Stone Age · c. 3300 BC · Badari, Asyut Governorate, Egypt
Egypt's oldest known metal drill identified among century-old finds from Badari
Wear marks and six coils of leather thong indicate that a 63-millimetre copper alloy tool from a Predynastic grave was spun with a bow about 5,300 years ago.
Peer-reviewed paper
Badari, Egypt Researchers from Newcastle University and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna have identified the oldest known metal drill from Egypt. It is a small copper alloy tool from a Predynastic cemetery at Badari, in Upper Egypt. The tool dates to the Naqada IID phase, in the late fourth millennium BC, about 5,300 years ago.
The researchers say two clues show that the tool was spun with a bow: wear on its tip and the remains of a leather thong around its shaft. If so, Egyptian craftspeople were drilling this way before the first pharaohs. That would also be long before the date of the best-preserved drill sets from Egypt.
Martin Odler and Jiří Kmošek wrote the study, which is published in the journal Egypt and the Levant. Odler is a visiting fellow at Newcastle University's School of History, Classics and Archaeology.
The study is part of EgypToolWear, a project funded by UK Research and Innovation. The project studies use-wear traces on ancient Egyptian tools.
Long catalogued as an awl
The object was excavated in the 1920s from Grave 3932 at Badari. This was the burial of an adult man. The tool is now in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, catalogued as 1924.948 A. It is 63 millimetres long and weighs about 1.5 grams.
The archaeologist Guy Brunton published the object in the 1920s. He described it in one line as "a little awl of copper, with some leather thong wound round it." The note drew little attention. For decades the tool was treated as a simple punch.
Wear on the tip points to a bow
Under the microscope, the working tip shows fine parallel striations, rounded edges and a slight bend. The researchers say this combination comes from sustained, rapid rotation against hard material. It differs from the damage left by pushing, piercing or scraping.
Six coils of a very fragile leather thong are still wrapped around the shaft. The team interprets them as the last remains of the bowstring.
In a bow drill, the string of a small bow is looped around a drill shaft. Moving the bow back and forth spins the shaft quickly. This gives more speed and control than turning a point by hand.
Bow drills are well documented in the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC). Tomb paintings from Western Thebes, on the west bank at modern Luxor, show craftsmen drilling beads and wood with them. These paintings include the tomb of Rekhmire. Several complete drill sets survive from that period.
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.
Martin Odler, Newcastle University, lead author
Finds from the Badari cemetery include beads, stone vessels and wooden objects. Many of them needed careful drilling. Odler describes the drill as a tool for perforating wood, stone and beads, used in work from furniture making to the production of ornaments.
Such everyday equipment rarely survives. Organic parts survive even less often.
This object preserves not just the tool itself, but also a trace of how it was used. That is incredibly rare for this period.
Martin Odler, Newcastle University, lead author
Copper mixed with arsenic, nickel, silver and lead
The team analysed the metal without damaging it, using portable X-ray fluorescence. Kmošek presented the results. The drill is made of copper with arsenic and nickel. It also contains notable amounts of silver and lead.
According to the authors, this mixture would have given a harder and visually distinctive metal compared with ordinary copper.
The presence of silver and lead may reflect deliberate alloying choices, or point to long-distance exchange networks and metallurgical knowledge linking Egypt to the wider Eastern Mediterranean.
Jiří Kmošek, co-author
The researchers leave the source of the metal open. The silver and lead could have reached Badari through long-distance exchange with the eastern Mediterranean. Or they could come from ore sources in Egypt that are still little explored, possibly in the Eastern Desert.
Sources
- 5,300 year old metal bow drill found in Egypt is earliest known rotary tool (Archaeology News)
- A 5,300-year-old rotary metal drill pushes back the history of technology in Ancient Egypt by more than two millennia (La Brújula Verde)
- Ancient Egyptian Technology’s Hidden Secret: A 5,300-Year-Old Bow Drill Crafted from an Advanced Metal Alloy (Arkeonews)
- Oldest Egyptian Metal Drill Identified (Archaeology Magazine)
Paper: Martin Odler and Jiří Kmošek, "The Earliest Metal Drill of Naqada IID Dating", Ägypten und Levante / Egypt and the Levant 35 (2025). DOI: 10.1553/AEundL35s289
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