Latest / Ramses the Great: Egypt's Most Powerful Pharaoh — Fexingo History / Ramses the Greats Stonemasons The Men Who Built the Temples
Transcript
- Lucas: If you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, you've heard a lot about Ramses the Great's monuments — Abu Simbel, the Ramesseum, Medinet Habu. But we've barely talked about the people who actually carved the stone. Luna: The stonemasons, you mean? Not the architects or the scribes, but the ones with the chisels? Lucas: Exactly. The men who spent their days in the quarries under the sun, breathing dust, hammering out blocks that weighed tons. They're almost invisible in the record, but we do have some traces. Lucas: The main quarry for Ramses's big projects was Gebel el-Silsila, about 65 kilometres north of Aswan. That's where the sandstone came from — and it was a massive operation. Thousands of workers, organised into gangs, each with a foreman and a scribe keeping tally. Luna: What kind of tools did they have? I imagine iron wasn't common yet. Lucas: Right, it was the Bronze Age in Egypt — copper was the main metal for tools. Chisels, adzes, saws. But for the really hard stone, like granite, they used dolerite pounders — just heavy balls of a very hard volcanic rock, swung at the surface to pulverise it. Backbreaking work. Lucas: And they didn't have pulleys or cranes as we know them. They used ramps, wooden levers, and sheer manpower. A single block for a colossus could weigh 50 or 60 tons. Moving that from the quarry to the river, then onto a barge, then to the temple site — that took coordination. Luna: So who was in charge of that whole chain? Was there one overseer? Lucas: For the royal works, there was a 'director of all royal works' — a high-ranking official. Under Ramses, one of the key figures was a scribe named Penre. We've mentioned him before in the Pi-Ramesses episode. He was essentially the project manager for the king's building programme. Lucas: Penre was based at Per-Ramesses, but he oversaw quarries and construction sites all over Kemet. We have a few inscriptions from Gebel el-Silsila that mention him, and a stela where he's shown making an offering — a rare glimpse of the man behind the monuments. Luna: I'd love to know what the workers themselves thought. Did they grumble? Did they ever protest? Lucas: They did. We have the famous strike records from Deir el-Medina — but that's the workmen building the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, under Ramses III, a later pharaoh. Still, it shows that Egyptian labourers could and did walk off the job when their rations didn't arrive. They sat down in front of the mortuary temple and refused to move until they got their grain. Lucas: For Ramses's projects, we don't have a strike record, but we do have a letter from a stonemason named Bekenkhons. He wrote to his son — also a stonemason — complaining about a shortage of copper tools. He says, 'I have no chisels to work with. Send me some from the storehouse.' It's human, immediate. Luna: Bekenkhons — that's a name that survived three thousand years just because he complained about his tools. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the thing — these men were paid in kind: beer, bread, sometimes oil or meat. A good mason might get a bonus of a loincloth or a pair of sandals. They weren't slaves. They were skilled artisans, often organised into hereditary guilds, passing the trade from father to son. Lucas: We know from inscriptions that a standard gang had about ten men. They had a 'chief of the stonemasons' who reported to the scribe. The draughtsmen would sketch the hieroglyphs and reliefs on the stone, and then the carvers would cut them — sometimes with astonishing precision. Luna: It makes you wonder what the average day was like. Sunup to sundown? Lucas: Probably. The Egyptian workday was divided into two shifts — morning and afternoon — with a break for the main meal. They worked eight-day weeks, with the tenth day off. There were religious festivals that meant extra holidays. And the state provided medical care — we have records of workmen being treated for eye injuries from stone chips. Lucas: One of the most remarkable things is the sheer scale of the workforce. For the Ramesseum, Ramses's mortuary temple on the west bank at Thebes, the quarrying and building must have involved tens of thousands of men over years. And yet, we know the names of only a handful of the supervisors, and almost none of the actual stonecutters. Luna: So the monuments that scream 'Ramses' were really the work of Bekenkhons and his mates. Lucas: Absolutely. And that's something that's easy to forget when you look at the colossal statues. The king provided the vision and the resources, but the stonemasons provided the sweat and the skill. Lucas: If today was actually useful to you, the way these stay ad-free is listener support — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small way to keep the stonemasons' story, and all these stories, accessible. Luna: Yeah, we don't have temple-builders on the payroll, but every little bit helps keep the show running. Lucas: So back to the stonemasons — one of the most poignant records comes from Gebel el-Silsila itself: a small chapel carved into the rock by a foreman named Penre. He dedicated it to the god Hapi, the Nile flood deity, because the quarry relied on the river to transport the stone. It's a personal prayer from a man who knew that without the flood, his work stopped. Luna: That's beautiful. A chapel built by a project manager, asking for the river to keep flowing. Lucas: Exactly. And in that chapel, he had himself depicted making an offering — not as a great official, but as a man who spent his life overseeing the extraction of stone for the glory of Userrenput-aanehktu, the 'User of Years, Great of Victories' — Ramses's own throne name. But the chapel is really about Penre and his relationship with the river. Lucas: So when you look at Abu Simbel, or the Ramesseum, or the colonnades at Luxor, remember that each block was touched by hundreds of hands. The stonemasons left their marks too — sometimes just a graffito saying 'the gang of the great temple' or a sketch of a worker on a block. They wanted to be remembered. Luna: And now, in a small way, they are.