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6. Mining in Ancient Egypt

The very essence of modern Egypt to outsiders and visitors is its fabulous ancient cities and monuments, and the treasures that were found in the country’s most famous ancient structures, the Pyramids. These great antiquities have fascinated people for centuries and have led to much controversy as many of the priceless artefacts uncovered by archaeological expeditions, often foreign, have found their way outside Egypt. There are a number of different points of view about the history of this traffic in antiquities which, thought provoking though they are, lie well outside the scope of this particular history. However, it is beyond doubt that these great treasures would not have come into existence if the ancient Egyptians had not developed mining skills.

As we noted earlier, evidence suggests mining was first carried out in Egypt at least 40,000 years ago and possibly before that. In the Stone Age the targets for ancient miners were primarily materials such as flint for tool and weapon making, and other basic stone. Although it was the Bronze Age that heralded the rapid spread of the use of metals, the mining of copper, gold and other minerals in Egypt probably occurred long before that, as there is evidence of copper mines at Bir Nasib in the southern Sinai and turquoise mines at nearby Serabit el-Khadim.

The latter mines, developed first around 3500 BC as the Bronze Age was dawning, consisted of large hollowed-out galleries where the miners carved out turquoise for shipping to Egypt, to be made into jewellery and pigments for paint. The copper mines of the Sinai were established considerably earlier than the turquoise mines and there is archaeological evidence of copper smelting in the 6th millennium BC, probably using native copper, and copper mining 3,000 years later in the time of the Old Pharaohs. The mines lasted for centuries and disgorged large quantities of minerals. Indeed in the 19th century the British, who occupied Egypt for several decades, attempted to re-open the mines of Serabit.

Stone quarries

In Ancient Egypt there were also many stone quarries littered around the eastern and western deserts and also down in the south at Aswan. The latter were critical in the construction of the temples and tombs in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, one of the world’s great tourist attractions and historical sites, and also the temples at Abu Simbel to the south near the Sudan border. The granite quarried at Aswan was exported by the Romans, when they occupied Egypt, to many Mediterranean sites, and indeed granite mining around Aswan continues to this day. The great Pyramid of Giza just outside Cairo used granite transported 500 miles from Aswan, demonstrating that not only were the ancient Egyptians able to mine and cut stone but also had the means to transport the mined materials large distances. The use of slaves for mining and hauling would have helped make this economically viable.

Other varieties of stone were also extensively mined by the ancient Egyptians. Although granite was a first class basic building block many of the temples required more ornate and beautiful stone for facing and other uses. Mines at Tura and Ma’sara, south of Cairo, provided high quality white limestone used for facing the tombs of the grandest occupants. At Tura the limestone was found at depth and could not be mined from the surface, so the ancient miners tunnelled underground and then cut the limestone out in large blocks, the limestone left behind acting as the support pillars for the mine. This demonstrates significant sophistication in mining, in keeping with the technical achievements in construction of the ancient Egyptians. Other decorative stone quarries and mines can be found the length of the Nile and during the period of the Pharaohs they were active in providing raw materials for the continuing building programme.

Metals in the desert

The need to transport building stone considerable distances meant that many of the stone quarries and mines developed were those close to the Nile; the river being the main transport route between the north and the south of ancient Egypt. The copper and gold mines were often to be found further inland and the tough working and living conditions meant that slaves formed the main part of the labour force.

One of the most extensive mining sites was at Wadi Hammamat between the Nile and the Red Sea in the Luxor area. There, over the years, gold, granite, slate and eventually iron ore were mined. Whilst mining itself was both tough and dangerous there were other dangers that increased with the remoteness of the mining site – these dangers related to the marauding Bedouin tribesmen who were in the habit of ambushing supply camel trains going in to mines and metal delivery trains leaving the mines.

One of the biggest copper mining centres was in the Timna Valley near Eilat on the eastern edge of the Sinai Peninsular. Mines had been known in the area since the Late Neolithic period (4000 BC) and production was particularly buoyant around 1300 BC when the Egyptians took control. The mines that the Egyptians developed at Timna were complex and technically advanced, which is little surprise due to the construction achievements of theirs that we noted earlier.

The first Late Neolithic copper mining consisted of crudely beating out an opening in rock, where the copper seams were observed to run, with hammers, and then excavating galleries to dig out the copper. The Egyptians mined in an altogether more organised manner. They used metal implements rather than stone hammers and dug regular round shafts and cut out steps so that miners could access the workings. The shafts went down sometimes as deep as 100 feet, depending on where the copper-bearing sandstone was to be found. Narrow galleries or drives followed the ore and where substantial quantities of ore were located the drive was widened into a cave in order to work the face. There was also some basic ventilation in the mine. Once mined the ore was dragged through the drives and then hauled to the surface. The Egyptians also organised the treatment process so that the furnaces ran 24 hours a day, which economised on the huge consumption of wood/charcoal under the earlier stop-and-start system when fires were left to burn out overnight before being started again the next day.

Mining for precious gold

If the great kings of ancient Egypt needed spectacular tombs to mark their passing, and thus large quantities of stone, they also needed precious metals for adornment both in life and in death. The main gold mines were to be found in the south of the country in Nubia and in the Eastern Desert along the Nile. The mining methods used were not greatly different from those used in the copper mines, with shafts being sunk and galleries and drives being excavated to access the gold ore veins.

When the rock reached the surface it was first heated to make it brittle enough to break and then pulverised into a dusty substance which could then be agitated with water over a receptacle, the heavy gold sinking to the bottom. The gold dust, which could also be made finer by grinding with a corn millstone, was sometimes washed through a sieve; it is thought that sheepskin was also sometimes used to capture the gold as it was washed. Alluvial gold operations, as well as hard rock, were also known. Egyptian gold production levels at that time are clearly difficult to calculate but it has been suggested that it was around 1.5 tonnes a year.

The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus provided an extensive description of these Egyptian gold mining techniques at the gold mines of Bir Umm Fawakhir in the Central Eastern Desert region near Luxor in the 2nd century BC. It is likely that the mining methods were little changed from those employed in previous centuries and indeed millennia, perhaps only different in that by the time of Diodorus’s observations tools had become more effective.

Diodorus pictures the work force as made up almost entirely of slaves who were basically worked until they died, with little or no allowance being made for age, physical condition or health. These dire working conditions and cruel use of slaves suggests that a royal control structure was probably essential in the ancient Egyptian gold mining industry to give legality to such activities. It is also the case that gold, right from the start, had a monetary role as well as a decorative role, which would have been an even more crucial reason for royal interest.