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Alabaster: Egypt’s
Rock of Ages
By: Sonny Stengle
Seventy-year-old Mohamed Ahmed Abdallah smiles
broadly as he watches that big truck unloading alabaster rocks in
front of his alabaster factory on the west bank of Luxor. Times
are changing, yet he still remembers the "old days,"
when he was riding on donkeys with his father, into the mountains
of the Western Desert, following the trail of the old alabaster
road, seeking that magnificent rock in almost inaccessible
valleys. Today’s trucks do that job.
You cannot talk about Egypt without mentioning
Alabaster, an artistic handicraft that boasts a millenniums old
history and a noble tradition that can be felt in almost every
nook and cranny of the country. The secrets  of the manufacture of
this warm and luminous stone have been handed down from generation
to generation, throughout the ages, and still represent one of the
pinnacles of Egyptian handicrafts.
Alabaster is quarried either in open pits or
underground. In open pits, veins of Alabaster are found 12 to 20
feet below the surface under a layer of shale which can be two or
three feet deep. The rocks have an average height of 16-20 inches
and a diameter of two to three feet. Rarely do the rocks exceed
these sizes. This material is a mineral product of two fine
masters, father Time and mother Earth. It requires both to achieve
the fine grain of its smooth white translucent stone. Working the
alabaster quarries is a laborious, unpredictable job.
Alabaster is ageless. It is found throughout the
histories of Sumer, Babylon and Assyria and of course, Egypt.
Deposits of alabaster are not only found in Egypt also in
countries like Algeria, England, United States, Belgium, India,
Turkey, Spain, Cyprus, and Italy.
Alabaster is a fine-grained, massive,
translucent variety of gypsum, a hydrous calcium sulphate. It is
pure white or streaked with reddish brown. Like all other forms of
gypsum, alabaster forms by the evaporation of bedded deposits that
are precipitated mainly from evaporating seawater. It is soft
enough to be scratched with a fingernail and hence it is easily
broken, soiled, and weathered. Because of its softness, alabaster
is often carved for statuary and other decorative purposes. The
often-used term "Oriental Alabaster" is a
misnomer and actually refers to marble,
a calcium carbonate, whereas gypsum is a calcium sulphate.
So we do know two different kinds of Alabaster:
the gypsum kind, which is used mainly for pure hand-made products
and the "Oriental Alabaster" which is a much harder
stone, similar to marble, and which  today is only used for
machine-made products.
"Oriental alabaster" (marble) was
extensively used by the Egyptians in sarcophagi, in the linings of
tombs, in the walls and ceilings of temples, and in vases and
sacrificial vessels.
As a raw material (Gypsum Alabaster), it is a
crystalline material (hydrated calcium sulphate - gypsum-), with
off-white colour, translucent, density 2.350 kg/m3 and a Mohs
Hardness of 2,3 to 2,5. Iron, copper and other minerals native to
the quarry area were introduced in solution, giving the stone its
exquisite colours, which distinguish Upper Egypt’s alabaster
from other deposits on this planet. Each vein of alabaster has its
own unique colour and characteristics. It is found in nature in
bulky, irregular shapes, in different sizes and variable depths,
mixed with other materials like marls or clays which protect
alabaster against exterior agents.
Stonework with alabaster was one of Egypt's
earliest industries (4000 BC). Two ancient alabaster sites are
known. One site was at Wadi Gerawi, and the other at Helwan.
Oriental alabaster (marble or calcium  carbonate) was very popular
during Egypt's New Kingdom. The working of hard stone reached it's
height during the Third and Fourth Dynasties, 2600-2400 BC. Early
vessels were of simple but elegant shape, often with flat board
rims. Calcite was believed to have, in a mythical sense, solar
connections.
Products obtained from alabaster stone have had
a very diverse historic evolution; Firstly, the Egyptians and also
the Greek and Chinese cultures used it to make artisan products.
Afterwards, it was used around the world in altarpieces of
churches and monasteries and mosques. In modern times Muhammad Ali
used it for his Alabaster  mosque in the citadel of Cairo. At the
beginning of last century, ART DECO and ART-NOUVEAU designers used
it for the first time as diffuser of light to design decorative
fitting, taking advantage of its transparency and natural
graining. In the middle of the 80´s, the recovery of DECO´s
style in interior design boosted the re-introduction of alabaster
as a material, competing with crystal and other acrylic materials,
and mainly contributing, as novelty, the fact that it was a
"natural product made by hand".
Several millenniums have passed since the
ancient Egyptians began to work with alabaster and in spite of
various problems Egyptian artisans have not lost the knowledge of
how to handle this material. Even though branch of industry no
longer represents the most important factor of the economy in
Egypt, it is still a characteristic element of its culture and its
history. There aren’t many artisans left "knowing how to
handle" Alabaster. It’s up to men like Mohamed Ahmed
Abdallah and his colleagues in Cairo and in Luxor/Westbank/Qurna
to preserve this old tradition and to keep this handicraft going
for future generations.
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