The stone quarries of ancient Egypt once produced quality stone for the building of tombs and temples and for decorative monuments such as sarcophagi, stelae, and statues. These quarries are now recog
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.
Mons Porphyrites
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Mons Porphyrites is the mountainous site of a group of ancient quarries in the Red Sea Hills of the Eastern Desert in Egypt. Under the Roman Empire, they were the only known source of the purple "impe
Stone quarries of ancient Egypt
…was discovered at an isolated site in Egypt in 18 CE by a Roman legionary named Caius Cominius Leugas. The location of the site, known to the Romans as Mons Porphyrites, was lost for many centuries until rediscovered in the 19th century. It was the only source of imperial porphyry in antiquity. The quarry was active…
Imperial porphyry mined from Mons Porphyrites