Stone Used in Temples, Monuments and Statues in Ancient Egypt | Middle East And North Africa

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ORNAMENTAL STONE IN ANCIENT EGYPT

head of man carved from stone

The quarrying of “eternal stones “is more frequently mentioned on the Egyptian monuments than mining; the indefatigable energy of the Egyptians in building caused the demand for stone to be unusually great. Diorite limestone and granite were two of the most important resources. They were used to build temples and monuments and were of such importance quarrying them was controlled by a government monopoly. Limestone was mined at sites near Memphis, Amarna and Abydos. Granite, diorite and sandstone were mined primarily around Aswan.

James Harrell of the University of Toledo wrote: “The ornamental stones of ancient Egypt comprise a large and diverse group of rocks. Their attractive colors and patterns, and ability to take a good polish, made them sought after for decorative applications in art and architecture. At least 48 varieties of ornamental stone were used by the Egyptians and these come from 45 known ancient quarries, two in northern Sudan and the rest in Egypt. [Source: James A. Harrell, University of Toledo, OH, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013 escholarship.org ]

“The greatest selection of ornamental stones is found in the vessels made during the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods. Most of these are included in the table; those omitted, all rare, are discussed by Aston. About half of the listed varieties were used during the Roman Period and exported to many parts of the Mediterranean region. Some of the Roman names for these stones are preserved and these are also included in the table, along with the traditional names given by Italian stonecutters. It is by the latter names that the Roman stones are mainly referred to today in the archaeological and art historical literature.

Building Stones in Ancient Egypt

James Harrell of the University of Toledo wrote: “The building stones of ancient Egypt are those relatively soft, plentiful rocks used to construct most temples, pyramids, and mastaba tombs. They were also employed for the interior passages, burialchambers, and outer casings of mud-brick pyramids and mastabas. Similarly, building stones were used in other mud-brick structures of ancient Egypt wherever extra strength was needed, such as bases for wood pillars, and lintels, thresholds, and jambs for doors. Limestone and sandstone were the principal building stones employed by the Egyptians, while anhydrite and gypsum were also used along the Red Sea coast. A total of 128 ancient quarries for building stones are known (89 for limestone, 36 for sandstone, and three for gypsum), but there are probably many others still undiscovered or destroyed by modern quarrying. [Source: James Harrell. University of Toledo, OH, Environmental Sciences, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2012, escholarship.org ]

Building stones at the pyramids

“The building stones of ancient Egypt are those relatively soft, plentiful rocks used to construct most Dynastic temples, pyramids, and mastaba tombs. For the pyramids and mastabas made largely of sun-dried mud- brick, building stones were still employed for the interior passages, burial chambers, and outer casings. Similarly, building stones were used in other mud-brick structures of ancient Egypt (e.g., royal palaces, fortresses, storehouses, workshops, and common dwellings) wherever extra strength was needed, such as bases for wood pillars, and lintels, thresholds, and jambs for doors, but also occasionally for columns. Ptolemaic and Roman cities along the Mediterranean coast, Alexandria chief among them, followed the building norms of the rest of the Greco- Roman world, and so used stone not only for temples but also for palaces, villas, civic buildings, and other structures. Limestone and sandstone were the principal building stones used by the Egyptians. These are sedimentary rocks, the limestone consisting largely of calcite (CaCO3) and the sandstone composed of sand grains of mostly quartz (SiO2) but also feldspar and other minerals. The Egyptian names for limestone were jnr HD nfr n ajn and jnr HD nfr n r-Aw, both translating as “fine white stone of Tura-Masara” (ajn and r-Aw referring, respectively, to the cave-like quarry openings and the nearby geothermal springs at Helwan). Sandstone was called jnr HD nfr n rwDt, or occasionally jnr HD mnx n rwDt, both meaning “fine, or excellent, light-colored hard stone.” Although usually translated as “white,” here HD probably has a more general meaning of “light colored.” Sandstone is not normally considered a hard rock (rwDt), but it is often harder than limestone. In the above names, the nfr (fine) or HD or even both were sometimes omitted, and in the term for sandstone the n was later dropped.

“From Early Dynastic times onward, limestone was the construction material of choice for temples, pyramids, and mastabas wherever limestone bedrock occurred—that is, along the Mediterranean coast and in the Nile Valley from Cairo in the north to Esna in the south. Where sandstone bedrock was present in the Nile Valley, from Esna south into Sudan, this was the only building stone employed, but sandstone was also commonly imported into the southern portion of the limestone region from the Middle Kingdom onward. The first large-scale use of sandstone occurred in the Edfu region where it was employed for interior pavement and wall veneer in Early Dynastic tombs at Hierakonpolis and for a small 3rd Dynasty pyramid at Naga el- Goneima, about 5 kilometers southwest of the Edfu temple. Apart from this pyramid, the earliest use of sandstone in monumental architecture was for some Middle Kingdom temples in the Theban region (e.g., the Mentuhotep I mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri and the Senusret I shrine at Karnak). From the beginning of the New Kingdom onward, with the notable exception of Queen Hatshepsut’s limestone mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri, most Theban temples were built either largely or entirely of sandstone. Further into the limestone region, sandstone was also used for the Ptolemaic and Roman Hathor temple at Dendara, portions of the Sety I and Ramesses II temples at Abydos, and the 18th Dynasty Aten temple at el-Amarna. The preference for sandstone over limestone as a building material coincided with the transfer of religious and political authority from Memphis in Lower Egypt to Thebes in the 18th Dynasty. The Egyptians also recognized at this time that sandstone was superior to limestone in terms of the strength and size of blocks obtainable, and this permitted the construction of larger temples with longer architraves.

“The Serabit el-Khadim temple in the Sinai is of sandstone, and temples in the Western Desert oases were built of either limestone (Fayum and Siwa) or sandstone (Bahriya, Fayum, Kharga, and Dakhla), depending on the local bedrock. In the Eastern Desert, limestone was used for the facing on the Old Kingdom flood-control dam in Wadi Garawi near Helwan (the “Sadd el-Kafara”; Fahlbusch 2004), and sandstone was the building material for numerous Ptolemaic and Roman road stations. Both types of bedrock in the Nile Valley and western oases hosted rock-cut shrines and especially tombs, and these are the sources of many of the relief scenes now in museum and private collections. Limestone and sandstone were additionally employed for statuary and other non-architectural applications when harder and more attractive ornamental stones were either unaffordable or unavailable. In such cases, the otherwise drab- looking building stones were usually painted in bright colors. Conversely, structures built of limestone and sandstone often included some ornamental stones, most notably granite and granodiorite from Aswan, as well as silicified sandstone, but also basalt and travertine in the Old Kingdom.”

Kind of Ornamental Stones Used in Ancient Egypt

unfinished stones from Menkaure's pyramid

Large sculptures were usually carved from sandstone. Small and mid-size sculptures were made from a variety of materials including painted wood, limestone, Egyptian alabaster (not a true alabaster but a form of calcite), mottled rose granite, black basalt, roseate quartzite, graywacker (a smooth greenish grey rock), clay, schist, ceramic, bronze and other materials. Some of the most beautiful small Egyptian sculptures are made of anorthosite gneiss, which glows in the sunlight and emits a deep-blue color. Limestone and wood statues were painted and had inlaid eyes made of stone and rock crystal.

James Harrell of the University of Toledo wrote: ““There is much confusion over the geologic names applied to Egypt’s ornamental stones. Many of those now in common use were suggested over a century ago by archaeologists and other non- geologists with a poor understanding of the rocks they were describing, and still others were introduced by geologists following now disused or inappropriate rock classifications. Also, some stones are known by multiple names with different petrological meanings. For example, the famous “metagraywacke” from Wadi Hammamat has been variously but incorrectly referred to as “basalt,” “durite,” “schist,” “siltstone,” and “slate,” all rocks that are very different from metagraywacke. [Source: James A. Harrell, University of Toledo, OH, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013 escholarship.org ]

Another notable example of misused terminology is the widespread actice of referring to “travertine” as “alabaster.” For geologists, alabaster is a variety of rock gypsum and consists of the mineral gypsum (CaSO42H2O), whereas travertine is a rock composed of the mineral calcite (CaCO3). To avoid this nomenclatural conflict, some writers have referred to travertine as “calcite,” “calcite- alabaster,” “Egyptian alabaster,” or “oriental alabaster,” but travertine is the only geologically correct name. It is important that the geologic names be applied consistently and follow widely accepted, modern petrological conventions.

“There are no comparable global classification schemes for metamorphic and sedimentary rocks, but the terminology used here follows the popular norms reported by Brown and Harrell with, additionally, for some metamorphic rocks, compositional descriptors based on the IUGS classification. Modern petrological nomenclature allows for still other, equally valid, rock names for most of the ornamental stones and these are sometimes encountered in the literature. It is common practice to add a generalized color term to rock names (e.g., “red granite” from Aswan and “green metaconglomerate” from Wadi Hammamat) but such characterizations can be misleading and are, in any case

Valuable Limestone and Sandstone

The cheapest material, the common limestone, was indeed to be obtained everywhere on the edge of the desert with very little trouble; but this limestone scarcely admitted of fine treatment. The really good kinds of stone which were used for sculpture were not found in very many places, that is, if we consider those places only where it could be easily quarried. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

The fine white limestone, such as was used for instance for the better mastabas and pyramids, and for many statues, was brought from the great quarries of Terofu, nearly opposite Memphis; these are now called the quarries of Tura, and are still worked. Frequent mention is made at all times of these quarries; they consist of immense halls quarried in the rock; and when we consider what enormous masses of stone were cut here, we cannot overestimate their importance. Notwithstanding the fact that there are fewer inscriptions preserved at Tura than, c. g. in the less important mines in Sinai, yet this circumstance is to be explained by the great extent of the operations at the former place. To fetch stone from the Tura quarries, which lay close to the Nile, was such an everyday matter that it was not thought necessary to immortalise the work, however arduous it might be. It was only when a new cutting in these stone quarries was solemnly opened, in order to “cut beautiful white limestone," to build “houses that should last for millions of years," that the fact was narrated in an inscription intended for posterity. This happened During the Middle Kingdom in the reign of an Amenemhat, and in the time of the New Kingdom under Ahmose, and under Amenhotep III. ; in the latter case "his Majesty found that the quarries which are in Tura had fallen into decay since earlier times. "

Sandstone, which was valued as the least destructible building material, was chiefly obtained, as we might surmise, from that place which was most conveniently situate for Egypt proper, the most northerly point of the sandstone plateau, Gebel Selseleh. The mountains here approach the river on both sides so closely as to render quarrying an especially easy matter, yet I doubt whether sandstone was used for building in Lower Egypt During the Old Kingdom; even in later times it was employed preferably in the towns of Upper Egypt. During the New Kingdom the quarries of Gebel Silsila must have been the scene of very great activity in consequence of the immense quantity of material required for the building of Karnak, Luxor, Medinet Habu, and other temples; yet here, probably for the same reason as at Tura, inscriptions having any reference to quarrying are strangely few in number. Amongst these one of the most instructive is that of a certain Setemheb, who was “superintendent of the house of silver” of the temple of Amun under Ramses II. He superintended the quarrying of stone here for the building of the Ramesseum. For this purpose he employed 3000 men, amongst whom were 500 masons.

Granite in Ancient Egypt

Colossal red granite statue of Amenhotep III

The quarries of Aswan, from which was obtained the beautiful red Egyptian granite, were workedb the Old Kingdom. We learn this from the autobiography of Un'e, the oft-mentioned favorite of King Pepi. Merenre', who succeeded Pepi, required this costly stone for the adornment of his pyramid, and commissioned Un'e, who was superintendent of the south at that time, to obtain it for him. Unas went first to a part of the quarry district called 'Ebhat, and brought thence the coffin of the King and the point for his pyramid. He then went to Elephantine and from the island opposite Aswan he fetched the red granite that was further required for the furnishing of the pyramid; the stele, with the table of offerings belonging thereto; the door frames for the "upper chamber," etc. In connection with this latter journey the fact that is emphasised as most remarkable, and as never having occurred before “under any king whatsoever," is that Un'e, who had to employ for his work twelve ships for freight, required the escort of but one single warship; in former times, therefore, the country near the frontier had evidently been far from safe for Egyptian officials. ' Later, when the cataract district had been long under l{!gyptian government, the military importance of this frontier was very great, and the numberless inscriptions on the rocks are due perhaps more to this fact than to the proximity of the granite quarries. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

We possess still further evidence of the great importance of these granite quarries. In all the Egyptian ruins we find immense blocks of this Aswan stone, and in the neighbourhood of that town we can still see the places where they were cut. The procedure by which the old hgyptian stone masons extricated the blocks can be distinctly recognised. At distances generally of about 6 inches they chiselled holes in the rock, in the case of the larger blocks at any rate, to the depth of 6 inches. Wooden wedges were forcibly driven into these holes; these wedges were made to swell by being moistened, and the rock was thus made to split. The same process is still much employed at the present day.

The hardness of the red granite permitted its employment in great masses, and as the quarries were close to navigable water, the Egyptian architects and sculptors made good use of this happy circumstance. Some of the blocks in the temple of King Khafre not far from the great Sphinx measure 1 4 feet in length, and those under the architraves in the sanctuary of the crocodile-god Sobek in the Faiyum, built by Amenemhat III., are even more than 26 feet long. Amongst the Theban obelisks there is one more than 107 feet high, whilst a papyrus speaks of an obelisk of some kind from the quarries of Aswan, which measu such as nearly 200 feet, These again are surpassed in bulk by the colossal seated statue of red granite which lies shattered in the Ramesseum at Thebes; this colossus was hewn out of a single block 5 5 feet high and correspondingly broad.

As we have said, the convenient proximity to the water was the reason that the Aswan granite was constantly employed for these colossal works; the black granite, which might have been used perhaps for even larger architraves and for more slender obelisks, owing to its iron hardness, was only employed in comparatively small pieces, on account of the difficulty of transporting it from the quarries in the heart of the desert. The “valley Rehanu," or according to its modern appellation the Wadi Hammamat, lay on the desert route between Coptos and the Red Sea, and thence was obtained the “splendid rock the beautiful Bechen stone," from which were made nearly all the dark-colored statues and coffins that excite our admiration in the Egyptian departments of our museums. The working of these quarries must have been very difficult, for Hammamat lies two to three days' journey from the Nile, and the supply of provisions for the host of laborers necessary for the transport of the blocks can have been no easy matter. Numberless beasts of burden were required to fetch the necessaries of life; for instance, we read that 50 oxen and 200 donkeys carried the supplies for 350 men," thus to find water and food for these animals must again have been an arduous undertaking in the desert. In view of these difficulties, it seems to have been considered most meritorious to work there; it was indeed quite another matter to fetch stone from Hammamat than from Aswan or from Tura, To this cause we owe the number of inscriptions in existence at Hammamat, inscriptions which give us a very interesting glimpse of the working of these quarries, especially during the older period.

Alabaster in Ancient Egypt

Alabaster is a mineral and a soft rock used for carvings. Archaeologists, geologists, and the stone industry have different definitions for the word alabaster. In archaeology, the term alabaster includes objects and artefacts made from two different minerals: 1) the fine-grained, massive type of gypsum; and 2) fine-grained, banded type of calcite. In general, ancient Near East alabaster, including Egypt and Mesopotamia, is calcite. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

a cosmetics jar made of Egyptian alabaster, with a lid surmounted by the goddess Bast from the The tomb of Tutankhamun

During the Old Kingdom, alabaster was obtained from Wadi Gerraui, an area a little southward of Tura nearly opposite Dahshur, surrounded by steep limestone cliffs that stretch into mountains. In this valley the old alabaster quarries lie three or four hours' journey from the Nile valley, with which they were connected by a road which can still be traced in places. About an hour's journey below the quarries proper are the ruins of the stone, huts of the workmen.

A very strong wall, formed of blocks of stone piled up, and covered on the outside with squared stone, forms a dam across the valley at this point, and presumably served to intercept the stream formed by the winter rain, and thus to store the water for both workmen and draught cattle. The greatness of this work — the dam is about 30 feet high, 216 feet broad, and nearly 140 feet thick — shows that at one time great importance was attached to the quarries of the Wadi Gerraui. " This may have been during a period when the finer alabaster afterwards obtained from the town of Hat-nub, the gold house, was as yet unknown. Even the latter quarries were undoubtedly exhausted under King Pepi of the 6th dynasty. The threat age of this work is proved by the degree of weathering of the square stone of the dam, which is exactly like the weathering that can be observed in the blocks used for the pyramid temples.

Malachite

Malachite is green-colored, copper carbonate hydroxide mineral that is opaque and has green bands. In ancient Egypt the colour green (wadj) was associated with death and the power of resurrection as well as new life and fertility. Ancient Egyptians believed that the afterlife contained an eternal paradise, referred to as the "Field of Malachite", which resembled their lives but with no pain or suffering. [Source Wikipedia]

Malachite was mined from deposits near the Isthmus of Suez and the Sinai as early as 4000 B.C. In Egypt, malachite was in fact considered to be one of most valuable materials yet it stands to reason that it was not for the sake of malachite alone that the great mines of Sinai were worked for thousands of years. It is more likely that in official style its high-sounding name often stood for vulgar copper. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

The ancient Egyptians loved cosmetics. Green eye makeup was made by combining malachite — with galena. Both malachite and galena were ground on a palette with either gum and/or water to make a paste. Round-ended sticks made of wood, bronze, haematite, obsidian or glass were used to apply the eye make-up.”[Source: Cheryl Dawley, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com]

Where Ancient Egyptian Ornamental Stones Came From

Hippo relief carved in stone

James Harrell of the University of Toledo wrote: “From the Predynastic through Ptolemaic Periods, most of the ornamental stones, in terms of volume, were quarried in the Aswan region (vars. 1-2 granite, var. 1 granodiorite and silicified sandstone). The rest of the stones came from Cairo’s Gebel el-Ahmar (silicified sandstone), the Western Desert’s Fayum (basalt and rock gypsum) and Gebel el-Asr area (anorthosite gneiss and gabbro gneiss), and the Eastern Desert’s limestone plateau (travertine) and Red Sea Hills (var. 1 andesite-dacite porphyry, dolerite porphyry, var. 2 granodiorite, marble, metagraywacke, metaconglomerate, vars. 1-2 pegmatitic diorite, var. 2 serpentinite, steatite, tuff, and tuffaceous limestone). Quarries are known for all of these stones.

Most of the other stones for which quarries have not been found almost certainly come from the Sinai or, more likely, the Eastern Desert, including vars. 1-2 andesite porphyry, var. 1 dolostone, buff limestone, limestone breccia, var. 1 recrystallized limestone, rock anhydrite, and var. 1 serpentinite. The source of the var. 1 bituminous limestone is perhaps to be found in the Helwan-Saqqara region, where such rocks have been reported in geological surveys. Two known quarries in northern Sudan’s Third and Fourth Nile Cataracts for the var. 3 granite and vars. 1-2 granodiorite-granite gneiss were primarily sources of stone for the Napatan and later Meroitic kingdoms, but they were also employed for royal statues and stelae of Egypt’s 25th Dynasty and, in the case of the var. 1 granodiorite-granite gneiss at Tumbos, an 18th Dynasty stela. Peridotite was used for a few 18th Dynasty royal statues found at sites in northern Sudan, and its quarry is perhaps north of the Third Cataract, where outcrops of this rock occur.

Many of the Dynastic quarries for ornamental stones continued to be worked during the Roman Period, but most of the activity at this time involved new quarries producing a wide variety of colorful rocks in the Red Sea Hills (vars. 1-3 andesite-dacite porphyry, var. 2 dolostone, var. 2 bituminous limestone, var. 2 recrystallized limestone, var. 3 granodiorite, vars. 1-2 metagabbro, vars. 1-3 quartz diorite, rhyolite porphyry, var. 2 serpentinite, vars. 1-2 tonalite gneiss, and trachyandesite porphyry). [Source: James A. Harrell, University of Toledo, OH, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013 escholarship.org ]

“Non-ornamental limestone and sandstone, ancient Egypt’s main building stones, were also employed for many of these same applications when the more costly ornamental stones were either unaffordable or unavailable. Other stones were sometimes used for small vessels and figurines, including agate, amazonite, amethyst, fluorite, hematite, jasper, lapis lazuli, obsidian, rock crystal, and silicified wood. These, however, are normally thought of as gemstones and are discussed in Harrell. Some applications derive more from a stone’s non-visual attributes. For example, granite (var. 1), granodiorite (var. 1), and silicified sandstone were widely employed for door lintels, jambs, and especially thresholds because of their great durability, and in these applications they may be viewed more as building than ornamental stones. Although silicified sandstone is one of the ornamental stones, it was also widely employed in utilitarian applications, especially for grinding stones. The most heavily utilized ornamental stones of the Dynastic Period are sometimes given the sobriquet “monumental” (as in, for example, Aswan’s “monumental granite”) because of their widespread use in temples and for colossal statues and obelisks.

“Dozens of ornamental stones from around the Mediterranean region were imported into Egypt during the Roman Period and used for statuary and especially architectural elements in villas, temples, and public buildings. Much of this material has been reused in Egypt’s medieval mosques and other Islamic monuments, where it was employed for floor tiles, wall veneer, columns, and other decorative applications. Some of it has also been reused in Coptic Christian churches. The imported stones are much less evident in Egypt’s heavily plundered, Roman-era archaeological sites, but among these perhaps the greatest quantity and variety of such stones is seen in Alexandria’s Kom el-Dikka.”

Quarrying Ornamental Stones in Ancient Egypt

Quarry chambers of Masara

James Harrell of the University of Toledo wrote: “The quarrying of ornamental stones was usually done in surface pits and trenches, and occasionally on loose boulders. In addition to such open-cut workings, some travertine quarries went underground and formed cave-like galleries. From Predynastic times into the Late Period, quarrying of hard stones (all igneous and most metamorphic rocks plus silicified sandstone) was done with stone tools. These tools, known as pounders or mauls, were hand-held, purpose-shaped pieces of exceptionally hard, tough rock, of which dolerite was the most popular variety . The pounders were used to knock off corners and edges of bedrock outcrops when only relatively small pieces were required, to hack out trenches and undercuts to isolate larger blocks from the bedrock, or to reduce and reshape loose boulders resting on the bedrock. Fire-setting was occasionally employed during the Dynastic Period to either induce fracturing in hardstones or weaken their surfaces prior to pounding with a stone tool. Where the ancient quarrymen could exploit natural fractures in the bedrock, metal gads and also possibly wedge- shaped rock splinters were hammered into the fractures to widen them. Stout wooden poles used as levers would have been employed to help detach blocks along fractures or cut trenches. [Source: James A. Harrell, University of Toledo, OH, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013 escholarship.org ]

“Stone pounders are known to have been used for rock gypsum and travertine, and probably were used for some of the other softer ornamental stones (i.e., colored limestones, marble, rock anhydrite, and steatite). All of these would also have been worked at times with the same metal tools employed for the similarly soft building stones (limestone and sandstone). Throughout the Dynastic Period until near the end of the Late Period, these tools were copper and later bronze chisels. Chert or flint (microcrystalline quartz) picks were probably also sometimes used. Although copper and the harder bronze were tough enough to work the softer stones, these tools were quickly blunted and abraded in the process. They were entirely unsuited for quarrying hardstones, and for these the stone tools were far superior.

“Certainly by the 30th Dynasty of the Late Period but possibly as early as the 26th Dynasty, the Egyptians used “iron” (actually low-grade steel) tools for quarrying, including hammers, chisels, picks, and wedges. When extracting blocks from bedrock or boulders, a line of wedge-shaped holes was first chiseled into the surface. Iron wedges were then inserted into the holes and these were hammered until the rock split along the line of holes. Thin pieces of iron called “feathers” may have been placed on each side of the wedges to increase the lateral, expansive force of the hammer blows. The iron-wedge technology improved through the Ptolemaic Period and reached its zenith in Roman times with little change to the present day.

“A fiction often repeated in the popular archaeological literature is that the wedge holes were cut for wood wedges which, when wetted, would expand and so split the rock. In reality, this cannot work for the sizes and shapes, spacings, and often inclined orientations of wedge holes found in ancient hardstone quarries. Another quarrying technology that became commonplace in Egypt beginning in the Ptolemaic Period is the “pointillé” technique, which is still in use today. This technique, like the use of iron wedges, is conventionally thought to have originated in the Greek Aegean region during the sixth century B.C., but there is new evidence in Wadi Hammamat’s metagraywacke quarry suggesting it was employed there as early as the Predynastic or Early Dynastic Periods. Whereas wedging is useful for rough splitting, lines of pointillé pits are employed for more precise, controlled separation. In this method, a straight line of small, shallow, closely spaced pits is chiseled across a rock surface. The quarryman then hammers a chisel back and forth along the line of pits until the rock splits. In the case of the early Wadi Hammamat workings, the chisel was apparently fashioned from metagraywacke. Fire-setting and levers continued to be used, but the levers were probably of iron as well as wood.”

Carving Ornamental Stones in Ancient Egypt

James Harrell of the University of Toledo wrote: “The extracted rock masses were dressed (trimmed) in the quarries with the same tools used to remove them. A new stone-dressing technology was introduced by the Romans in the Wadi Umm Shegilat quarry for pegmatitic diorite (var. 1). Here they used a toothless iron saw blade along with the locally available quartz sand as the abrasive to cut the sides of rectangular blocks and the ends of column drums. Surprisingly, there is no evidence that this technology was employed in any other Roman quarry except for one at Felsberg in Germany. During all periods of Egyptian history, the quarry products were usually roughed out to something approaching their final form on site, and occasionally were carved to a nearly finished state. This not only reduced the weight of stone requiring transport, but also had the benefit of revealing any unacceptable flaws in the stone prior to its removal from the quarry. [Source: James A. Harrell, University of Toledo, OH, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013 escholarship.org ]

“Once the stone was taken to a Nile Valley workshop or construction site, it underwent additional dressing and carving followed by polishing. The same cutting tools used for quarrying were brought to bear, but in the Dynastic Period, especially during the Old Kingdom, copper or bronze saws and tube drills were also used. Quartz sand served as the abrasive for the softer copper and bronze tools, as it did later for the iron saws of the Romans. The principal application of the earlier saws was for cutting basalt paving stones in several of the Old Kingdom pyramid temples, with saw marks also seen on some of the hardstone sarcophagi of this period.

“The tube drills were used to cut recesses within blocks, including hollow interiors, sunken relief scenes, and hieroglyphic texts. Chert drill bits have been found in association with drilled rock gypsum and the much harder metagraywacke, and were surely used to drill other ornamental stones as suggested by the fact that hieroglyphs showing a hand drill with a stone bit were ideograms for “craft”. The effectiveness of chert tools (chisels, gravers, and especially drill bits) on granite has been experimentally demonstrated by Gorelick and Gwinnett and Stocks. Polishing was the final step in preparing an object carved from ornamental stone. Hand-held pieces of silicified sandstone (“rubbing stones”) are known to have been used for rough smoothing, but a fine- grained quartz sand paste applied with a piece of cloth or leather was almost certainly employed to produce the highly polished surfaces.”

Transporting Ornamental Stones in Ancient Egypt

“During the Dynastic Period, quarried pieces of stone too large to be carried on the backs of men or animals (mainly donkeys but also camels from perhaps the Late Period onward) would have been placed on wooden sledges, which were pulled by teams of either draft animals or men . Friction between the sledge and ground was sometimes reduced, as depicted in numerous tomb scenes, by pouring water on the ground in front of the sledge, but this would only work if the surface material had abundant hydrophilic clay. [Source: James A. Harrell, University of Toledo, OH, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013 escholarship.org ]

“ It is not clear what, if any, aids were used when sledges were pulled over sandy or rocky ground. Lehner suggests that clay-rich material or “tafla” (either Nile mud or sedimentary shale) was applied to the surface of 4th-Dynasty construction roads and ramps at Giza, and it is known that closely spaced wood beams were laid crosswise on the 12th Dynasty construction roads at el-Lisht and el-Lahun. It is conceivable that such friction-reducing practices were used for sledges brought from quarries near the Nile Valley. It has also been suggested that sledges were sometimes pulled over wooden rollers, although this is unlikely as these would only be effective on ground that was hard, smooth, and relatively flat. Such ground conditions may have existed within some quarries and construction sites, but in most cases the sledges traveled over uneven rocky or soft sandy ground where the rollers would be ineffective.

“The best-attested means of preparing ground surfaces for sledges was the construction of quarry roads. Some were paved with a single course of dry-laid, unshaped, and loosely fitted pieces of locally available rocks, the most notable being the 12 kilometers-long road leading from the Old Kingdom basalt quarry at Widan el-Faras in the Fayum. A 20 kilometers-long network of paved and partially cleared roads of New Kingdom and Roman date is found in the silicified sandstone quarries near Aswan at Gebel Gulab and Gebel Tingar. Most of the Dynastic quarry roads were unpaved and consisted only of cleared tracks, where the coarser surface gravel was swept to the sides. Where these roads crossed steep declines or surface dips, their bases were built up (and often supported by stone revetments) to reduce and even out the gradients. An outstanding example of this kind of road leads from the travertine quarry at Hatnub to the Nile River near the modern village of el-Amarna.

“Although the Egyptians knew of the wheel from the earliest Dynastic times, they had no wheeled wagons until the early New Kingdom. It is not known if these were ever used to transport quarried stone, but it is unlikely because, without relatively broad roadways with firm, flat surfaces, the heavily laden wagons would either get stuck in the sand or break their wheels on the rocks. In Roman times, however, and possibly as early as the Ptolemaic Period, wagons pulled by draft animals were the primary means of land transport for quarried stone and other materials, and this method was made practical by an extensive, well-built network of roads (cleared, unpaved tracks) linking the Eastern Desert quarries with the Nile Valley.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated August 2024