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Marble

Marble is a metarmorphic calcareous rock formed from pre-existing rocks (under high heat and/or pressure). It has been completely recrystallised to the point where it has lost all traces of fossils. Impurities in the original limestone are crystallised as minerals and are concentrated as bands of colours. Marble can be found at four places in Egypt: Wadi Dib (near Red Sea hills, west of Gebel Zeit), Gebel Rokham (east of Edfu), Wadi Haimur (south of Aswan), Qash Amir peak (Red Sea, at Sudanese border).

Marble is not very often used in ancient Egypt, until it becomes common, with imports, in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt.

examples
UC 14762 UC 16825

Aston/Harrell/Shaw 2000: 44-45
Aston 1994: 55-56


 

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