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Updated: June 13, 2025
the great glacial cirques, with their stupendous precipices from which the vast ice-sheets started, which gouged, smoothed, planed and grooved millions of acres of solid granite into lake-beds, polished domes and canyon walls and carried along millions of tons of rock debris to make scores of lateral and terminal moraines; together with the evidences of uplift, subsidence and volcanic outpouring of diorite and other molten rocks, afford one as vast and enjoyable a field for contemplation as any ordinary man can find in the Grand Canyon.
The rock is of trap, greenstone, or whinstone, which miners call iron-stone and Cornishmen 'blue elvan: this diorite, composed of felspar and the hardest hornblende, contains granular iron and pyrites like silver. We find the same trap on the mainland. From the surf-boat we remarked that there were no sharks; apparently they shun coming within the reefs.
In order to reach the diorite and grey granite quarries of the Hammamat Valley, the Pharaohs caused a series of rock-cut cisterns to be constructed along the line of route. Some few insignificant springs, skilfully conducted into these reservoirs, made it possible to plant workmen's villages in the neighbourhood of the quarries, and also near the emerald mines on the borders of the Red Sea.
The slate, however, becomes more and more metamorphic as we go up, until it passes into what much resembles trap. In some places it looks like diorite and in others like porphyry. I saw no evidence, however, of any outburst. This latter rock passes somewhat more rapidly into granite at Glen Alpine Springs.
We shall have to refer again to these discoveries; we will only add now that in the black earth forming the soil were found worked flints, polished diorite hatchets, pierced shells, with various pieces of pottery, and mills for grinding corn. So far, however though many of the stations have been explored, no trace has been found of the use of metals.
The face lacks both intelligence and vivacity; but his work, after all, called for no special nimbleness of wit. Khafra is in diorite; Raemka and his wife are carved in wood; the other statues named are of limestone; yet, whatever the material employed, the play of the chisel is alike free, subtle, and delicate.
They imported gold, copper, and diorite from the Sinai peninsula and Arabia, precious stones from Armenia and the Upper Euphrates, wood from Bahrein and from various parts of the Amanus range, and so all quarters of the ancient world of culture were ransacked for contributions to add to the splendor of the Babylonian and Assyrian cities.
Very large veins, with an irregular direction, often assume the aspect of short layers; and the balls of diorite heaped together in hillocks may, like many cones of basalt, issue from the crevices. Mica-slate, chloritic slate and the rocks of slaty amphibole contain magnetic sand in the tropical regions of Venezuela, as in the most northern regions of Europe.
On its arrival at the Louvre, M. Léon Heuzey was struck by its general resemblance to a Sumerian head of diorite formerly discovered by M. de Sarzec at Telloh, which has been preserved in the Louvre for many years. On applying the head to the newly found statue, it was found to fit it exactly, and to complete the monument, and we are thus enabled to identify the features of Gudea.
Diorite statues of the prince are now in the Louvre, and inscriptions upon them state that the stone out of which they were made was brought from the land of Magan. On the lap of one of them is a plan of the royal palace, with the scale of measurement marked on the edge of a sort of drawing-board. Prof.
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