#bow-drill

A Workbench from Pompeii

Daedalus and Pasiphae discussing the pantomime cow. Wall mural from Pompeii, 1st century A.D.

The art and artifacts from Pompeii have been much on my mind since the major new excavations have been published the past couple years.  I was looking at this wall mural and noticed the very Roman workbench in the lower left, complete with bench dogs while the young carpenter whacks away with hammer and…

The Dakotas used a drill-bow for the purpose of obtaining fire. This instrument is a small stiff bow, the string of which forms a loop round the upright stick, and thus, when the bow is moved backwards and forwards, gives it a rotatory movement. . . . The use of the bow-drill is very ancient. Ulysses used one to put out the eye of the unfortunate Cyclops. I myself, he says, twirled it round, while my companions pulled the "thong," and it requires no great stretch of the imagination to see the strap drill working until "the very roots of the eye hissed in the fire." The bow-drill was used still earlier by the Egyptians — even in the fourth dynasty.

— AVEBURY Prehistoric Times, ch. 14, p. 500. (A., 1900.)