Of course there are better alloys today for all those specific uses (likely except musical). It was just a comment on the oddity that what the Egyptians were u

Of course there are better alloys today for all those specific uses (likely except musical). It was just a comment on the oddity that what the Egyptians were using had not yet been figured out, but that he knew. Despite all our vast current knowledge, there remain bits of arcane knowledge still hidden away in obscure corners. It's definitely NOT the case that "any competent chemist could figure it out". He'd also told me about an MIT team who had gotten closer than others to figuring it out, but gave up after the mixes/processes kept exploding on them. Definitely no lack of competence there, but maybe they did run out of budget or motivation to keep unintentionally blowing things up. It's not as trivial as you'd like to think.