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You don't want a lot of smoke in an enclosed space so cleaner burning light sources would have been used. Oil lamps burning very light grease or oil would proba
by throwaway4aday 4y ago
You don't want a lot of smoke in an enclosed space so cleaner burning light sources would have been used. Oil lamps burning very light grease or oil would probably have been used by the painters since they last longer, produce less smoke and are easier to handle than a torch.
- pencilguin 4y agoThat's one mystery less. Ventilation at the ends of the tunnels is another mystery. It was heavy labor knocking out those cavernous spaces. All I can think of is they just abandoned work for a while when the air got too bad. (Piped-in air seems too unlikely.) Lots of the Valley of Kings tombs were unfinished when used, so it might just have been slow going. Heavy stonecutting out in the open involved building a fire against a stone face and then quenching it to fracture and weaken the rock. But that wouldn't work in those tunnels. The ancients worldwide cut through fantastic amounts of stone, often in close quarters. Ancient Celts invented hard-rock mining, cutting deep into mountains. They all solved it, somehow, likely differently in different places. But details matter.