The King’s Official Weni Errand in the South (On the question of E. Bloxam’s hypothesis)
Orekhov Roman A.
Based on the geoarchaeological evidence from the Gebel el-Asr quarries (Lower Nubia) the British scholar E. Bloxam proposed a logistical scheme of the transportation of the mined gneiss rock to the main Nile bed during the Old Kingdom period. Given that the gneiss deposit was situated at great distances from the river (near 80 km) Bloxam suggests that the so-called Wadi Toschka, flooded during the inundation season, played the essential part in this transportation scheme. The gneiss rock was transported on special rafts upstream along the Wadi Toschka. The climate conditions established during the first half of the Old Kingdom were favourable to that task. But later on, by the end of the 5th dynasty, a period of drier climate began, and the quarries became inaccessible. The author argues that the court official Weni described precisely this way of rock transportation in his famous inscription (Urk. I, 108–109; Tresson 1919, 7) which would support the hypothesis of E. Bloxam.
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