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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Robidoux Pass, post: 4400376, member: 96691&quot;]In the early to mid-80s I lived 4 years in Egypt supervising the construction of a port/grain silo facility on the Red Sea shore at Safaga.&nbsp; On Fridays and holidays, I would spend most of my time in the Eastern Desert exploring and visiting the Ptolemaic and Roman ruins. Thus I&#039;ve been fortunate to have been able to visit the imperial porphyry quarries in Egypt numerous times.&nbsp; In addition to the quarries, there is a remarkable causeway where the stone was brought down the mountain, numerous Roman villages situated in the mountain wadis, a temple, and a relatively well-preserved praesidium (fort).&nbsp; I eventually co-authored a peer-reviewed article in the American Journal of Archaeology on the 150 km long Roman road and its related stations from the porphyry quarries to the Nile River.&nbsp; And yes, one can still see the tracks of the Roman wagons in some of the gravel beds.&nbsp; Plus pieces of porphyry that occasionally fell off the wagons.</p><p><br /></p><p>The quarries are located in the Red Sea Mountains at Gebel Dokhan (Smoke Mountain in Arabic) and which the Romans called Mons Porphyrites (Mountain of Porphyry).&nbsp; It&#039;s about a 40 km trip by 4-wheel drive from the town of Hurghada. </p><p><br /></p><p>As the above posters have noted, the stone from these quarries is beautiful, purple with white crystals.&nbsp; Its very fine-grained matrix makes it suitable for carving. One interesting use of the purple porphyry I didn&#039;t notice mentioned above was in the imperial palace in Constantinople on the walls of the birthing room for the royal family.&nbsp; That&#039;s the origination of our term &quot;born to the purple&quot;[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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