<HTML>Yes, thanks for the article. It indeed DID quite a lot of sense - at least in ruling out this possibility :-)
Let me explain: This material is called "Pozzolan" and is a vulcanic tuff found around the italian city of Pozzuoli. Volcanic tuffs are mostly amorphous, that's right. Infortunately (for this special idea) they only consist partly od Silica (at most about 60%) whereas Egyptian Fayence consists to up to 98% of silica. Tuff has lots of impurities which don't matter in concrete, but would have been detected in the chemical analyses of fayence.
Another thing, too: such reactive tuffs like pozzolan are only found in a few regions around the Mediterranean: Santorini, Sicilly, Naples - well, that was it. The Egyptian tuffs (found only in very small quantities in the eastern desert (Lucas/Harris p. 419) are not that reactive. The Egyptians therefore used tuff to CARVE OUT figurines etc.
Again a dried out spring.
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