We notice the nicety and precision with which the stone-cutter went to work in hewing out and polishing the monument. His art was one that had been brought to the highest state of perfection in Egypt; and no wonder, for in a country where timber was scarce and hardly one tree was suitable for wood-work, men had to fall back on their natural supply which the mountains rising on both sides of the valley yielded. Stone was there in abundance. Hence from the earliest times of Egyptian history the stone-cutter receives a prominent place. The implements he employed must have had a wonderful degree of hardness to chip and polish the tenacious rock of Syene. With regard to the quarrying of the rock, that is, how, after having selected a properly-sized piece of rock without a flaw and having carefully marked it, the stone-cutters were able to detach 50-100 feet of it without a break--that has given rise to many conjectures. Belzoni held, that after a groove of about two inches had been cut along the line, the blow of some machine must have separated the pieces of rock, as glass when cut by a diamond. Others believe that a saw was employed to sever the rock. Sir J. F. Herschel prefers to accept the theory that the separation of the rocks was caused by fire, a method still employed in India. He calls attention to the fact, that after the workmen there have cut a groove into the rock they kindle a small fire on top of this line, and that {14}after the rock is thoroughly heated they suddenly pour cold water on it, causing the rock to split with a clean fracture. It is, however, more probable that the Egyptians made use of wooden wedges to accomplish their purpose. We frequently find not only grooves in the rock but also wedge-holes inside these grooves. Wedges with their slow and steady pressure would insure a good fracture. Possibly, as Wilkinson surmises, the grooves themselves may have carried water to the wooden wedges which, being kept continually moist and thereby expanding, would have caused the rock to split. The saw was undoubtedly used for the last cutting to separate the piece from the native rock. [Illustration: Stone-cutters smoothing a block of granite.] [Illustration: Stone-cutter at work.]