🏜️ Wadi Hammamat

Wadi Hammamat is a wadi in the Eastern Desert, located about 110 kilometres east of Qena in Egypt. Known since the beginnings of pharaonic civilization, Wadi Hammamat was exploited for its gold mines and, above all, for its greywacke quarries, known as "Bekhen stone", for millennia. In addition, the wadi had a strategic position because it provided access to the caravan route from Coptos to the Red Sea, the most direct route between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea, hence its ancient Egyptian name Rô-hanou.