Among the most honored of professions in ancient Egypt was that of architect, or Chief of Works. This was the man (all the cases we know of were men) who oversaw the plans for building and constructing royal tombs, temples, pyramids, and other important edifices of the Egyptian ages.
Examples of men who filled this role include Imhotep, circa 2650 BCE (who was actually revered as being at least semi-divine until the Late Period, although some of this reverence may be due to his status as physician and all-round polymath). Imhotep presided over the building of Djoser's Step Pyramid at Saqqara.
We can also include Amenhotep son of Hapu, circa 1360 BCE, as an influential Chief of Works who was remembered long after he died, and who was deified in Ptolemeic times. He served the ruler, Amenhotep III. Senenmut, Chief of Works for Queen Hatshepsut, and built Deir el-Bahari, a terraced temple. Some of his notoriety of course stems from the uncertainty of his relationship with his liege lady.
A study of the rocks that make up many of the temples, monuments, and pyramids can determine from which quarry the stone was obtained. As many of the ancient quarries were not used for the last couple millenia, studies can be now done to match up many structures with the source of the stone used to build them.
Limestone often came from caves; these quarries are located from near current-day Cairo up to the Luxor region. A very white limestone, calcite alabaster, came from open mines near Amarna. Quartz came from the eastern Cairo region, and near Aswan. Basalt could be obtained north of the Fayum oasis.
Other types of stone came from as far away as Nubia. Rose granite, important for the making of Old Kingdom obilisks, came from the Aswan region. Red sandstone was quarried near Edfu, and became incorporated into temples at Karnak, Dendera, Edfu, and other upper Egyptian locales — generally downriver of the quarry site, for ease of transport. At many of these quarries, if untouched for the past couple millenia, one can decipher the types of stone cutting tools used, and one can determine that ramps carved into base rock were used to move the stone.
Often, it appears that in order to remove excess weight, initial and rough carving of blocks of stone to be used for statuary would be done before shipment away from the quarry site.
Some types of stone were obtained out in the desert, to be hauled for miles to the Nile. Sleds with runners were used for this purpose.
Very few construction plans survive, although a couple do, indicating that architectural and construction pre-planning, as one might expect for works of this scale, was indeed important.
References:
- Dietrich Wildung, Egypt from Prehistory to the Romans, 2001, Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-1221-8.
- Cyril Aldred (updated by Aidan Dodson), The Egyptians, 1998, Thames and Hudson, ISBN 0-500-28036-3.
