On a visit to Giza in 2008 I wanted to visit was Tura to see what remained of the ancient quarries which are the source of the Great Pyramid’s casing stones. I’ve seen photographs that Petrie took in the quarries in the 1880s when he commented on surviving parallel lines of horizontal cutting with Old Kingdom chisel marks still visible. Before I went I'd had trouble finding much information about whether it was possible to visit and what if anything there was to see now. I knew the quarry was still in use and had read in a book from the mid 1930s that the Old Kingdom work faces where being lost even then.

(Some early authors describe two quarry areas “Turah” and “Ma’sara” but they are very close and the are now usually known just as “Tura”.)

In the Second World War the area was used by Allied Forces as an ammunition store and a Radar instillation:

“In spite of the name, Tura Caves were not a natural phenomenon, but a huge beautifully wrought quarry, or stone mine, whence had come the limestone blocks for the pyramids. There can be no disputing this, because in 1942 at one point at the end of the quarry a pyramid block was found lying on wooden rollers, still after some five thousand years awaiting delivery. On the side was a job number in lamp black…” (The Tura Caves, Nial Charlton. JEA Vol.64 (1978) p.128)

John Romer's book on the Great Pyramid seemed to confirmed what I'd read elsewhere that there was little left to see now:

“Tura been worked as a quarry now for at least 5000 years. It is hardly surprising that there are few remaining traces of quarrying at Tura that appear to date from before the middle of the first millennium BC when the ever-increasing use of iron by the quarrymen gave birth to a brisker technology - a change of pace that has recently accelerated once again, with the use of dynamite to feed the nearby concrete manufactories. At the turn of the last century, however, tourists were still able to visit a series of enormous ancient caverns, great low arches cut into the Tura hills, which were regarded as one of the sights of Egypt. The quarries of the pyramids', so Baedeker advised, required a day's trip, a guide, a donkey and a candle. In those days, before the last explosion in working Tura stone, it was possible to read inscriptions of pharaohs and officials who had ruled and quarried in later dynasties than Khufu's on Tura's cliffs, as well as the rocky scribblings of visiting Greeks and Romans. Earlier guidebooks than Baedeker's even record elaborate ancient reliefs cut into the quarry face, one image showing oxen pulling blocks of stone set on wooden sledges." (The Great Pyramid, John Romer p185)

The best information I had were some instructions from a correspondent based on a visit during the Second World War. He'd marked the position of some of the "Caves" on a satellite photo and given me directions from a clearly visible cement factory.

So off I went with my regular and always resourceful taxi driver "Sayed" and we headed out of Cairo with the Citadel and the Mohammed Ali Mosque behind us.



He said that a lot of the area was under military guard because of the dynamite in use and if I was approached I was to say I'd left the taxi as I was in urgent need of a loo!

Initial views of the area which are visible from the road were unpromising:



I walked in the direction of an ugly cement works but was warned off by a guard:



I had to stay in the Taxi as we proceeded through some fairly impressive looking limestone outcrops but if there was any evidence of ancient quarrying I couldn’t say:



Eventually we were able to stop and I wandered around a bit and found some dramatic sites but, again, I had no idea if I was looking at ancient quarrying:





Only at this point could I see obvious evidence of parallel lines of cutting that followed the strata. But as elsewhere I've no idea how old this is.



So an interesting trip but without really knowing what I’d seen.