Ten quarries of Ancient Egypt: Series summary

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Per Storemyr
The main quarry workings at Rod el-Gamra in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Photo: Per Storemyr
What a quarry! The central summit at Gebel Manzal el-Seyl in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Nearly 5000 years old. Photo: Per Storemyr
Firesetting experiment at Aswan. Photo: Adel Kelany
A biface (hand axe) in the Wadi Beiza Palaeolithic quarries. Photo: Per Storemyr
One of the fine Old Kingdom basalt quarries at Widan el-Faras that is now destroyed… Photo: Per Storemyr
Pharaoh Chephren’s pyramid at Giza, with remaining casing stones from the quarries at Tura at the top. Photo: Per Storemyr
A room with a view! A soapstone quarry at Wadi Abu Qureya in Egypt’s Eastern Desert. Photo: Per Storemyr
This is how it looks like at Chephren’s Quarry. Photo: Per Storemyr
This is the place where we bumped into the Wadi el-Muluk limestone quarry in the winter of 1999. Photo: Per Storemyr
A grinding stone quarry at the north scarp of the Kharga Oasis in the Egyptian Sahara. Photo: Per Storemyr

Egypt is world-renowned for its ancient quarries. Without them civilisation as we know it along the Nile would not have been possible. There are many spectacular quarries, popular way beyond the archaeological community. But there is also an enormous amount of quarries that rarely get the headlines. In the series Ten quarries of Ancient Egypt I have tried to highlight a few of those “unknowns”. They were the ones that particularly touched me during many seasons of walking the deserts bordering the Nile.

Thanks for reading, and for sharing the stories on Facebook between Christmas and New Year 2012/2013! Let’s hope that the quarries, most of which are thousands of years old, will remain there in 2013 and for millennia to come, and not be destroyed by modern development and bulldozers. So that we can enjoy them – and those after us!

Here’s the link to all the ten stories: Ten quarries of Ancient Egypt. Or you can click on the photos in the gallery above to get to the quarries…

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Ten quarries of Ancient Egypt: 10 – Firework!

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Per Storemyr
Happy New Year with firework in the ancient quarries!

Happy New Year with firework in the ancient quarries! Photo: Per Storemyr

It’s New Year’s Eve. Happy New Year to you all! What could be better than to end this little series on Ancient Egyptian quarries with firework! It was Reginald Engelbach that first suggested the use of fire for stone quarrying in Ancient Egypt, when he excavated the Unfinished Obelisk at Aswan almost a hundred years ago. Over the last decade much more evidence has been found in Aswan and elsewhere – and Adel Kelany and his team of archaeologists has even made experiments trying to figure out how firesetting works. Take a look at the following pictures to see how it looks like when old Egyptian stone has been subjected to fire! Continue reading →

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Ten quarries of Ancient Egypt: 9 – Palaeolithic quarries in the Eastern Desert

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Per Storemyr
This is a great Palaeolithic quarry by Wadi Beiza in the Eastern Desert. It was the black, hard stone that was exploited. Photo: Per Storemyr

This is a great Palaeolithic quarry by Wadi Beiza in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. It was the black, hard stone that was exploited. Photo: Per Storemyr

Practically the whole of Egypt is dotted with quarries and tool workshops dating to the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic (some 3-400.000 to 30.000 years ago), showing how our predecessors adapted to the geological resources along the Nile and in the adjacent deserts. I’m very far from an expert on these periods, but over the years I’ve often been truly fascinated by quarries from these times that just popped up while looking for much later archaeological remains. In 2006, while on a tourist trip in the Eastern Desert with Red Sea Desert Adventures, we started to look for Palaeolithic tools and quarries. They were really very common. An experience we share with other people that have traversed the Eastern Desert. Continue reading →

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Ten quarries of Ancient Egypt: 8 – The quarry at Widan el-Faras that disappeared

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Per Storemyr
One of the fine Old Kingdom basalt quarries at Widan el-Faras in 2001. Read more to see how it looked like in 2006... Photo: Per Storemyr

One of the fine Old Kingdom basalt quarries at Widan el-Faras in 2001. Read more to see how it looked like in 2006… Photo: Per Storemyr

Many of you know the Old Kingdom basalt quarries at Widan el-Faras in the Northern Faiyum Desert. Some of you are also familiar with the partial destruction of the quarries by modern basalt quarrying. When we first started to work at Widan, about 12 years ago, in a project headed by Elizabeth Bloxam at UCL, the breathtaking lava and escarpment landscape was still quite pristine. A few years later a substantial part of the quarries had been eaten by machines. Though we had learnt by then that many other quarries in Egypt were under threat from modern development, Widan was a key reason for starting the QuarryScapes project – an EU-funded project on conservation of ancient quarries. Continue reading →

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Ten quarries of Ancient Egypt: 7 – Tracing a grinding stone quarry in the Sahara

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Per Storemyr
A grinding stone quarry at the north scarp of the Kharga Oasis in the Egyptian Sahara. Discovered by tracing flint hammerstones. Photo: Per Storemyr

A slicified sandstone grinding stone quarry at the north scarp of the Kharga Oasis in the Egyptian Sahara. Discovered by tracing flint hammerstones. Photo: Per Storemyr

In 2007 I was very happy to be invited to join Salima Ikram and Corinna Rossi‘s North Kharga Oasis Survey (NKOS). Great mission, great landscape. The landscape so breathtaking that I immensely enjoyed walking and looking for stone and quarries. Crude flint hammerstones turned up. One after the other, even small depots. Tracing the hammerstones for several kilometres paid off. At the end of the trail was the first grinding stone quarry found in the Western Desert of Egypt! Continue reading →

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Ten quarries of Ancient Egypt: 6 – Gebel Manzal el-Seyl volcanic tuff quarry

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Per Storemyr
What a quarry! The central summit at Gebel Manzal el-Seyl in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Nearly 5000 years old. Photo: Per Storemyr

What a quarry! The central summit at Gebel Manzal el-Seyl in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Nearly 5000 years old. Extraction took place at the top, spoil from the workings were deposited down the slope. Photo: Per Storemyr

Looking for old quarries in Egypt’s Eastern Desert means that you are not only walking in the footsteps of ancient quarrymen, but also of archaeological geologist Jim Harrell. Jim has crisscrossed the Eastern Desert and found several very important quarries over the last 20 years, one of which is Gebel Manzal el-Seyl, in the northern part of the hilly desert. Manzal el-Seyl is so important because it shows that there was organised production of material for stone vessels in remote parts of the Eastern Desert by the Early Dynastic period (2920-2575 BC). This is when vessel production was at its peak in Egypt. Continue reading →

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Ten quarries of Ancient Egypt: 5 – “The loner” at Chephren’s Quarry

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Per Storemyr
In the middle of nowhere, by Chephren's Quarry. Who was this guy that left the stones here almost 5000 years ago? Photo: Per Storemyr

In the middle of nowhere, by Chephren’s Quarry. Who was this guy that left the stones here almost 5000 years ago? Photo: Per Storemyr

Most of you have heard about the famous, vast Old Kingdom Chephren’s Quarry in the far south of the Western Desert of Egypt. There are hundreds of quarry workings, which took advantage of clusters of big boulders in a flat desert, in total covering an area of almost 100 square kilometres. But there are also expanses of nothing but sand in between major workings. Except at one place, in the middle of nowhere. This is where “the loner” seems to have carried out his work, leaving one half-finished vessel blank, one almost intact hammerstone and one broken one. 5000 years ago. Continue reading →

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Ten quarries of Ancient Egypt: 4 – Wadi el-Muluk limestone quarry

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Per Storemyr
This is just the place where we bumped into the Wadi el-Muluk limestone quarry at sunset in the winter of 1999. Photo: Per Storemyr

This is just the place where we bumped into the Wadi el-Muluk limestone quarry at sunset in the winter of 1999. Photo: Per Storemyr

It was my first trip to Egypt. In 1999, with Tom Heldal, I simply wanted to see as many old quarries as possible. We had several weeks at hand, meagre information on the location of quarries, and no idea of how to get to them. Also, security issues and permits were, back then, not part of our vocabulary. So we usually got a taxi and asked our way around. But in the Valley of the Kings at Luxor we could walk. On our way back from the tombs we recalled that there ought to be a quarry nearby. Off the road we went and 200 metres later we literally fell into one of the finest limestone quarries from the New Kingdom – a quarry full of lines and inscriptions made by red ochre. But why on earth were they painted in the quarry? Continue reading →

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Ten quarries of Ancient Egypt: 3 – The Second Pyramid at Giza

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Per Storemyr
Pharaoh Chephren's pyramid at Giza, with remaining casing stones from the quarries at Tura at the top. In the foreground part of the local quarries that were used to for providing backing stones for the pyramids. Photo: Per Storemyr

Pharaoh Chephren’s pyramid at Giza, with remaining casing stones from the quarries at Tura at the top. In the foreground part of the local quarries that were used for providing backing stones for the pyramids. Photo: Per Storemyr

A quarry? The Second Pyramid?? The Pyramid of Old Kingdom Pharaoh Chephren at Giza??? This is not a quarry – it is a Wonder of the World, it is a Pyramid! False. It is also a quarry! Continue reading →

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Ten quarries of Ancient Egypt: 2 – Rod el-Gamra dolerite porphyry quarry

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Per Storemyr
The main quarry workings at Rod el-Gamra in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Photo: Per Storemyr

The main quarry workings at Rod el-Gamra in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Photo: Per Storemyr

Rod el-Gamra is a gem. A gem because it is small, even tiny, yet it features the typical archaeology that is found at ancient quarry sites. A gem because what was produced here, so-called naoi, are beautifully strewn in front of the quarry workings. And a gem because it has perhaps the oldest evidence of the use of iron tools in quarry operations in Egypt. But the Ancient Egyptians may not have been the first to quarry stone here, for the hard, volcanic stone show signs of having been worked for stone tools already by Palaeolithic man, tens of thousands of years ago. Continue reading →

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