Egyptian Maps

The harvest of the desert

At all periods the Egyptians made full use of their soft stones, the limestone and sandstone cliffs along the Valley, for building stone: in general, they used a relatively close source, and so the monuments from Abydos to Cairo are mainly of limestone, and those from Dendera south are mainly of sandstone. In addition, they quarried the harder rocks in the outcrops north of Cairo (quartzite), at the First Cataract (granite and granodiorite), and north of the Fayum (basalt).

The Saharan deserts to west and east of the Nile Valley in Egypt and Nubia offer a variety of other stones: well-used quarries include the calcite/travertine quarries at Hatnub, south-east of Amarna, and the quarries for sedimentary stones along the Wadi Hammamat, between Koptos and the Red Sea. The Roman Emperors set up more distant quarries, most famously at the source for imperial porphyry.

The desert also provided semi-precious stones such as amethyst, carnelian and jasper.

At several quarries, the ancient mining expeditions left inscriptions immortalising their success.

References

Arnold 1991
Bauer1974

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