Overview
- The copper‑alloy implement from Badari Grave 3932, cataloged as 1924.948 A at Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, was long listed as a small awl with leather.
- Wear features under magnification—fine striations, rounded edges and a curved working end—match rotary drilling rather than simple puncturing.
- Six coils of extremely fragile leather on the shaft are interpreted as remnants of the bowstring that powered the drill.
- pXRF analysis identified an uncommon alloy containing arsenic and nickel with notable lead and silver, suggesting deliberate metallurgical choices and possible wider material connections.
- The study, part of the EgypToolWear project and published in Egypt and the Levant, pushes evidence for Egyptian rotary metal drilling back roughly two millennia into the late 4th millennium BCE.