How a 5300-year-old bow drill is rewriting the story of ancient Egypt

In examining a 5,300-year-old Egyptian artefact, remarkable new research has confirmed the existence of far more mechanically sophisticated technology than we ever thought possible from before the age of the Pharaohs.

A new study has revealed that Egyptians were using a mechanically sophisticated drilling tool far earlier than previously suggested. Researchers at Newcastle University and the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, have re-examined a small copper-alloy object excavated a century ago from a cemetery at Badari in Upper Egypt, and uncovered a remarkable find.

Contents

1. Tools in ancient Egypt

2. What was a bow drill?

3. The discovery

4. The EgypToolWear project

Tools in ancient Egypt

For much of ancient Egyptian history, tools were manual extensions of human effort, rather than complex machines.

From the Predynastic period (from 5500 to 3100 BCE) onward, craftspeople worked with copper chisels, stone pounders, flint blades, and wooden mallets to shape everything from jewellery to architecture. This period saw the transition from Neolithic farming societies to the rise of more complex Egyptian culture, known as the Naqada period/culture, which extends to the reigns of first pharaohs.

Toolkits evolved alongside society. As the science and technology of metals developed, arsenical copper and later tin bronze expanded what was possible in construction, sculpture, and fine craft production. Composite devices, which combined wood, cord, stone and metal into mechanically efficient systems, marked an important step in technological sophistication.

Among these was the bow drill, a deceptively simple but highly effective rotary tool known across the ancient world and frequently found in Egyptian tomb scenes of the New Kingdom (1550 - 1070 BCE).

What was a bow drill?

A bow drill was an early hand-powered rotary tool, consisting of a straight metal shaft (the drill) with a cord wrapped around it, kept taut by a simple bow. By moving the bow back and forth, the cord turned the shaft rapidly, giving a much faster and more controlled spinning motion than could be achieved by hand alone.

This basic but ingenious mechanism would be used to bore holes into hard and soft materials and, in some traditions around the world, including Egyptian, to start fires through friction.

‘The ancient Egyptians are famous for stone temples, painted tombs, and dazzling jewellery, but behind those achievements lay practical, everyday technologies that rarely survive in the archaeological record. One of the most important was the drill: a tool used to pierce wood, stone, and beads, enabling everything from furniture-making to ornament production.’ - Dr Martin Odler, Visiting Fellow in Newcastle University’s School of History, Classics and Archaeology and lead author

Bow drills are well known from later periods of Egyptian history, including New Kingdom examples from 150 – 101 BCE, with tomb scenes showing craftsmen drilling beads and woodwork. These tombs located in the modern-day West Bank of Luxor area.

Bow drill in action. New Kingdom tomb painting from Western Thebes, Tomb of Rekhmire, object 31.6.25. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain

The earliest known depiction of a bow drill in use appears in a carved scene on the wall of the tomb chapel of the official Ty at North Saqqara, about 20 miles south of modern-day Cairo. Ty’s tomb is one of the most significant and beautifully decorated non-royal tombs located in the North Saqqara necropolis, dating back to the reign of Nyuserre in the Fifth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom (about 2450 BCE).

Bow drill use with a caption, found in the tomb of Ty at Saqqara, drawing after ODLER 2016

The discovery

Researchers at Newcastle University and the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna re-examined an ancient artefact excavated a century ago from a grave at Badari in Upper Egypt.

The artefact was only 63 millimetres long, and weighed about 1.5 grams. Catalogued as 1924.948 A in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, the object was described by the original excavator as ‘a little awl of copper, with some leather thong wound round it’.

That brief note proved easy to overlook, and the artefact attracted little attention for decades.

However, under magnification, the researchers found that the tool shows distinctive wear consistent with drilling: fine striations, rounded edges, and a slight curvature at the working end, all features that point to rotary motion, not simple puncturing.

The research, published in the journal ‘Egypt and the Levant’ (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna) and authored by Dr. Martin Odler and Jiří Kmošek, also described six coils of an extremely fragile leather thong, which the researchers argue is a remnant of the bowstring used to power a bow drill, an ancient equivalent of a hand drill, where a string wrapped around a shaft is moved back and forth by a bow to spin the drill rapidly.

The artefact, an ancient Egyptian bow drill. Photo credit: Martin Odler

This research confirms that the artefact is the earliest identified rotary metal drill from ancient Egypt, dating to the Predynastic period (late 4th millennium BCE), long before the first pharaohs ruled.

‘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.’ - Dr Martin Odler

Chemical analysis by the team, using portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF), found the drill to be made from an unusual copper ore or alloy. The drill contained arsenic and nickel, with notable amounts of lead and silver. This recipe would have produced a harder and visually distinctive metal, compared with standard copper.

Jiří Kmošek, archaeometallurgist, PhD candidate at the Institute for Natural Sciences and Technology in the Arts, Vienna, is a co-author of the study.

‘The presence of silver and lead may hint at deliberate alloying choices and, potentially, wider networks of materials or know-how linking Egypt to the broader ancient Eastern Mediterranean in the fourth millennium BCE.’ - Jiří Kmošek 

The EgypToolWear project

The study of the bow drill is linked to the UKRI-funded EgypToolWear project (Horizon Europe Guarantee).

The project took a multidisciplinary approach to provide fresh perspectives on ancient Egyptian tools. The bow drill discovery highlights how museum collections can still provide major discoveries.

Until now, scholars have relied on texts and images to interpret Egyptian tools. EgypToolWear introduced a hands-on, scientific analysis that challenges the long-held assumptions, for example, the idea that Egyptian toolmaking was conservative and unchanging.

‘I originally started to research ancient Egyptian copper as an MA thesis but quickly found out that a lot of ‘textbook’ truths were unsupported. It’s still a gift that keeps giving because there is quite a lot to be done in this field. Never before was the Egyptian metalwork wear studied in a systemic way, on a broadest possible corpus. That is why I came to Newcastle to learn from Andrea Dolfini who is developing this research for Bronze Age Europe, learning the techniques from him to apply them on Bronze Age Egyptian metal work.’ - Dr Martin Odler

Professor Andrea Dofini (left) and Dr Martin Odler (right). Credit: UK Research and Innovation

Reference

“The Earliest Metal Drill of Naqada IID Dating”, Martin Odler and Jiří Kmošek Ägypten und Levante / Egypt and the Levant (Vol. 35, 2025) DOI:  10.1553/AEundL35s289

You might also like:

• find out more about Dr Martin Odler, Visiting Fellow in Newcastle University’s School of History, Classics and Archaeology and lead author
• read the original press release: 5,300-year-old ‘bow drill’ rewrites story of ancient Egyptian tools
• read the study: ‘The earliest Metal Drill of Naqada IID Dating’, Martin Odler and Jiří Kmošek Ägypten und Levante / Egypt and the Levant (Vol. 35, 2025) DOI:  10.1553/AEundL35s289 (or contact the author on martin.odler@newcastle.ac.uk for the PDF of the article)
• learn about the EgypToolWear project, and how it is inspiring fresh perspectives on ancient Egyptian metal tools
• explore the work of Professor Andrea Dolfini, Professor of Archaology at the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology at Newcastle University, and collaborator on the EgypToolWear project
• hungry for more historical research? Find out how our researchers are uncovering hidden maths form ancient Rome