Unfinished stone box in Cairo Museum: preserves same corner relief machining mark

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Key facts

• An unfinished and uninscribed stone box in the Grand Egyptian Museum:, Old Cairo, is known mainly for huge saw cuts and striations on its underside where the lid was being sawn off the quarry block.
• The lid cracked and broke off, and the piece was abandoned, leaving the interior cavity unfinished.
• The unfinished interior shows the same contoured radial relief between the floor and the walls of the box as on the Giza couch block.
• The presenter interprets the witness marks as indicating the interior corners were finished first and the walls were then lowered down to that level.
• A nub remains on the back wall of the box, left unfinished.
• The radial relief is described as allowing a larger, stronger tool to remove more material while still creating a change in angle.
• The presenter suggests completed boxes would have been lowered until tangential at 90 degrees to the corner radius, leaving a corner radius without an actual relief.

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