the ancient Egyptians drill hard stone?
With bow drills, and with tubes, probably copper, fed with grit. A Theban tomb painting of about 1450 BCE shows a bead maker spinning three drills at once with a single bow. Bronze tools were not in use in Egypt until about 2000 BCE, so earlier drills were very likely copper, and the cutting came from grit. Two Egyptologists disagreed in print over which grit for 35 years. A. Lucas held that it was wet quartz sand, which is plentiful in Egypt and will grind quartz, the hardest stone the Egyptians worked; Sir Flinders Petrie held that drills were set with fixed points of emery. In a study published in 1983, Gorelick and Gwinnett cast the 24 cm drill holes in an Old Kingdom granite sarcophagus lid of about 2500 BCE, now in the Brooklyn Museum, and drilled red granite themselves. A copper tube with sand drilled granite but left none of the fine rings seen in the ancient holes; loose emery, corundum or diamond powder with water or olive oil did leave them. They suggest the drill was probably a copper tube fed with emery, corundum or diamond, though they could not say which.
How did Greek and Roman engravers carve gems without magnifying lenses?
By eye, with drills and wheels turned by a bow. Greek vases show bow drills, and a Roman gem carver’s gravestone has the earliest known picture of a horizontal spindle, or bow lathe, which held the drill or wheel so that both hands were free to guide the stone. Pliny says engravers set tiny splinters of adamas, usually translated as diamond, in iron to hollow out any hard stone; that some gems cannot be engraved with iron, others only with a blunted tool, but all with adamas; and that the drill achieves the most. No magnifying lens has been shown to be part of the kit. Boardman, in Greek Gems and Finger Rings, noted that no deliberately made lenses have been found and that Pliny would hardly have failed to mention them; spectacles came only in the 13th century CE. Gorelick and Gwinnett suggest the finest work was done by short-sighted craftsmen: a strongly short-sighted eye sees clearly at about 10 cm, magnified about two and a half times. That is a hypothesis, not a proven fact. Faceting came much later; see our history of gem faceting.
When and where were these methods used?
| When | Where | What was made | Tools and grit |
|---|---|---|---|
| About 4000 to 3500 BCE | Mehrgarh, Balochistan (Pakistan) | Lapis lazuli beads | Tiny stone drill heads |
| From about 3300 BCE | Harappa (Pakistan) | Lapis and carnelian beads | Chert or jasper drills for lapis; carnelian pierced by pecking |
| From about 3000 BCE | Mesopotamia | Cylinder seals | Drill and cutting disc, with loose abrasive such as sand |
| About 2600 to 1900 BCE | Indus cities | Long, slender carnelian beads | Constricted drills of Ernestite stone |
| About 2500 BCE | Egypt (Old Kingdom) | Drill holes 24 cm long in a granite sarcophagus lid | Probably a copper tube, with emery, corundum or diamond grit in water or oil |
| About 1900 to 1700 BCE | Harappa | Hard stone beads | A tiny copper tube with abrasive sand |
| About 1450 BCE | Thebes, Egypt | Beads, shown in a tomb painting | One bow turning three drills |
| Roman period | Roman world | Engraved gems | Iron tools set with adamas splinters (Pliny, first century CE); drills; a bow lathe, shown on a gem carver’s gravestone; naxium, probably emery, for engraving and filing |
Frequently Asked Questions
What abrasive did ancient gem cutters use?
Quartz sand, at hardness 7, was a common one. Emery, a rock made mostly of corundum, which is 9, was probably used too, and Pliny describes splinters of adamas, usually translated as diamond, set in iron tools for engraving.
Did ancient gem engravers use magnifying glasses?
There is almost no evidence that they did. No lens deliberately made for magnifying is known from the period, and spectacles date only from the 13th century CE. One suggestion is that short-sighted craftsmen, who see small objects enlarged at close range, did the finest work.
How long did it take to drill a stone bead by hand?
Hours, and sometimes days. In experiments, a copper tube fed with emery and quartz sand drilled half an inch (about 13 mm) into quartz in three hours, while a cane drill with sand needed about 30 hours of drilling to go as deep into a quartz pebble.
Were gems faceted in ancient times?
Not in the modern sense. Ancient gems were drilled, ground, polished and engraved, and some beads were ground with a few flat faces, but cutting stones with regular facets began with diamond in the late Middle Ages: first the point cut, which polished the faces of a natural crystal, then table cuts from the 1400s.
What is Ernestite?
A hard stone that Indus bead makers used for drills in the Harappa Phase, about 2600 to 1900 BCE, to pierce long, slender carnelian beads. Its exact source is unknown; Jonathan Mark Kenoyer thinks it probably came from what is now Gujarat or Baluchistan.
Sources
- Harappa.com: Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Bead Technologies at Harappa, 3300 to 1900 BC: A Comparative Summary (PDF linked from this page; chert or jasper drills for lapis, pecking for carnelian, Ernestite drills and their likely source, a tiny copper tube with abrasive sand after 1900 BC, steatite beads sometimes faceted)
- Harappa.com: Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Stone Beads of the Indus Tradition: New Perspectives on Harappan Bead Typology, Technology and Documentation (2017; Ernestite drills as the Harappa Phase development, long carnelian beads unique in the ancient world and traded to Mesopotamia, wooden vises and resin, drilling from one or both ends)
- Harappa.com: Massimo Vidale, Maurizio Mariottini, Giancarlo Sidoti and Muhammad Zahir, Early Evidence of Bead-Making at Mehrgarh, Pakistan (lapis workshop MR.2, about 4000 to 3500 BCE; drill heads; drilling in water)
- Penn Museum, Expedition 22(1): A. John Gwinnett and Leonard Gorelick, Ancient Lapidary (1979; Mohs values of copper, bronze and iron, abrasion rings, drilling from both ends, early cutting-disc evidence, 2,200 seals by hardness, drilling-time experiments, the lapis seal price, the Roman bow lathe)
- Penn Museum, Expedition 20(2): Leonard Gorelick and A. John Gwinnett, Ancient Seals and Modern Science (1978; seals rolled on clay, the Theban triple drill, the Tell Asmar tools, bow drills on Greek vases and a gem cutter’s gravestone)
- Penn Museum, Expedition 25(3): Leonard Gorelick and A. John Gwinnett, Ancient Egyptian Stone-Drilling (1983; Lucas and Petrie, bronze not in use until about 2000 BCE, the granite lid in the Brooklyn Museum, tests with sand, emery, corundum and diamond, Naxos as a source of emery)
- Penn Museum, Expedition 23(2): Leonard Gorelick and A. John Gwinnett, Close Work Without Magnifying Lenses? (1981; Boardman on lenses, spectacles in the 13th century, the short-sight hypothesis, a seal cutter’s five-year apprenticeship)
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 37, Latin text at LacusCurtius: sections 60 (adamas splinters set in iron) and 200 (iron, a blunted tool, adamas and the drill)
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 36, Latin text at LacusCurtius: sections 51 (sand, not iron, does the sawing) and 54 (naxium for engraving and filing gems)
- GIA, Gems & Gemology, Winter 2020: Baroque-era rose cuts (diamond fashioning began with the point cut; table cuts from the 1400s)
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