Here and there around the base, however, I knew that enough had remained in position to permit the great nineteenth century archaeologist, W.M. Flinders Petrie, to carry out a detailed study of them. He had been stunned to encounter tolerances of less than one-hundredth of an inch and cemented joints so precise and so carefully aligned that it was impossible to slip even the fine blade of a pocket knife between them. ‘Merely to place such stones in exact contact would be careful work’, he admitted, ‘but to do so with cement in the joint seems almost impossible; it is to be compared to the
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