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.
7. The Eastern Mediterranean and the Near/Middle East
Apart from Egypt, a giant in ancient times, other important and prosperous states were located at the eastern end of the Mediterranean and some of them like Crete and Mesopotamia accumulated considerable quantities of gold. This gold was largely under the ownership of the royal houses, as it was in Egypt, underlining the idea that wealth in these early times was significantly in the hands of kings and princes.
Crete and Mesopotamia were insignificant gold producers so their gold would have come from neighbouring states such as Egypt, indicating an active trading environment in that part of the world. Crete, which was a substantial sea power, would have obtained gold from the northern Aegean and from the Balkans and the Danube states, where gold was mined extensively. This gold would have been shipped through Aegean ports.
There are also theories that the Egyptians launched expeditions in the 11th century BC to eastern Africa and brought back gold from mines in the area that is now Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The Phoenicians in the 6th century BC are believed to have circumnavigated Africa, starting in the Red Sea, and brought back gold from both the eastern and western sides of the continent. It is also more than likely that large quantities of gold reached the Middle East from the neighbouring Arabian Peninsular where ancient gold workings of considerable size have been identified at Mahd adh Dhahab in Saudi Arabia near Mecca. The current mine there is a high-grade one by today’s standards (plus 20gms per tonne), and it is believed the ancient mine operated during the reign of King Solomon.
Jordan
The advanced state of Egyptian and Mesopotamian society and the sophisticated nature of their buildings and the mines and quarries that provided the raw materials suggests that the Mediterranean/Middle East region, until the rise of the Roman Republic and Empire, was the centre of the civilised world, in contrast to today. We should therefore not be surprised that other parts of the region, and in particular Jordan, have a very long history of mining, going back to the 5th millennium BC.
The copper mines of Feinan, 40 miles south of the Dead Sea, underline the importance of Jordan as a mining region at that time. Amongst the ancient mining sites uncovered are Wadi al Abiad, Wadi Ratiye and Qalb Ratiye. Evidence of more than 100 mines has been found in this broad area, where ancient miners cut up to 30 feet drives into hillsides following the visible copper veins. The adits and drives that have been uncovered by archaeologists appear to have been kept low and were no more than 8 feet wide, with pillars to support the roof. This enabled miners to gain access to the veins, mining them in a gallery setting, maximising the amount of metal taken out and minimising the amount of digging required.
This room and pillar method of mining was accompanied by backfilling in a number of cases, which is an unusually advanced concept for the time and required considerable physical effort on the part of the miners. This was effort without any obvious economic return, except to avoid the galleries’ roofs collapsing – perhaps an early example of mine reclamation. Flint picks and stone hammers found around the site, very much as elsewhere, provided the tools needed for mining in these early days.
As well as gallery mining there were a number of small-scale copper diggings at Madsus, another regional mining site. Here copper ore had been washed down over time from higher levels to terraces below, where the miners dug small pits to retrieve the copper-enriched material. These diggings were close to the ancient settlement of Wadi Fidan 4 where evidence has been found of residues from copper smelting, suggesting an integrated