Bronze Drill Bit From 5,300 Years Ago

The Daily Mail reports on an ancient Egyptian metal tool, originally catalogued as a copper awl, was actually a bronze drill bit for use in a bow drill. 

    First excavated a century ago from a cemetery at Badari in Upper Egypt, the tool shows wear consistent with rotary drilling.

    The tool contained arsenic and nickel, with notable amounts of lead and silver, suggesting deliberate engineering choices and pointing to early material trade or shared technical knowledge across the ancient Mediterranean.

    Lead author Dr Martin Odle from Newcastle University said: 'This re-analysis has provided strong evidence that this object was used as a bow drill, which would have produced a faster, more controlled drilling action than simply pushing or twisting an awl-like tool by hand. 

    'This suggests that Egyptian craftspeople mastered reliable rotary drilling more than two millennia before some of the best-preserved drill sets.'  

Per the article, the drill dated back to "Naqada IID, a late Predynastic period around 3300 to 3200 BC, [which] saw the inception of kingship, writing, and organized religion, which would become the basis of the classical Egyptian civilization." Although we generally think of bronze as an allow of copper and tin, it can also be made by alloying copper with arsenic.