A remarkable campaign of decorative stone quarrying took place in the southwestern Egyptian desert almost 5000 years ago. The target for quarrying was Precambrian plagioclase−hornblende gneiss, from which several life-sized statues of King Chephren (or Khafra) and thousands of funerary vessels were produced. The former inspired George Murray in 1939 to name the ancient quarry site 'Chephren's Quarries.' Almost 700 individual extraction pits are found in the area, in which free-standing boulders formed by spheroidal weathering were worked by stone tools made from local rocks and fashioned into rough-outs for the production of vessels and statues. These were transported over large distances across Egypt to Nile Valley workshops for finishing. Although some of these workshop locations remain unknown, there is evidence to suggest that, during the Predynastic to Early Dynastic period, the permanent settlement at Hierakonpolis (Upper Egypt) could have been one destination, and during the Old Kingdom, another may have been located at pyramid construction sites such as the Giza Plateau (Lower Egypt). Chephren's Quarries remains one of the earliest examples of how the combined aesthetic appearance and supreme technical quality of a rock made humans go to extreme efforts to obtain and transport this raw material on an ‘industrial’ scale from a remote source. The quarries were abandoned about 4500 years ago, leaving a rare and well-preserved insight into ancient stone quarrying technologies. Reference: Heldal, T., Storemyr, P., Bloxam, E. & Shaw, I. (2016): Gneiss for the Pharaoh: Geology of the Third Millennium BCE Chephren's Quarries in Southern Egypt. Geoscience Canada, 43, 63-78

A remarkable campaign of decorative stone quarrying took place in the southwestern Egyptian desert almost 5000 years ago. The target for quarrying was Precambrian plagioclase−hornblende gneiss, from which several life-sized statues of King Chephren (or Khafra) and thousands of funerary vessels were produced. The former inspired George Murray in 1939 to name the ancient quarry site 'Chephren's Quarries.' Almost 700 individual extraction pits are found in the area, in which free-standing boulders formed by spheroidal weathering were worked by stone tools made from local rocks and fashioned into rough-outs for the production of vessels and statues. These were transported over large distances across Egypt to Nile Valley workshops for finishing. Although some of these workshop locations remain unknown, there is evidence to suggest that, during the Predynastic to Early Dynastic period, the permanent settlement at Hierakonpolis (Upper Egypt) could have been one destination, and...

An ancient gypsum quarry is situated at Umm el-Sawan in the northern Faiyum desert, approximately 40 km southwest of the Giza Plateau. The gypsum was used largely in the Early Dynastic Period/Old Kingdom for ornamental purposes such as small vessels, as well as for utilitarian purposes such as wall plaster. Geologically, the gypsum occurs within the upper part of the Eocene Qasr el-Sagha Formation, in which deposits and smaller extraction sites are found also elsewhere in the northern Faiyum area. Blocks of gypsum were moved from the quarry to a number of workshops where the shaping of the vessels took place. Within the quarry and in nearby areas the ground is scattered with several types of stone tools. These have a bipartite provenance, originating partly from a local to semilocal source in other parts of the Tertiary rock successions, and partly from Upper Egypt. In the latter case, the presence of such exotic rocks links the vessel production at Umm el-Sawan with similar production elsewhere from the same period (3rd–4th Dynasties). The previous interpretation of a ‘hut-circle’ area for the workmen was proven to represent a group of grinding stone quarries, bearing implications for the interpretation of the social organisation of the gypsum quarrying. The remains from gypsum quarrying and working, extraction of secondary stone resources for tools, and quarries targeting domestic utensils, collectively illustrate the interaction between man and the geological resources throughout the landscape, and illuminate the problem of delineating a small part of this landscape for preservation.

Rock foundations of the Kephren and Kheops pyramids are examined in comparison with other Fourth Dynasty monuments: the Sphinx, Queen Kentkawes' mastaba and the Abu Rawash pyramid. This study is based on geological and geomorphological observations, ...

"The surviving remains of ancient Egyptian material culture are dominated by the stones used for building, ornamental, gem, and utilitarian applications. These came mainly from the Nile Valley and Eastern Desert (with some also from the Western Desert), where over 200 quarries have been discovered spanning about 3500 years from the Late Predynastic Period to the Late Roman Period. The harder stones (nearly all the igneous and metamorphic rocks plus silicified sandstone and chert) were quarried using stone tools aided by fire setting and wood levers up until the Late Period, when the stone tools were replaced by iron ones. The softer stones (mainly limestone, sandstone, and travertine) were extracted with copper and, later, bronze picks and chisels during the Dynastic Period, with iron tools again replacing the earlier ones by the end of the Late Period. Until the advent of suitable roadways and wagons rugged enough to transport them in the Greco–Roman Period, the larger pieces of quarried stone were carried on sledges, often along prepared roads, and probably pulled by teams of men to the building sites or to the Nile River for shipping. Ancient quarries are more than just sources of stones, but are also rich a rcheological sites with ruins and other cultural remains. Their study and preservation is necessary because they provide a unique perspective on life in ancient Egypt."