The Pharaohs' Gold: Ancient Egyptian Metallurgy

THE PHARAOHS' GOLD: ANCIENT EGYPTIAN METALLURGY TI n an age when mining is conducted on an lode country increased in size and scale, the clam industrial scale through the use of explosives, or for more efficient means of processing ores huge draglines, and enormous ore-carriers, there grew ever more strident and in response to this is a tendency to forget that mining was, and is, an demand milling processes grew increasingly activity involving the concerted efforts of human sophisticated. Greever notes that California's beings. In his depiction of mining activities in hardrock miners first relied on arrastras and California's nineteenth-century gold fields, Chilean mills to reduce their ores. When these William S. Greever in The Bonanza West: The Story devices failed to provide satisfactory returns of the Western Mining Frontier, 1848-1900 calls to California's argonauts then began to employ mind the human factor involved in the extraction stamp mills to process their gold ores.3 of ore from beneath the earth's surface: The processes underlying the operation of a stamp mill had changed little in the centuries [T)he deepest shafts in California leading up to the California gold rush.4 Greever quartz mining went down ... about compares the basic function of a stamp to that of a three hundred feet; often a deposit was pharmacist's mortar and pestle. In its simplest worked by a tunnel into a hillside or application, a stamp was dropped repeatedly on a even an open cut. The men used hand piece of metallic ore until the ore was reduced to drills, sledges, and a little black pow powder. The sand or finely crushed material that der to extract the ore.l emerged from the stamp was then subjected to a variety of concentration and refining processes to Mining ore was, however, only an initial step separate the metal from the waste.S in the process of extracting metals from nature's Just as today's miners owe a debt to the prac tenacious grip. As Greever concedes "to separate tical miners and engineers of California's gold gold from ... ore was a difficult process.2 There fields, early miners depended on technology first is, then, a second factor inherent to the mining developed thousands of years ago. The evolution industry. This second step involves milling or of this technology merits examination. processing the ore to recover its metallic content. The exact time or even rough estimates as to As mining operations in California's mother when humanity began to make use of metals 81 82 The Pharaohs' Gold remains hidden in the dim mists of prehistory. We er of gold in the Eastern Hemisphere. During this can only presume that many thousands of years period, estimates show that Egypt consumed ago ancient artisans discovered nuggets of placer four-fifths of the gold production of the ancient gold or lumps of native copper and hammered world. By 1,500 B.C. Egypt's production of gold and polished the raw metal into shapes and reached an estimated 1.4 million pounds.lO designs that suited their needs. Gold became an essential element or Egyptian Historical and archaeological records indicate material and spiritual culture. From jewelry to that the peoples of Egypt and Mesopotamia by religious statuary, from currency to the trappings 4,000 B.C. had made great advances in metal of state, the people of Egypt found a multitude of working and were familiar with metallurgical uses for gold. processes.6 In the centuries prior to 3,000 B.C. Gold, for example, was a medium of exchange metallurgical technology had advanced beyond in ancient Egypt and as such long predated the just mining, milling, and smelting to the produc coining of silver.ll By the end of the fourth mil tion of alloys.7 One such alloy, bronze, revolu lennium B.C., during the reign of the Pharaoh tionized the manufacturing of tools and weapons Menes, small14-gram gold bars stamped with the and forever changed humanity's perception of the pharaoh's name were produced by the royal trea physical elements that comprised the world. With sury.12 It is believed that Egypt's earliest gold cur the discovery of the basic principles of mining rency was in the form of rings. In circulation by and metallurgy, humanity could now improve around 2,700 B.C., these rings bore a stamp which upon nature-alter the basic composition of the indicated their weight.13 Although archaeolo elements-to meet its needs. gists have yet to discover specimens of this ring Any attempt to portray fully the early history money, J. Gardner Wilkinson, a noted of the mining and milling of ores in a brief article nineteenth-century Egyptologist, found that this is simply not feasible. Likewise any attempt to form of currency was commonly represented in recount the mining and metallurgical history of a Egyptian art work.14 single nation is just as difficult. What can be pre To the Egyptians, gold served more than as a sented, however, is a brief account of a single civ medium of exchange, it was also a substance of ilization's fascination with gold and its epic great religious significance. By the time the endeavors to acquire that most ancient and pre pharaohs ruled, gold was believed to be the sub cious of metals. stance of the body of the sun-god, Amon-Re. One such ancient people evolved in North Consequently, the pharaohs, descendants of Africa along the banks of the Nile River in Egypt. Amon-Re, lived a golden life, surrounded by the Egyptian civilization-birthplace of pharaohs and "sun's metal." Their furniture, clothing, dining pyramids-was from its inception a culture and utensils, ornaments and symbols of office, all society driven by an insatiable appetite for gold. were fabricated from this sacred metal.l5 Beginning about 5,000 B.C. various Hamtic One indication of the importance of the sun's peoples began to settle along the Nile, hunting, metal to Egyptian culture is fo und in its written fishing, and raising crops to sustain their small symbol for gold. Wilkinson suggests that the villages. Within a few centuries, the neolithic peo hieroglyphic character that signified gold was ples of the Nile, these proto-Egyptians, left the comprised of three separate characters describing stone age behind and embarked upon the transi the process of refining gold: a symbol for the tion from village life to that of city dwellers, and bowl or pan in which the gold was washed, a builders of a great civilization.B symbol representing the cloth through which the Archaeological and historical sources suggest gold was strained, and a symbol depicting flow that Egyptian metal-workers as early as 4,000 B.C. ing water.16 Modern scholars, most notably C. H. had developed remarkab.ly sophisticated gold V. Sutherland, suggest a linkage between the smithing skills.9 In the millennia prior to the Egyptian word for gold, nub, and Nubia, one beginning of the Christian era, Egypt was in all ancient gold producing region which lay just to likelihood both the largest consumer and produc- the south of Egypt proper.17 1995 Mining History Journal 83 An old adage states, "gold is where your find it." the surface.22 Many of the major Nubian quartz The Egyptians understood this concept and mines were located in the Bisharee desert.23 became quite proficient at finding the precious Wilkinson notes that from the days of the metal. So important was the search for gold that pharaohs to as late as the tenth-century A.D., the one of the oldest known maps, dating to around Bisharee district had been extensively explored 1350 B.C., illustrates an Egyptian goldfield.18 and prospected. In an account of his travels The Nile River-source of life and civilization through Bisharee in the nineteenth-century, he for ancient Egypt-probably provided Egypt's found ample evidence of this activity: "so diligent metalsmiths with their earliest supplies of gold. a search did the Egyptians establish ... that I For untold thousands of years the Nile mean never remember to have seen a vein of quartz ... dered between the Libyan desert to the east and which had not been carefully examined by their the coastal high lands flanking the Red Sea to the miners."24 west. For millennia, the mighty Nile washed Diodorus Siculus, a historian from the Greek away any obstacles that stood in its path, yet it colony on Sicily, writing at the close of the second al~ays left behind vast alluvial deposits in its century B.C., provides us with a brief description wake. In addition to the deposits left by the of the quartz zones in what was possibly the river's ancient meanders, the Nile's annual floods, Coptos-Berenice district- which swept down from the highlands of interior Africa, supplied, with almost clockwork regulari The soil, naturally black, is traversed ty, the fertile silt of Egypt's farmlands. with veins of marble of excessive Whether caused by the river's ancient mean whiteness, surpassing in brilliancy the dering or from its annual floods, one region of most shinning substances; out of ancient Egypt, which lay between the first and which the overseers cause the gold to sixth cataracts of the Nile, was especially rich with be dug.25 gold.l9 The vast alluvial deposits of this region, located roughly from modern-day Aswan, Egypt, That Diodorus was speaking of quartz when he to Khartoum, Sudan, provided Egypt's earliest referred to "marble" seems a reasonable assump goldsmiths with their raw material.

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