Essentially all of the basic materials needed to sustain human life were available in the Egyptian Nile Valley - to feed, house, and clothe the ancient Egyptians. When Egyptians ventured out of the Valley on expeditions, it was usually to obtain raw materials that were used to make high status goods for elites.
From later prehistoric times onward, pottery was the most common artifact, especially for food preparation, consumption, and storage. The Nile Valley had plentiful sources of Nile silt clay for pottery. Marl clay, which is harder when fired than Nile silt wares, was mined in deposits along margins of the Valley, with an important source in the Wadi Qena, near modern Qena.
Natron (sodium carbonate and sodium chloride) was used in the mummification process to desiccate human flesh, as well as for general cleaning and in temple ritual. It was found in the western Delta and in Upper Egypt near Elkab, but the major source was in the Wadi Natrun, to the west of the Nile Delta.
Stones used for building construction were also used to make statues and stone vessels. Royal sarcophagi were carved from granite, but also in limestone and quartzite. Some stones used for craft goods were available in or near the Nile Valley, including travertine, and red and white breccia. Diorite and quartzite were found in or near Aswan, but the most important source of quartzite was northeast of Cairo.
The Eastern Desert was the source of many of the stones for carved statues and vessels, including marble, granite, greywacke/siltstone (also used for Predynastic palettes), and serpentine. “Imperial” porphyry, quarried by the Romans for columns, sarcophagi, basins, and statues, came from the site of Mons Porphyrites in the Eastern Desert. Some porphyry columns quarried in Roman times are still in use today in old Italian churches.
Stone beads are often found in Egyptian burials. Agate occurred as pebbles in Egypt. Carnelian, green feldspar (amazonite), and red, yellow, and green jasper came from the Eastern Desert. (Beryl, also known as emerald, was not used until Greco-Roman times.) Amethyst was mined near Aswan, as was garnet, which was also found in the Eastern Desert and Sinai. Steatite, found throughout the Eastern Desert, was used for making faience beads and scarabs, usually glazed blue-green in color.
Map 3.4 Major stone and mineral resources in Egypt, Nubia, Sinai, and the Eastern and Western Deserts. From J. Baines and J. Malek, Cultural Atlas of Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Andromeda, 2000. Reproduced by permission of the publisher
Stone was used for tools, both in prehistoric times and pharaonic times. Metal tools were costly and for the most part unavailable to the average farmer. Quarrying of hard stones such as granite was done using harder stone mauls and levers. Craftsmen also used stone tools to produce artifacts such as stone vessels, for drilling as well as polishing. Chert, which forms a sharp edge when fractured, was used for stone tools that required a cutting edge. It occurred as nodules that were quarried in limestone in the desert.
The Egyptian Nile Valley had no minerals. These had to be brought in from the Eastern Desert or imported from abroad. Both malachite (a copper ore) and galena (lead ore) came from mines in the Eastern Desert and were ground and used for eye paint. Small copper mines were also located in the Eastern Desert. Copper artifacts continued to be made until Ramessid times, when most metal artifacts were made of bronze. Pure copper is fairly soft, but many Egyptian copper artifacts that have been analyzed contain traces of arsenic that occurred in the copper ore deposits. Arsenic in copper makes it much harder, which is also the case when copper is (intentionally) alloyed with a small amount of tin to make bronze. Tin sources are known in the Eastern Desert, but pharaonic sources of tin are uncertain.
Gold was the most important mineral found in the Eastern Desert, mainly in the region of the Wadi Hammamat and southward. The huge quantities of gold artifacts in Tutankhamen’s tomb, including the solid gold inner coffin which weighs over 110 kilograms, represent only a small amount of what must have been mined by the Egyptians in the deserts to the east of the Nile in the 18*h Dynasty. The largest gold mines, however, were to the east of the Nile in Nubia.
World History
