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Watch How Ancient Egyptians Carved Hieroglyphs

In a video for the V&A Museum, stone carver Miriam Johnson hand-carves a pair of hieroglyphs “using both sunken relief and raised relief techniques”.

The video has minimal narration; mostly it’s just a master craftsperson quietly tapping away at the stone — and getting bits of rock all over the sleeve of her jumper. The effect is pretty relaxing, especially with the more rhythmic tapping for the second carving. (via the kid should see this)

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Tim Bradshaw

It's just breathtaking how skilled humans can be. Even more astonishing is that being this skilled is not particularly rare: there must have been – and still are – really quite large numbers of people who could do this or an equivalently skilled task. That's not to be dismissive of how skilled the person here is: it's just that humans are quite amazing (and machines are very, very far behind, despite the hype).

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