Wadi Hammamat

Hammamat became the major route from Thebes to the Red Sea and then to the Silk Road that led to Asia, or to Arabia and the horn of Africa.

Quarrying expeditions to the Eastern Desert are recorded from the second millennia BCE, where the wadi has exposed Precambrian rocks of the Arabian-Nubian Shield.

These include Basalts, schists, bekhen-stone (an especially prized green metagraywacke sandstone used for bowls, palettes, statues, and sarcophagi) [3] and gold-containing quartz.

[4] The Narmer Palette, 3100 BC, is one of a number of early and predynastic artifacts that were carved from the distinctive stone of the Wadi Hammamat.

[7] The first European descriptions of the Wadi Hammamat were from the Scottish traveler James Bruce in 1769, and the Russian Egyptologist Vladimir Golenishchev led the first modern study of the inscriptions in 1884–1885.