Chephren's Quarry, Upper Egypt: Archaeological registration and mappingof ancient quarry sites

Abstract

Chephren's Quarry is one of the world's oldest hard-stone quarries. It issituated in the easternmost part of Sahara - covering nearly 100k2 of flat,hyper-arid desert, some 60 km west of Lake Nasser ( River Nile) and the famousAbu Simbel temple in the extreme south of Egypt. Lately, it has been discoveredthat this unregistered, archaeological site of great importance, is seriouslythreatened by modern development - the canal and irrigation work related to theSouth Valley Development Project. An initiative to a Norwegian - British -Egyptian Project aiming to provide accurate maps and documentation of theChephren's Quarry site, was taken, and field work was carried out January 2003.The mapping and documentation work in January 2003 were carried out by theGeological Survey of Norway (NGU) with help from the Geological Survey of Egypt(EGSMA), supported by the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage(Riksantikvaren) and generous funding by the Norwegian Ministry of ForeignAffairs. Simultaneously, our partner, a British team of archaeologistsundertook archaelogical excavations in the area. This part of the project wasfunded mainly by the Egyptian Exploration Society (EES) and University ofLiverpool.In total, 5 ancient stone quarry areas, one ancient mine and an ancient roadwere mapped. This included approximately 700 ancient quarries (of these 40large ones) and 2-300 features related to ancient infrastructure. The mappingwas done with GPS and field computers. Several thematic mapes were made,including accurate maps of the areas of interest for future protection. Mapsand databases were handed over the EAIS (Egyptian Antiquities InformationSystem) project of the Supreme Council of Antiquites. In addition to thesedata, the project revealed a lot of nwe and interesting information about theancient quarrying techniques