He Moved a 58-Tonne Statue With a Jar of Water

Almost 4,000 years ago, an Egyptian governor named Djehutihotep had a 6.8-metre statue of himself dragged across the desert by 172 men. His tomb painting shows a man pouring water on the sand in front of the sledge, and for over a century many experts saw a ritual. In 2014, physicists in Amsterdam measured it: the right amount of water makes sand stiff, and the pulling force drops by half.

Sources: Fall et al., “Sliding Friction on Wet and Dry Sand”, Physical Review Letters 112, 175502 (2014); P. E. Newberry, El Bersheh I (1895).

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