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The Egyptian limestone was called
by the Egypt’s people the ‘white stone’ and can be found in big
quantity in this country. The name of white stone comes from the
Cretaceous period when the seawaters covered Egypt. The
sandstone can also be found in big quantities in Egypt although
it started to be more used with the New Kingdom. The Saqqara
area is the place where the limestone was employed for the first
time; this limestone is not of a high quality but it is layered
in strong and regular formations and a thickness of half a
meter. The clay, in thin layers, is the one who separates the
layers of the limestone. Dahshur, Giza and Saqqara are among the
locations of the limestone quarries. To cut the blocks, the
workers had to use tools from hard stone such as chisels,
dolerite, granite hammers and copper pickaxes. The Egyptian
limestone used at mortuary temples and pyramids was white, fine
and could not be found in the building site’s vicinity. The
Muqattam hills, situated on the Nile`s West bank, close to the
modern Maasara and Tura, was an important limestone source. The
workers had to dug tunnels to get to quarry of stone because the
stone was buried away from the land` s surface. The depths where
the stone could be found could reach even 50 meters; in these
situations some immense caverns were built to get to the quarry.
In general after the huge stone chunks were removed and in the
end cut into many blocks. These blocks were brought to the site
of the building on big sledges made from wood and pulled by
strong oxen. To make the moving easier, the paths were made from
layers of mud. |
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