The Roman Quarries of Mons Claudianus, Egypt an Interim Report

Abstract

Mons Claudianus, the fortified Roman settlement and its quarry field, situated in the remoter recesses of the Eastern desert of Upper Egypt was first discovered in 1823 by Wilkinson and Burton (1). Since then, it has been visited by a succession of explorers and archaeologists culminating in the German expeditions of 1961 and 1964 (2). Many of these visitors recorded their observations so that there is a considerable body of published information and indeed, the exemplary German reports remain, a quarter of a century later, a major source for the study of Roman quarries. Since then, the site has received comparatively little scholarly attention, but in 1985 it was visited by a group of papyrologists engaged in cataloguing the collections in the Cairo museum. They observed that an asphalt road, constructed during the Egyptian-Israeli troubles of the 1960ies, had greatly facilitated access to the site and it was now being plundered by tourists and locals in search of saleable antiquities, which included ostraca and other portable artifacts.