Mons Porphyrites

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mons Porphyrites is a Roman quarry in the eastern desert of Egypt . It is located about 45 kilometers from the sea on the road between Maximianopolis / Kainopolis in the Nile Valley and Myos Hormos ( Abu Sha'ar Al-Qibli on the Red Sea ), 55 kilometers west of Hurghada on the northeastern steep slope of the Jebel Duchan Mountains (Smoke Mountains), whose highest mountain is 1626 meters high. The mountain range itself consists of Precambrian effluent rocks. In the quarry itself, a purple-red or black porphyry (andesite) with white or pink sprinkles made of feldspar was mined, which was extremely rare and therefore valuable. The imperial porphyry is only found in a small area of ​​about six square kilometers. Other mining sites (Barton) produced black porphyry. A second variant is green-black with white to slightly greenish phenocrystals that are up to five millimeters in size.

history

The mine was in operation between 29 and 335 AD, the northwest quarry was arguably the oldest. According to stone finds, a business in the late predynastic period and in the early Old Kingdom as well as in the Ptolemaic period can be assumed, for which there is hardly any evidence on site. In the 1930s, the quarry was briefly resumed under Prince Faruk , during which the stone was mainly used in Cairo .

Use of the stone

The Romans called the material lapis porphyrites (purple stone); in Italy it is called porfido rosso Egiziano or porfido rosso antico . The green-black second variant was called lapis hieracitis (Falkenstein), in Italian porfido verde Egiziano , its more blackish expression lapis porphyrites niger (black purple stone).

A number of buildings in Rome were equipped with this material , where 134 columns are known to date. The largest known porphyry column stood in the Sun Temple in Baalbek ( Lebanon ), was brought to Constantinople under Justinian I and built into Hagia Sophia . The exedrae of the Hagia Sophia contain a total of eight columns made of imperial purple, Prokop describes in his book De Aedificis their “purple and scarlet sheen” and compares the effect with a flowering meadow.

The largest porphyry bowl comes from Nero's Golden House . Pope Clement IX (1600–1669) left them from the villa of Pope Julius III. Transport it to the Vatican and temporarily set it up there. Today it stands in the Sala Rotunda in the Vatican, where it rests on a bronze pad with four lion's feet. The stone in the Porphyra the Great Palace at Constantinople Opel was Anna Comnena According to Rome at the Bosphorus been brought. Even Charlemagne procured to 786 with the permission of Pope Hadrian columns of Rome to be in the Palatinate Church in Aachen install (so-called spoils ). These are two smaller, polished columns made of a green Egyptian porphyry that are now in the museum next to the church. Several columns made of red porphyry are located in the Magdeburg Cathedral, which Otto the Great brought from Italy.

In addition to columns, the material was also used for statues, cladding (for example in the Pantheon ) and sarcophagi. After Suetonius , Nero was the first Roman emperor to be buried in a sarcophagus made of red porphyry. Even Constantine and his wife Konstantina had such coffins (now in the Vatican ). Emperor Friedrich II. , Heinrich VI. , King Wilhelm I and Empress Konstanze were buried in reused ancient sarcophagi made of red porphyry (cathedrals of Palermo and Monreale in Sicily).

Buildings

The quarries are located on the mountainside and in the summit area, while the workers' accommodations are on the slope and in the valley. The most important settlements are at the fortification on the edge of the wadi Al-Maa'mal (or Abu Ma'amel) and on the southern slope of the Jebel Duchan (Badi'a). The settlements were fortified like those of Mons Claudianus and, in addition to the quarters for the quarry workers, contained stables, cisterns, wells and baths as well as a small burial ground. As the excavations showed, women and children also lived here, and hairpins and toy combs were found. According to an inscription, a Serapis temple was built between 117 and 119 AD, "when Rammius Martialis was governor of Egypt". A stele discovered by Wilkinson in 1823 indicates the existence of a Christian church. There are sgraffiti in Greek on the walls of the quarry. In addition, numerous written fragments ( ostraka ) were discovered. Today there are no springs in the area, only the Wadi Umm Sidri has groundwater and has sparse vegetation of Christ thorn and acacias . In summer it can get up to 45 ° C.

Infrastructure

The quarry is connected to the settlements by steep serpentine paths. The stones, rough blocks of about 2 meters in length and weights of 20 tons were lowered into the valley via wide slides, which can still be seen in the terrain. Its course is marked by rounded piles of reading stones. There were large ramps at some distance from the settlements. It can be assumed that here the stones were loaded onto ox wagons in order to be transported over the 150-kilometer route to the Nile Valley near Qena. The road followed Wadi Abu Mu'amal (Valley of the Workshops) into Wadi Umm Sidri and Wadi Belih, crossed the watershed between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and then followed Wadi al-Attrash and Wadi Qena. It was called Via Porphyrites and already described by Claudius Ptolemy and Strabo . Seven fortified springs ( hydreumata ) were located here at intervals of one day's journey . The buildings were about 14 square meters and had two towers. The use of the first station, Badi'a, is dated by coins from Hadrian , Trajan , Constantine and Theodosius . The next station at the entrance to Wadi Qattar has been largely destroyed. The other stations are Deir al-Attrash, Saqqia and Al-Heita with double fortifications. The last station is also completely destroyed. From Qena, the stones were transported by ship.

Research history

The stone itself was reportedly discovered by a Roman legionnaire in AD 18. In 1823 the quarry was rediscovered by James Burton and John Gardner Wilkinson of the Royal Geographical Society . Georg August Schweinfurth named three mining sites (Lycabettos, Rammius, Lepsius), a fourth is simply called North-West. A black porphyry quarry was discovered in 1994 by Nick Bradford and named after him. George Murray, head of the Geographical Survey of Egypt , mapped the site in the 1930s, David Peacock from the University of Southampton carried out field visits and excavations from 1994-1998 . In 1998 a survey of the Via Porphyrites took place under the direction of Steven Sidebotham (University of Delaware ).

literature

  • VM Brown, JA Harrell: Topographical and petrological survey of ancient Roman quarries in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. In: Y. Maniatis, N. Herz, Y. Bassiakis (Eds.): The Study of Marble and Other Stones in Antiquity. ASMOSIA III, Athens, Transactions of the 3rd International Symposium of the Association for the study of marble and other stones in Antiquity. Archetype Publications, London 1995, pp. 221-234.
  • James A. Harrell: Decorative stones in the Preottoman Islamic buildings of Cairo, Egypt. Part I: Description of stone varieties . University of Toledo 2001, last revised February 8, 2003, last accessed October 2, 2014.
  • Rosemarie Klemm, Dietrich D. Klemm: Stones and quarries in ancient Egypt. Springer, Berlin a. a. 1993, ISBN 3-540-54685-5 .
  • Valeria A. Maxfield, David Peacock: Mons Porphyrites. In: Kathryn A. Bard (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Archeology of Ancient Egypt. Routledge, London 1999, ISBN 0-415-18589-0 , pp. 531-534.
  • Valerie A. Maxfield: Stone quarrying in the Eastern Desert with particular reference to Mons Claudianus and Mons Porphyrites. In: David Mattingly , John B. Salmon (Ed.): Economies beyond agriculture in the Classical World (= Leicester-Nottingham studies in ancient society. Volume 9). Routledge, London / New York 2001, ISBN 0-415-21253-7 , pp. 143-170.
  • Valerie A. Maxfield, David Peacock: The Roman Imperial Quarries: Survey and Excavation at Mons Porphyrites 1994–1998. Volume 1: Topography and Quarries (= Excavation Memoirs. Volume 67). Egypt Exploration Society, 2001.
  • Leo Tregenza: The Red Sea Mountains of Egypt. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1955.
  • Steven E. Sidebotham, Ronald E. Zitterkopf, John A. Riley: Survey of the 'Abu Sha'ar-Nile Road. In: America Journal of Archeology. Volume 95, No. 4, 1991.
  • Aschaffenburg Natural Science Association (Ed.): Porphyre (=  messages from the Aschaffenburg Natural Science Museum . Volume 26 ). Helga Lorenz, 2012, ISSN  0939-1924 , p. 188 .

Web links

Coordinates: 27 ° 8 ′ 54 ″  N , 33 ° 17 ′ 29 ″  E