This particular Imperial grade of porphyry all came from the Gabal Abu Dukhan quarry in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, from 600 million-year-old andesite of the Arabian-Nubian Shield. The road from the quarry westward to Qena (Roman Maximianopolis) on the Nile, which Ptolemy put on his second-century map, was first described by Strabo, and it is to this day known as the "Via Porphyrites", the Porphyry Road, its track marked by the hydreumata, or watering wells that made it viable in this utterly dry landscape.