gems, beryl, emerald, Egypt, Cleopatra, history of gemology, archaeology, archaeologemology

Located at the fringes of the Egyptian Eastern Desert, the quarries of Hatnub have remained famous, since the Pharaonic period, for the quality of their calcite alabaster and, since their discovery at the end of the 19th century, for their epigraphic richness. The work carried out in quarry P and its surroundings, since 2012, by the epigraphic and archaeological mission of Hatnub (Ifao, University of Liverpool), has allowed a better understanding of the functioning of this quarry and in particular the way in which the blocks were extracted from it. Preliminary studies were also carried out to understand how this quarry (and the others) was inserted on the Hatnub plateau, through a vast network of roads and installations essentially oriented towards the production and transport of alabaster and the administrative and logistical management of the quarries.