In very many cases the pounder had been broken by the great force of the blows delivered with it. I cannot believe that a man, using one of these by hand, could break it, as the only way I succeeded in doing so was by hurling one down from a height of about 30 feet on to a pile of others, and then only after repeated attempts. It has long been known that the face of the granite was dressed by means of these pounders, but I have not heard of their use being suggested for excavating a trench in it. There are many examples of monuments, partly pounded out, now lying in the quarries of {13} Aswân and Shellâl. Plate IV, no. 3, shews an example where, apparently, the lid of a sarcophagus is being shaped by this means. To ascertain how much headway can be made by hand on this kind of work, I tried, on the bottom of the trench, to see how much I could remove by hand pounding. I found that, after an hour’s hard work, I had extracted about five millimetres off the surface of the foot × half-trench-width area. With practice I could perhaps have done more. I noticed that, if I threw the pounder down and caught it on the rebound, the granite broke up at a much greater rate; but to do this as a regular thing would certainly result in an accident, as occasionally the pounder rebounds at very unexpected angles. I am certain that they were not used entirely by hand in the regular work of cutting out the trench, as the work would go very slowly indeed, and, which is more to the point, it would not have the same regular appearance that it has. There is no doubt that very powerful blows were struck vertically downwards, sometimes with such force as to split the dolerite pounders into fragments. The only conclusion I can come to is that the pounders were attached to rammers, and worked on the principle of the modern _mindâlah_, as the Egyptians call it, and with which they are very familiar. By this means two or more men could work from the top of the trench, while the third, working below, held the bottom of the rammer and directed the blows. As to how the rammers were attached to the pounders—if such were indeed used—I am uncertain. It may have been done by having the base of the rammer made slightly concave, possibly bound with metal to prevent splaying, the pounder being held up in its place by a metal (iron?) ring, sufficiently large to expose enough bruising surface, but not large enough to let the pounder slip through or to scrape against the side of the trench. The ring would be held up by two metal bands or hide thongs attached to the body of the rammer. Another method of attaching the pounders would be by a leather strap, with a hole just small enough to keep the ball from slipping through.