10/07/2021
In popular imagination the stones that made up the pyramids on the Giza plateau were all large, smooth-sided, rectilinear blocks. The reality is, however, that most of the cores of the pyramids were composed of locally-quarried, unfinished blocks of variable size. It was only the outside casings of the pyramids that were constructed of smooth, close-fitting, and regular limestone.
A few example of these fine casing stones can still be seen around the bottom of Khufu's Great Pyramid (on the right in the image below) and rather more at the top of his son Khafre's pyramid (middle), but most were quarried over the centuries as building materials for medieval Cairo or simply for lime mortar.
Most of these blocks came from a quarry just south of modern Cairo in a place now known as Tura.
We know a significant amount about the movement of these casing stones due to the discovery in 2013 at Wadi al-Jarf on the Red Sea of the 4,500 year-old journal of the leader of a group of workers who transported them from the Tura quarries to the Great Pyramid (the 'Horizon of Khufu').
The entries are brief, but give a real sense of the constant back-and-forth involved:
‘Day 26. Inspector Merer sailed with his team from Tura; loaded with stones for the Horizon of Khufu; passed the night at the Lake of Khufu.
Day 27. Sailed from the Lake of Khufu; navigated to the Horizon of Khufu, loaded with stones; passed the night at the Horizon of Khufu.
Day 28. Sailed from the Horizon of Khufu in the morning; navigated back up the river to Tura [south].
Day 29. Inspector Merer spent the day collecting stones in Tura south; passed the night at Tura south.’
The al-Jarf papyri give us a very real sense of day-to-day involvement and labour of ordinary ancient Egyptians in the creation of these vast monuments that would house the mortal remains of their dead kings.
(Upper photo: Pierre Tallet; Lower: mine.)
