What is "hatnub"

Hatnub was the location of Egyptian alabaster quarries and an associated seasonally occupied workers' settlement in the Eastern Desert, about southeast of modern el-Minya. The pottery, hieroglyph inscriptions and hieratic graffiti at the site show that it was in use intermittently from at least as early as the reign of Khufu until the Roman period (c. 2589 BC–AD 300). The Hatnub quarry settlement, associated with three principal quarries, like those associated with gold mines in the Wadi Hammamat and elsewhere, are characterized by drystone windbreaks, roads, causeways, cairns and stone alignments.

Hatnub was first described in modern times by Percy Newberry and Howard Carter in 1891. There are many inscriptions on the rocks and these were first described by George Willoughby Fraser and Marcus Worsley Blackden, members of this same expedition. For nearly 100 years, archaeologists concentrated on finding and translating these inscriptions which illuminated much ordinary life in Ancient Egypt. Only when Ian Shaw and his team began studying the material remains were the two integrated to give a fuller picture.

For example, no New Kingdom inscriptions were found and it was thought that the quarries were not used during that period. Shaw and his team found New Kingdom pottery fragments showing that workers from this period must have used the quarries.