ThebuildingstonesofancientEgypt–agiftofitsgeology

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African Earth Sciences 33 (2001) 631–642www.elsevier.com/locate/jafrearsciThe building stones of ancient Egypt – a gift of its geologyDietrich D. Klemmaa,*, Rosemarie KlemmbInstitut f ur Allgemeine und Angewandte Geologie der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen, Luisenstrasse 37, D-80333 M unchen, Germanyb gyptologie der LMU, Meiserstr 10, D-80333 M unchen, GermanyInstitut f ur AReceived 1 February 2001; accepted 31 July 2001AbstractBuilding stones and clay-rich Nile mud were ancient Egypt’s main raw construction materials. While the mud was easily accessiblealong the Nile river valley, the immense quantities of the different stone materials used for construction of the famous pyramids,precious temples and tombs needed a systematic quarrying organization, well arranged transport logistics over extreme distances anda high standard of stone masonry. The petrography, occurrence, and main applications of the 11 most popular stone types used inancient Egypt are described in this contribution. Rough estimates of the scale of this mining activity, based on the volume of manydifferent ancient quarry sites, all over Egypt, reveal that the monuments known today represent only a small fraction of the amount ofbuilding stones mined during the long, ancient Egyptian history. Ó 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.Keywords: Building stones; Nile mud; Monuments and temples; Petrography; Mining logistics1. IntroductionAncient Egypt was regarded by Evers (1929) as the‘‘state out of stone’’ because stone was the most important raw material used during the different periods ofPharaonic Egypt until Graeco-Roman and Arab times. Avery schematic geological map of Egypt (Fig. 1) presentsthe general geological units of this country, all of whichsupplied ancient dynasties with varying quantities ofbuilding stones, mainly for funereal and sacral purposessuch as pyramids, temples and various tomb constructions. Apart from the temples and sacral monuments, themore mundane architecture, including dwellings of thenobility and royal palaces was almost exclusively built ofsun-dried Nile mud bricks. Nile mud, formed annuallyalong the river valley during floods which averaged threemonths in duration, was thus the most important rawmaterial in ancient Egypt, as it still is today. The mudderives predominantly from the source regions of theBlue Nile, the Abyssinian Mountains, and is laid downannually as a layer of a few millimetres thickness ofhighly fertile clay, providing an excellent and everlastingbasis for agriculture. This annual blessing together withthe constant water supply by the river guaranteed Egypt*Corresponding author.E-mail address: dietrich.klemm@iaag.geo.uni-muenchen.de (D.D.Klemm).its legendary reputation as the ‘‘land of milk and honey’’.Nile mud bricks alone do not resist weathering forces forvery long and thus, most of the villages, private and noblebuildings of ancient Egypt have been lost, with onlyscarce exceptions waiting to be uncovered by the spate ofarchaeologists active in the country.Unlike the habitations of the various levels of Egyptian society, the temples, famous pyramids and tombswere built for eternity and consequently were constructed and decorated from primary stone materialsmuch more resistant to the ravages of weatheringand time. The deposits of these stone materials utilised for such gigantic projects as the pyramids weremainly pragmatically selected near the construction sitesthemselves, but, if the proper material for decoration orcasing was not available locally, the ancient architects,supported by the royal administration, did not hesitateto mine the required stone material even at the mostremote sites and to transport it over thousands of kilometres to the construction sites.2. The main deposits of building stones and their uses inancient EgyptThe river Nile and its man-made channels served inmost cases as ideal shipping routes for long distancetransport of heavy stone loads, but in quite a few cases0899-5362/02/ - see front matter Ó 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.PII: S 0 8 9 9 - 5 3 6 2 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 8 5 - 9

632D.D. Klemm, R. Klemm / African Earth Sciences 33 (2001) 631–642Fig. 1. Schematic geological map of Egypt with location of the main ancient quarry sites.the stone material was also transported with utmostdifficulty, and up to a 100 km or more, along deserttracks. During a systematic survey of quarries mined inancient Egypt we have visited approximately 80 quarrydistricts, almost always subdivisible into local sites eachexploited during the different historical periods. In thisway, about 200 quarry sites have been listed. Most of theresults are reported in detail in Klemm and Klemm(1993), but in this contribution we shall briefly discussthe various quarry districts, starting with the geologi-

D.D. Klemm, R. Klemm / African Earth Sciences 33 (2001) 631–642cally oldest sites and ending with the youngest. The mostrecent deposits, the Nile mud quarries located everywhere along the river valley, have already been discussedabove.2.1. Deposits of anorthosite-gneiss in the Western DesertThese deposits belong to the ‘‘African basement’’ andoccur in a series of amphibolites, gabbro- and dioritegneisses with minor intercalations of calcsilicate-hornfelses (Huth and Franz, 1988), which form a dome at theGebel el-Asr, some 30 km west of the Lake Nasser, atToshka. The deposits most probably represent a highlymetamorphosed part of a layered intrusion of anorthosites, gabbros and diorites into calcareous sediments ofmid-Precambrian age. The main mineral constituents ofthis anorthosite gneiss are bytownite and a dark greento greenish-black, common hornblende (Harrell andBrown, 1994). The area is cut by various mafic dikes ofunknown age.Ancient quarrying was restricted to a small areaof mainly anorthosite- and diorite-gneisses. The exactidentification of the different quarry sites is somewhatdifficult, due to heavy cover of windblown desert sand.Nevertheless, many loose blocks of various local stonesshow intensive ancient working traces. Engelbach (1933,1938), who rediscovered this district, found a series ofstelae (incribed stone columns), particularly from theOld Kingdom (OK, about 2700–2160 BC) and theMiddle Kingdom (MK, 2119–1794 BC) as well as acopper chisel with a cartouche (an oval framed rendering of the king’s name) of Pharaoh Cheops (about 2550BC), now displayed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.According to the working marks and these stelaetraces it appears very probable that this site was indeedmainly worked during OK–MK periods, and that objects made of this stone material in later periods represent only reworked parts of broken material collectedfrom earlier periods. Recycling of natural resources wasthus already invented in ancient Egypt. Many stonevessels, objects mainly from Predynastic times to MKperiods were made of this material, from which the‘‘Falcon-Chephren’’ statue in the Cairo museum mightbe the best known. Total rock material mined in thisquarry district was in the order of some 100 tons, whichhad to be transported along an approximately 30 kmlong desert track to the river and from there, passing thefirst cataract, some 1500 km by water towards the north,to Gizeh (Cairo), close to the ancient capital of Memphis at that time.2.2. Deposits of ‘‘Bekhen-stone’’ (greywacke-siltstone) atWadi HammamatLarge parts of the Eastern Desert of Egypt, betweenthe river Nile and the Red Sea consist mainly of nappes633of intensely folded Pan African series, predominatelycomprising ophiolitic and other volcano-sedimentaryrocks. These thrust sheets are exposed in the EasternDesert of Egypt with a few exceptions of old Africanbasement.A zoisite-chlorite facies metamorphosed molasse-typesedimentary rock, resulting from these thrust systemsand some syn-kinematic granitoid intrusives, consistsmainly of green siltstones, dark green greywackes andconglomerates, which are best exposed in the WadiHammamat (Fig. 2) along the Quft-Quseir road fromthe Nile valley to the Red Sea. At this type locality thesemeta-sediments are also of favourable cleavage development, whereas at the many other occurrences of theEastern Desert, the Hammamat series are mainly characterized by intense schistosity and are highly brittle.Thus, larger blocks of suitable construction stones couldonly be obtained from the Hammamat region itself,where along a gorge type-section of about 2 km, animpressive quarrying activity is documented by almost600 rock inscriptions over a time interval from Predynastic until the late Roman period (about 4000 BC until300 AD). These many inscriptions concentrated along arelative short distance in the wadi obviously indicate theuniqueness of this site and its extraordinary importanceto ancient Egyptian culture. Consequently the rock typeextracted here received a special name: ‘‘Bekhen-stone’’,as reported in many ancient Egyptian documents.The oldest topographical sketch map hitherto documented, known as the ‘‘Turin mining papyrus’’, wasascribed to the Wadi Hammamat locality by Klemmand Klemm (1989). Apart from some gold and silvermines and a mining settlement displayed on this papyrus, it also shows the location of the Bekhen-stonequarry site, coloured in dark blackish green. OtherFig. 2. Unfinished sarcophagus in Wadi Hammamat greywacke andsiltstone quarries. The blocks for suitable work pieces could easily bebroken off using the almost horizontal and vertical joint patterns.Eastern Desert of Egypt.

634D.D. Klemm, R. Klemm / African Earth Sciences 33 (2001) 631–642differently coloured parts of this papyrus obviouslyrepresent different rock types of the portrayed regionand seduced some geologists to postulate this sketchmap to be the oldest geological map (Harrell andBrown, 1992), which claim cannot be substantiated realistically at all.Particularly the very dense, medium-grained darkgreen greywacke was used during the entire Pharaonicera and on until the Ptolemaic (Greek) period (from332–30 BC), mainly for sarcophagi, archetraphes andfor the finest carved sculptures of Egyptian antiquity.Scattered unfinished or broken sarcophagi indicate thatat least the raw form of these vessels were worked out atthe quarry site, which is understandable as they had tobe transported over 90 km through the desert, untilshipped on the river Nile to their final destination.Most of the royal sarcophagi of the OK and about100 sarcophagi for private individuals of the Late Period(since 600 BC) and of Ptolemaic and Roman times weremade of this rock variety. Mainly in Roman times, additionally, the use of a conglomeratic variety of rock, theso-called ‘‘breccia verde’’ became fashionable. The mostexciting examples of Hammamat greywacke statues arethe Mycerinos (259–2511 BC) triades in the Cairo andBoston museums, and a great number of extremely finecarved statues was produced throughout the ancienttimes, with a definite maximum during the Late Period.The stone material worked in the Wadi Hammamatquarry district exceed some 10,000 t, of which about athird was transported to the river Nile valley. Accordingto the rock inscriptions, up to 4000 men were involved inthe different quarrying expeditions into the Eastern desert, were well treated with food and ‘‘at least five litresof beer every day’’ and ‘‘no man got lost’’ (Couyat andMontet, 1912). Strange as it may seem, this stronglyindicates that the work forces were not made up ofslaves and were well taken care of.theless, even here, the desired joint spacing could not befound, forcing the Roman architects to reduce the envisaged height of the entrance-porticus (Nanz, 1987) byabout 3 m, still recognisable today by the double tympanum frames.The tonalites occurring in the Mons Claudianusquarrying district are actually leuco-tonalites, with arelatively low quartz content (see Fig. 5), and only withan average of 7 vol% hornblende and 4 vol% biotite,which distinguishes them clearly from the much darkergranodiorites and tonalites of the Aswan area, also usedduring Roman times for building stones and as smallerwork pieces. Apart from the columns in front of thePantheon temple, an uncountable number of large columns were manufactured from Mons Claudianus material and delivered to almost all parts of the RomanEmpire, certainly with a maximum in Rome itself, withits Fori, especially the Forum Romanum but also, forexample, in Villa Hadriana, Tivoli, the thermes of Caracalla and Diocletian (Fig. 3). This Egyptian quarrydistrict, with more than 150 different working sites wasexploited from the time of emperor Claudius (41–54AD) until the fourth century. Because of its excellentconservation state quite a voluminous archaeological literature exists, from its rediscovery by Wilkinson(1832) until recent works, of which only a small representative selection need be referred to here (Meredith,1954; Kraus and R oder, 1962; Klein, 1988; Peacock andMaxfield, 1997).The amount of leuco-tonalite mined at Mons Claudianus was in the order of some hundreds of thousandsof tons. The very heavy work pieces had to be transported 150 km through a dry desert, always in fear ofBlemmyes raids, along fortified roads with stronglyarmed forts and water wells, about 40–50 km apart,until the river Nile was reached at Qena. From there therock was shipped to Alexandria and from thence todifferent overseas destinations.2.3. Deposits of tonalite and the Roman search for greygranitoids in the Eastern DesertFor the construction of the imperial Pantheon templein Rome, due to unknown reasons, a mixture of reddishand grey, 21 m long monolithic columns was required.Nowhere in the Roman empire were such long-jointedgranitoid rocks known, except in the pink-granite district of Aswan; however, the grey granodiorites of thatarea have a much closer joint system, preventing themanufacture of such monolithic work pieces. Therefore,a systematic prospection for long-jointed, grey granitoids was started in the Eastern Desert. At least twolocalities were evaluated, at Semna and Barud, but indioritic-gabbroic lithological terrains of the eastern desert (Klemm and Klemm, 1993). Finally, in the area ofMons Claudianus, in a gneissic tonalitic massif, the required long-jointed rock variety was located. Never-Fig. 3. Roman column at Mons Claudianus tonalite quarry sites. Itstill rests on an ancient loading ramp waiting for transportation.Eastern Desert of Egypt.

D.D. Klemm, R. Klemm / African Earth Sciences 33 (2001) 631–6422.4. Deposits of imperial porphyry around Gebel Dokhanin the Eastern DesertDuring the Neoproterozoic an intensive daciticandesitic volcanism formed voluminous layers of ignimbritic lava-flows and tuffs, outcropping at many siteswithin the Eastern Desert of Egypt. These rocks arepartly interbedded with, but mainly cut through theHammamat sediments and overlie them. The volcanicbeds mainly have a dark grey-green porphyric appearance. The matrix is normally fine crystalline, but in theupper portions of the flows also has a crypto-crystallineto (devitrified)-glassy character. An auto-hydrothermalalteration of these sequences is pervasive, changing themineral composition mainly by altering the albitic plagioclase, the less abundant K-feldspar and the mostlyidiomorphic augitic clinopyroxene into epidote and especially, in the purple varieties (as the result of a slightmanganese-metasomatism), into piemontite (Fig. 4).These purple varieties with their pink to porcelainwhite porphyric remnants of feldspar crystals, formedpredominantly in the uppermost layers of the volcanicsuccession and provided the source for the desired‘‘porfido rosso antico’’, during Roman times exclusivelyreserved for imperial use (‘‘imperial porphyry’’). DuringPharaonic Egyptian periods this rock type was only usedfor small bowls, manufactured exclusively from roundedsmall wadi boulders but never mined from a quarry site.Only in Ptolemaic times is there evidence for the firstquarrying activity for this material, in the region ofGebel Dokhan in the Red Sea hills of the Eastern Desert. But the culmination of stone working at this, nowrenamed ‘‘Mons Porphyrites’’ area, began in the reign ofTiberius, continuing during early to middle Romanimperial time, and ending in the fifth century AD.Most probably because of its purple colour, its highhardness, extreme difficulty to work and its singularity,the ‘‘imperial porphyry’’ enjoyed an exceptional statusin the Roman and Byzantine Empire. It was used forFig. 4. Thin section of Egyptian Imperial Porphyry with crystals ofzoned piemontite.635statues, ceremonial bathtubs, bowls and vessels, mantle pieces, pedestals, benches and sarcophagi, alwaysstrictly reserved for imperial use. During Byzantinetimes the importance of this porphyry reached its apogy,when the legitimacy of imperial princes was boundto their birth in an imperial porphyry encased specialroom, leading to the genealogical suffix ‘‘Porphyrogenesus’’. Much later, Charlemagne (742–814 AD) attributed great importance to his throne, with its seat ofimperial porphyry.The working conditions in the porphyry quarriesaround Mons Porphyrites, some 150 km away from theriver Nile in a desolate, dusty and dry rocky desert musthave been horrible, and the work force was mainly recruited from slaves and the ‘‘damnati’’ (Klein, 1988),politically condemned persons without real hope ofsurvival. The amount of imperial porphyry quarriedwithin this region was in an order of magnitude of some10,000 tons; nevertheless, the logistic expenditure wasenormous with special road constructions through thedesert, a fortified well and camp every 15–25 km and atthe quarrying area itself, numerous settlements including the Isis and Serapis temples.2.5. Deposits of ‘‘Rose-Granite’’ and of other granitoidssouth of AswanPerhaps the best known quarries of ancient Egyptoccur south of Aswan. They cover an area of about4 5 km. Here, almost all varieties of granitoids usedduring the Pharaonic and also Roman periods in Egyptwere quarried.The most prominent group is a variety of rich pink toreddish-pink, coarse- grained, porphyric granite, wellknown as ‘‘rose-granite’’ and of an unmistakable appearance worldwide. In spite of its different local varieties, it is hard to confuse this granite type with freshtypes occurring elsewhere. A striking feature of thisgranite is the dominant texture of intensely etched, 2–5cm long, pink to reddish, porphyric K-feldspar grains,set in a medium-grained granitic matrix. Under thepolarizing microscope the intensive microclinal textureof the K-feldspars and the ubiquitous presence of allanite are characteristic. The fabric of the ‘‘rose’’-granitesvaries from amorphous to almost gneissic, but alwayspreserving its porphyric character and the phenocryststhemselves comprise 40–60 vol% of the rock.The amount of rose-granite mined in this region ishard to estimate but is likely to be in the range of somemillion tons. The best known examples for the use ofthis rock are the many obelisks and the uncountablecolumns distributed all over the Roman Empire, with amaximum in Italy. There are also numerous applicationsof this granite in many Egyptian temples, pyramids, andin early Christian churches. Furthermore, sarcophagi ofkings, nobles and sacrificed animals, colossi and more

636D.D. Klemm, R. Klemm / African Earth Sciences 33 (2001) 631–642cosmopolitan statues of kings, gods, sphinxes and private persons were made from this material.Also in the granitoid district south of Aswan, greycoloured granodiorites and tonalites to quartz dioritesare interfingered with the rose-granite. The exact distribution of these granitoid varieties is not yet satisfactorily mapped and, according to our own field work, thisseems rather difficult as variations of granodiorite totonalite may occur gradually within a few hundredmeters of outcrop, thus being difficult to map in detail.They appear to be medium-to coarse-grained with biotite and common green hornblende comprising 20–40vol% of the rock (biotite always about a third

thus already invented in ancient Egypt. Many stone vessels, objects mainly from Predynastic times to MK periods were made of this material, from which the ‘‘Falcon-Chephren’’statueintheCairomuseum might be the best known. Total rock material mined in this

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