Egyptian statues are unlike any other statues in the world. They have unique characteristics not found in the statues of any other civilization. But to avoid confusion it must be added that that is only true of their stone statues, not their metal statues.
Their metal statues are structurally undistinguished from those of other civilizations. So what is the difference between their metal statues and their stone statues? Supposedly their stone statues were carved in stone while their metal statues were not carved from metal but from clay or wax, and then by making a mold of a figure they were able to cast it in metal.

They could increase the complexity and naturalness of the final metal statue by increasing the complexity of the mold by employing additional pieces to allow for "undercuts" which a two or three piece mold would otherwise get hooked on.
Or they could sculpt in bees wax which could be completely covered by a single application of mold material. That wax could be eliminated after the mold material hardened by heating it, melting it and draining it all out. Then molten metal could be poured into the resulting cavity, and when cool, extracted by chipping away the entire mold mass. That's the "lost wax" method of casting. That would produce just one copy of the original wax sculpture, and as is usually the case, metal sculptures are 'one-of-a-kind'.

Stone figures could also have been cast in the same manner but in ancient Egypt they never were (unless they were small enough to sit on a table) because clay and limestone plaster were a million times more plentiful than bees wax.
Of course standard conventional thinking supposes (with no proof) that no stone figures at all were ever cast, (and therefore this exposition is just engaging in fantasy) but that perspective is totally unaware of the evidence of casting, which involves two aspects.

One is that which sculpting in clay and wax would definitely involve, and the other is what it definitely would not involve. In fact there are several examples of both, but I will reserve the latter for Part 2 and focus only on the five signs that ancient Egyptian hardstone sculptures were sculpted in clay and cast in artificially made stone.

The only conceivable alternative explanation for their creation is by using advanced technology that could shape hard stone by means that are completely unknown. That would mean either softening stone to a taffy-like state and pressing it under pressure into molds, or somehow carving and chipping and grinding and polishing hard stone using tools that are not known to have ever been produced and used by terrestrial sculptors… -not back then, -nor even today with but a few exceptions.

Such tools would not have been of terrestrial origin because they would have been power tools having incredibly hard graving edges and surfaces. While such tools are presumed by establishment thinking to have never existed, nevertheless some of them definitely did exist as evidenced by the cuts, including circular saw cuts, seen in granite in locations far and wide…but mainly in Egypt.
Actually, it's likely that statues, after casting and hardening (and possibly firing in a kiln as well), were completed and perfected by use of advanced technology finishing tools.

And one needs to be aware that the farther back in history one goes, the more impossible becomes the quality of the stone figures produced since they came before the (modern) development of metals hard enough to sculpt hard stone. So any tools that were able to shape hard stone far back in the pre-recorded-history era were not terrestrial tools because they were high-speed power tools using diamond or corundum grit.

We are forced to draw that conclusion because of the perfection of so many pre-historic statues formed from extremely hard stone, -a degree of perfection that primitive tools could not achieve in any humanly tolerable period of time.
One should add the fact that later generations were not able to produce such statues and instead the pharaoh in many instances had his identity crudely carved on the side of magnificient works of prehistoric times. He envied the inexplicable capability and products of ancient stone sculptors so he ordered that his name be forever attached to them by crudely scratching his own hieroglphic texts onto their perfect surfaces.
Now with all that as background to this subject, let's move right to what the six signs of casting are. In reverse order:

6. Multiple Copies

When you have a mold and you like what came out of it then you will probably repeat the casting process because two is better than one, and three is better than two, etc. And that is what the Egyptian sculptors did because it produced a powerful impression in the minds of the observers.

These two are identical, which means that one is a cast replica, or both are. The proof is in their appearance, as well as the bottom line of the headdress on the right side. The lines were randomly drawn so the odds of both being identical is about zero. Their dark color is due to an applied stain which was not applied to the chest and lower section of the headdress.


5. The Ears

In almost all Egyptian pharonic statues the ears are not flat against the head but instead face forward…like Prince Charles. They butt against the headdress and almost blend into it since there is no "behind" to the ears. Their sides attached directly to the headdress with no curvature leading to a space behind them. That was not inadvertant but was quite intentional because it eliminated the 'behind-the-ear' 'undercut' that a mold would be hooked on. Bulky ears = casting.

4 Raised Nipples.

In clay is it automatically preferable to form nipples to appear as they really are, which is raised above the surface of the chest rather than carving a circle into the chest. That is exactly what we see in almost all of the ancient statues. Raised nipples… in hard stone, -not alabaster or marble.
They would have been formed by rolling a small amount of clay into a little ball and then pressing it flat against the chest just like pitcher handles are pressed against a container formed on a potter's wheel.
But in addition to considering what would be done in clay, we must consider what would not be done in stone.
It would be essentially a sign of great stupidity or insanity to meticulously chip and grind and polish away the entire surface of the chest except for two little circles representing nipples. Nipples are not important enough by any stretch of the imagination to go to such an extensive and laborious effort. So we can assume that it didn't happen.
The creators of such perfect works were smart enough to not do that. They had to have had a better means to produce raised nipples. And they did. It was casting.
Raised nipples = sculpting in clay and casting in reconstituted stone.

~ a rare engraved nipple~

The Fingers

Egyptian statues have a feature that is probably not found anywhere else in the world, and that is the position of the fingers. All metal Egyptian figures and all Greco-Roman and Indian stone figures have fingers that are perfectly natural in appearance, existing in three dimensional space, -but not the fingers of the statues of Egypt.

Instead of being individually articulated, being open and surrounded mostly by air they are instead extended flat (or are tightly holding a cylinder). I'm talking about hands with fingers in such a straight and flat position that it's obviously not natural since fingers laying on one's thigh or at one's side would always be cupped, not stretched out flat.
That is exactly what a clay sculptor would have to do in order to be able to create a mold in two or three parts that would not be obstructed by cavities under the fingers and hand into which mold material would flow and then form a blockage (when hardened) which would make the removal of a mold section impossible.
So the positioning of the fingers is 100% compatible with consideration of the rules of casting and not compatible at all with the freedom of carving stone into life-like figures that are realistic in every way possible. Straight flat fingers = casting.

2. The Ankles

Human ankles are depicted in sculpture all around the world in a realistic manner, excluding ancient Egypt. Far too many Egyptian stone statues feature ankles that are unrealistically very, very 'thick', including the 'dainty' ankles of beautiful young women. That was the result of two influences.
One was shear laziness on the part of the sculptors who made the feet too fat, and the other was the necessity of avoiding 'undercuts' (the backside of the ankle area) that would act as a hook on the frontal section of a mold.
Laziness factored in because the ankles may have been the very last area of the sculpture that was worked on, and, after achieving a perfect masterpiece everywhere else, especially the face, the ankles were probably left to a disinterested young apprentice (or son) to complete.
The only instruction given must have been one to not carve any inward curvature to the backside of the lower leg and ankle area, but to carve that area so that it is flat straight to the backing mass or back wall of the sculpture. That way the frontal mold section could be removed without getting hooked on an undercut.

Bulky ankles = casting.

1. The 'Bridge'

Okay, now we've arrived at the big one, a game-changer, the one that will make Egyptologists' heads explode. It's the one that has been hiding in plain sight for maybe four thousand years. It's one more thing that is unique to ancient Egyptian sculpture and not found anywhere else. I'm talking about the situation with the arms.
In all Egyptian wood and metal sculptures, like the sculptures of all advanced societies throughout history, the arms of figures are open and free in 3-D space. But, in Egyptian hard stone sculptures they are not free and open. They are in the exactly perfect situation for casting, which means that they are attached to the body by a 'bridge' of stone that was deliberately not removed.

That is not true of any Greco-Roman or Indian stone sculpture, only ancient Egyptian. But keep in mind that only ancient statues of Egypt were made with such hard stone as granite, diorite and granodiorite long, long before the availability of hardened steel chisels and relatively-soft marble blocks for sculpting.
What came much later, millennia later, and involved softer stone and harder chisels which is the opposite of an expected progressive line of ever greater technological advancement.

That body connection only existed for one purpose, and that was to prevent the front mold section(s) and the back section from forming one solid mass connected between the arms and the body.
No 'stone sculpting' purpose exists for not removing that bridge area, so only a casting purpose is possible… and necessary. And necessity is particularly involved if they aimed to cast more than one statue.

The sections of the mold had to be easily removable from the clay sculpture so as to not damage it or the sections . A reuseable mold would make it possible to recast in the event of an unforeseen casting flaw, or an accidental breakage of the cast statue.
It can be speculated that a cast-stone statue would not be as hard or strong as one made of natural igneous rock, and so in order to transform its weaker molecular structure it was probably necessary to fire such statues in a hot kiln for several days of heating and many more of cooling.

That would have added one more additional and difficult processing stage to an already complex process, and that would be why only one copy would be created, -not to mention the curious and suspicious existence of a second identical statue…which would naturally raise questions regarding their production, but nevertheless, there are sets of statues that are identical, indicating that they all came out of the same mold.
The Egyptian statues made of hard stone, (whether sitting or standing) all have the connecting bridge between the arms and the body. And that is true regardless of the size of the statue.

That has powerful implications regarding the manner in which huge statues were formed. It counters the conventional narrative of quarrying, shaping, transporting, sculpting and finishing that is supposedly the manner in which the statues of ancient Egypt were created.
Could both methods have been used? The answer is 'no' as concerns the very ancient past and hard stone since far back then it was technologically impossible. But much later when harder steel tools became available (along with softer stone, i.e. marble) then both methods were possible even on the same statue.

That is demonstrated by etched and chiseled inscriptions that show the fracturing damage all along the engraved lines, fracturing caused when a hard chisel impacts hard siliceous stone. It responds a lot like glass. No clean smooth edge can result. It will always show fracturing along any line that is chiseled.
But as far as I know so far, there is no example of a hard stone statue that can be provably ascribed to hammer & chisel work even though all are ascribed anyway based solely on presumption since 'casting' never enters the minds of those solidly enscounced in the academic establishment or even in the 'alternative history' arena. It's never raised as a possibility so they are left with no explanations for the evidence that confronts them and the questions that always go unasked.

With any ancient statue that displays all or most of these six signs, one is compelled to believe, or strongly suspect, that it was cast. And guess what….most of them feature four or five of those signs. Ears, fingers, ankles, nipples, and 'bridges'. You now are aware of what to look for when examining Egyptian statutes, but plenty of mystery still remains unsolved since we have no clear clues as to how they did what they did with hard stone of a crystalline nature as well as with stone of a pure, fine homogenous nature (like powdered basalt), -only that they did it as the inescapable evidence indicates.

by Adrien Nash 6/30/2021 -completed Jan 2, 2022
Ancient Stonework Mysteries
https://www.facebook.com/groups/688983971514000

~future Part II: Four Signs that Ancient Egyptian sculptures were not chiseled

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