Perhaps the World’s first real engine
We mean some device that provides useable POWER. Prior to the last 1500 years or so, power was limited to animal and human effort. The first engines were water wheels and windmills — these were in use for several hundred years before the advent of the steam engine, but there was nothing we know of in the prior 3000 years.
Mining stone blocks and floating them on barges to the pyramid site is fairly well understood and presents no insurmountable problems. Lifting the blocks, however, is more difficult and required some real power.
Technically, one horsepower is the power delivered at a rate of 550 ft-lbs per second. The model lift engine delivers the equivalent of 1000 hp but only during its lifting cycle; the maximum continuous output is about 500 hp.
This enormous power would not be achieved again until the giant waterwheels that were built in the 19th century CE.