What did they use to fuel kilns in ancient Egypt? (preferible on the fiaence kilns)

Dear redcapelliragazo,

Certain araeological findings, like in Tel el-Amarna [1], suggest that
the Egyptians used charcoal for firing the kilns in the process of
producing faience. However, since the domestic supply of wood was very
limited in ancient Egypt, most of the wood necessary to make charcoal
very probably had to be imported and thus expensive.

While it is not impossible that the Egyptians imported the wood as raw
material for charcoal to make their famous faiences, there is tangible
evidence for an alternative fuel which was in use, at least in later
periods, but there is no reason to believe that this was unknown in
earlier times. In Memphis, archaeologists discovered kilns that were
used for faience-making, with the remains of fuel: "The fuel used was
straw; we found much carbonized straw in the masses of slag." [2]

Hope this answers your question!
Regards,
Scriptor


Sources:

[1] "Ancient Egyptian Faience", by Florence Dunn Friedman. Published
in Magazine Antiques,  Sept. 1998. Provided by Find Articles
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1026/is_n3_v154/ai_21146424/pg_2

[2] University College London: Digital Egypt for Universities -
Faience Objects from Memphis
http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/memphis/faience.html

An introduction to the history and culture of Pharaonic Egypt:
Household utensils and materials
http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/utensils/index.html

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Request for Answer Clarification by redcapelliragazo-ga on 19 Nov 2006 16:05 PST

Great answer; do you know by any chance if they use livestock dung,
because I know other ancient civilizations used this technique.