Cutting Stone

Tuesday November 9 - The day started leisurely with no tours in the morning.  Shortly after lunch we pulled ashore at the Sandstone Quarry.  All the great temples use the stones from these mines in their creation.  A whole community of people would live in a village near the quarry, living and dying and being buried here.  The bones of these villagers told a story of a hard life with many deformities due to lifting or cutting these heavy rocks.

We are viewing the cuttings on the west side of the Nile which have a lesser quality of rock than on the east side but it shows us lessons about cutting the stone.  We can see the marks where the cuts were made, how the rock was split and where they sharpened or honed their tools.  Some of the casing stones for the pyramids were cut from this site with the unused ones tumbled on the ground. The loading ramp to the river is also apparent.  When the Romans occupied this area they wanted to tax all the trade along the river so they chose this spot to set up two chains across the river to stop and hold any ship going past. The holes they drilled in the stone for the rope pulley are still evident.

A shrine is also carved into the sandstone to Hormbheb the beloved chief of the Egyptian army in 1360 - 1338 BC.

It’s a busy river the closer we get to Aswan.  We pulled to shore with about 7 other boats.