Interestingly enough, this dovetail has been cut in half.
We can see that quite well here.
It was cut in half on purpose
at the time of the construction, of the building site.
It is likely that the stone cutters
set in place a block, then this one next to it.
They dug a hole
to insert the dovetail.
They drove it into place.
But then they must have realized that the block they had just set in place
was perhaps poorly positioned. They had to correct things a bit.
So they cut the dovetail.
Because the dovetail is pounded into place,
unless they wanted to break the stone around it,
they couldn't remove it.
So they cut the dovetail.
They repositioned the block.
But so that it couldn't be seen,
they hid it
with a small piece of wood, I don't know if it's oak,
they hid
the break in the dovetail.
And that tells us a lots of things.
It shows that there were controls on the construction site,
frequent and perhaps impromptu controls.
That's something very interesting,
because it shows how things were organized.
The people who did this, the stone cutters,
were definitely afraid of getting in trouble
with the foremen
or the architect who designed the monument,
if he saw it.
Once they had put everything back in place, they
hid it with a bit of dust and earth.
That way, the break could no longer be seen.
They were no longer worried and the project could go forward.