NARRATOR (KEACH): Granite is an extremely hard rock. The copper and bronze tools used by the ancient Egyptians were too soft to carve it, and iron tools were not yet available. So how did the ancient quarrymen work the granite?
MARK LEHNER: This is the basic tool they used to separate the obelisks. It's made out of a stone called dolerite that's harder and denser even than granite. These were found all over the obelisk site when it was first excavated, and even today there are hundreds of them in the quarries of granite at Aswan. They simply took this in two hands and pounded the stone away, hour after hour, day after day.
(MARK LEHNER): We work to our right. We pound, we pound, we work the granite down. Lift! And we turn around; one foot in either depression and we work to our right...
NARRATOR (KEACH): With temperatures in excess of hundred and twenty degrees, it must have been a hellish experience. Ancient records tell us that up to ten per cent of the quarry workers died. After years of soul destroying work, this obelisk had to be abandoned, when cracks appeared in the giant shaft, making it impossible to separate in one piece.
MARK LEHNER: Because it was a failure, the pharaoh who commissioned this obelisk remains a total mystery. But whatever pharaoh it was, he was attempting to make a quantum leap in obelisks. This Unfinished Obelisk would've weighed something around 1160 tons. The next largest one that we know is only 440 tons. But this pharaoh was clearly asking more of nature than nature could deliver.
& 
at the same damn time
