<HTML>To make a long answer short: You have no sources, only conjecture. "I cannot think how this would work so it wouldn't work". Well, excellent basis for a theory. But it would be better for YOU to do a reality check: modern quarries are working in much the same way than antique quarries did.
I have a fascinating book, written 1919 (!): Albert Neuburger, Technik im Altertum. On more than 700 pages Neuburger compares several techniques (construction, transport, quarry...) with antique methods. At the end of his stone working chapter he concludes, thet the methods for quarying and working stone at the end of the 19th century are essentially the same as used in ancient Egypt, even with the same tools. Granite, for example, was sawn with the antique sand.saw-method, only with iron blades instead of copper.
The Klemms are showing modern quarries at work (p. 315 ff) as does my "BLV Mineralienführer", p. 210 ff: small trenches dug into the stone (today with compressed air drills), then some chisels driven to the frond and levers from the back. Someone SHOULD tell these poor quarry workers that this method doesn't work....
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