Stone quarries of ancient Egypt

Ancient quarry sites in the Nile valley accounted for much of the limestone and sandstone used as building stone for temples, monuments, and pyramids.

[1] Eighty percent of the ancient sites are located in the Nile valley; some of them have disappeared under the waters of Lake Nasser and some others were lost due to modern mining activity.

[1] Some of the sites are well identified and the chemical composition of their stones is also well known, allowing the geographical origin of most of the monuments to be traced using petrographic techniques, including neutron activation analysis.

The new department was designed to work in close cooperation with the regional SCA offices, and special training programmes for Inspectors of Antiquities will be carried out to enable the regional authorities to tackle inventory, documentation, risk assessment and management of the ancient quarries and mines.

[2] A necropolis is located at the site, sat on top of a small hill and contains twelve mastabas dated to the 1st dynasty.

[3] Typical materials known from this site are: Gebel el Ahmar[4] is located near Cairo on the east bank of the Nile, near the suburb of Heliopolis.

[9] Widen el-Faras, literarily translates to "Ears of the Mare" and is named for the twin peaks located east of the quarry site.

Pliny the Elder's Natural History stated that "imperial porphyry" was discovered at an isolated site in Egypt in 18 CE by a Roman legionary named Caius Cominius Leugas.

Typical materials known from this site are: Wadi Hammamat is a quarrying area located in the Eastern Desert of Egypt.

Inscriptions found at Wadi Hammamat describe quarry workers breaking blocks from the mountain and using a ramp to lower them to the ground when a monument was requested by the King.

The quarry was active sometime during the Old Kingdom through the Late Period and remains largely intact in modern time.

There are a number of well-known sites: Shellal, consisting of northern and southern quarries within an area of about 20 km2 (7.7 sq mi) on the west bank, and the islands of Elephantine and Seheil.

Rock temples cut directly in the rocks at the Silsileh quarrying site, near Aswan
The Colossi of Memnon are two massive statues made from blocks of quartzite quarried from Gabel el Ahmar.
Depiction of a limestone quarry in Tura by Karl Richard Lepsius , a 19th century Prussian Egyptologist.
Baptismal font in the Cathedral of Magdeburg , Germany. The font is made of purple porphyry quarried from Gabal Abu Dukhan.
Doryphoros torso (Uffizi). Basanite from the Wadi Hammamat quarry
Square chamber constructed out of red granite blocks with a granite sarcophagus in the center.
Khufu's chamber within the Great Pyramid of Giza . Chamber is constructed of red granite blocks with the granite sarcophagus in the center.