Mining in Egypt has a rich history dating back to predynastic times. Active mining commenced around 3000 BCE. Egypt possesses substantial mineral resources, including tantalite, coal, and an estimated 6.7 million ounces of gold in the Eastern Desert.
Location of Egypt in Africa
Egypt became a major gold producer during the Old Kingdom and remained so for the next 1,500 years, with interruptions during periods of kingdom breakdown. During the New Kingdom, gold production steadily increased, and mining became more intensive as new fields were developed.
British historian Paul Johnson stated that it was gold rather than military power which sustained the Egyptian empire and made it the world power throughout the third quarter of the second millennium BCE.
Most gold mines in Egypt today were exploited for high-grade gold (15 g/t gold or greater) by the ancient Egyptians; however, there has been limited exploration that applies modern day techniques where deposits can be viable based on gold grades as low as 0.5 g/t (provided there is sufficient tonnage and readily available infrastructure).
Read also: Exchange Rate: 300 USD to NGN
Early Mining Practices
Ancient artifacts discovered throughout the centuries have led scientists and historians to believe that the Egyptians first began mining gold around 3100 BCE, before the first developments of written language. At its height, the Egyptian kingdom was the largest and most powerful kingdom on the African continent, and one of the most prominent societies in the Mediterranean and Asia Minor regions.
Egypt’s most prosperous region was Nubia, where we believe that the world’s first active gold mines were constructed. Gold was harvested from the mines of Nubia for thousands of years. It made the kingdom incredibly wealthy, and soon gold played an integral role in Egyptian society.
For the first 3000 years, Egyptians used gold primarily for jewelry and religious items. Even so, their methods of working with gold were incredibly sophisticated.
Ancient Egyptian Jewelry
The technique of quarrying granite and limestone was an advanced technology by the time the pyramids were being built. Marble, alabaster, and diorite were used for making statues, basalt for making sarcophagi, and dolomite for hammers to work hard stones. Precious and semi-precious stones that were extensively mined and worked as well included turquoise, beryl, amethyst, and malachite.
Read also: Infinix Smart 5 Price & Specs
Gold as Currency and Commodity
In 1500 BCE, Egypt began using gold as a currency. These early coins were called shekels, and they were minted from electrum. The practice of using gold as a form of money quickly spread throughout Asia Minor, and it was perhaps one of the single most important moments in the history of currency.
In ancient Egypt gold was more plentiful than dirt. Egyptian hieroglyphs from as early as 2600 BC describe gold, which King Tushratta of the Mitanni claimed was “more plentiful than dirt” in Egypt. Egypt and especially Nubia had the resources to make them major gold-producing areas for much of history.
Gold, known as “nub” in ancient Egyptian, was highly valued and associated with the sun god Re. It was considered a divine metal and represented eternal life, the sun’s radiant power, wealth and the king’s divine authority.
Gold was used extensively in religious rituals, temple decorations, and the adornment of kings and nobility. It was also used as a form of currency and played a crucial role in trade and commerce.
Mining Locations and Methods
Almost all of Egypt’s gold mines, and its later gemstone mines, were located in the Eastern Desert, the arid expanse of barren ridges and wadis (seasonally dry ravines) between the Nile and the Red Sea. By the time Egypt had attained its height of cultural development in the New Kingdom, its gold workers had mastered the techniques of fusing, lost wax casting, engraving, embossing, and hammering the metal into thin, workable sheets.
Read also: Comparing Africa and North America
Slaves broke rock with handheld or hafted stone mauls. Most mines were surface pits and trenches, although slaves also drove narrow workings hundreds of feet underground to follow gold-bearing quartz veins. Slaves manually crushed the ore, then recovered the gold by dry shaking or by hauling the ore 50 to 100 miles to wash it in the waters of the Nile.
Compositional analysis of gold objects from the Predynastic period and first dynasties indicates that gold was mostly acquired from veins embedded in quartz outcrops that would have been highly visible in the desert terrain or from placer gold accumulated in dry wadi riverbeds.
Quartz veins were easily separated from their matrix after smashing with heavy hammers. There is evidence that pit mining began in Predynastic times at sites like Wadi Dara and Umm Elegia, where miners followed quartz veins underground.
The Turin Papyrus Map
Ancient Egypt’s gold-mining history is undocumented except for the Turin Papyrus Map. The six-foot-long Turin Papyrus Map, the world’s oldest known topographical and geological map, depicts stone quarries and numerous gold mines along a nine-mile section of the Eastern Desert’s Wadi Hammamat mining area.
It accurately presents different rock types as black and pink hills and depicts lithologically diverse wadi gravels as varicolored dots.
3,000 Year Old Gold Mine Discovered in Egypt
Modern Gold Mining in Egypt
Today, Egypt still produces gold. The nation’s first modern gold mine, the Sukari Mine, began production in 2010 in the Eastern Desert where gold was first mined more than 5,000 years ago.
In February, archaeologists from the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) of Egypt announced the completion of a two-year excavation of a 3,000-year-old gold processing complex at the Sukari gold mine. The site lies about 15 kilometers west of the Red Sea and was excavated as part of the Revival of the Ancient City of Gold project, which endeavored to uncover and document the ancient gold mine.
Processing of gold quartz at Sukari was quite advanced, with evidence of specialized factories having been set up alongside residential areas for the mine workers. The factories included facilities to process the gold quartz through crushing, purifying, smelting and extracting the gold.
The Economics of Gold Mining
A study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science has, for the first time, quantified the profitability of gold mining in Antiquity. The work was carried out by Leigh Bettenay and James Ross of the University of Western Australia.
The results showed that the most profitable method was alluvial mining in wadis (PAP), with a Return on Investment (ROI) of 124%. In other words, for every unit of gold invested in wages, 1.24 additional units of gold were obtained. Next came oxidized lode mining (OLM) and proximal clast mining (ACM-P), both with an ROI of 94%. The only unprofitable method was distal clast mining in large, distant catchments (ACM-D), which produced a -57% loss.
Profitability of Gold Mining Methods
| Mining Method | Return on Investment (ROI) | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Primitive Alluvial Prospecting (PAP) | 124% | Searching for nuggets and free gold particles in sediments from desert stream beds. |
| Oxidized Lode Mining (OLM) | 94% | Extraction of the upper, weathered portions of gold-bearing veins in bedrock. |
| Proximal Clast Mining (ACM-P) | 94% | Manually searching for quartz fragments containing gold inclusions near the source. |
| Distal Clast Mining (ACM-D) | -57% | Manually searching for quartz fragments containing gold inclusions in large, distant catchments. |
Gold Artifacts and Symbolism
Gold jewelry intended for daily life or use in temple or funerary ritual continued to be produced throughout Egypt’s long history. The gold used by the Egyptians generally contains silver, often in substantial amounts, and it appears that for most of Egypt’s history gold was not refined to increase its purity.
The color of a metal is affected by its composition: gradations in hue that range between the bright yellow of a central boss and the paler grayish yellow of a Middle Kingdom uraeus pendant are due to the natural presence of lesser or greater amounts of silver.
To the Egyptians, gold, as the color of the sun, was the flesh of the sun god Ra and represented eternal life.
Popular articles:
tags: #Egypt
