Although activity continued at Wadi Maghara during the 12th Dynasty, where there are inscriptions and a stone structure with evidence of copper production, the main focus of Middle Kingdom mining in the Sinai was at Serabit el-Khadim. Flinders Petrie made the first archaeological investigations at the site in 1904-1905. Petrie recorded inscriptions, excavated the Middle and New Kingdom Hathor temple, and investigated the many mines. More recently work there was conducted in the 1990s by Dominique Valbelle (the Sorbonne) and Charles Bonnet (University of Geneva), who re-excavated the Hathor temple.
Serabit el-Khadim was mined for its turquoise, with a nearby copper mining site to the west at Wadi Nasb. Beginning with the reign of Amenemhat I, expeditions were sent there during the 12th Dynasty. French investigations in the 1990s cite numerous small settlements in the region, and give a detailed description of a settlement located on a plateau in which there were three different areas: an open area with circular enclosures to the south of the Middle Kingdom temple, an industrial area, and a fortified camp with small structures of dry stone or stone with sand mortar.
Some crudely written inscriptions at Serabit are in a script called Proto-Sinaitic, dating either to the 12th or 18th Dynasty. The script probably wrote a West Semitic language with 27-29 consonantal signs, most of which were derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs. It has been proposed that this is the earliest alphabetic writing system, invented and used by Canaanite peoples working at the Egyptian turquoise mines. The Serabit Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions have not been completely deciphered, but the name of a Canaanite goddess, Ba’alat, who has plausibly been identified with Hathor, is recognizable. A similar (and possibly earlier) script has recently been found in the Western Desert, in the Wadi el-Hol (see 7.13).
At the harbor site of Ayn Soukhna (see 6.12) on the Egyptian side of the Gulf of Suez, there is also extensive evidence in the Middle Kingdom of copper mining and smelting. The extracted malachite was then reduced into copper in a series of operations at the site for which there is ample archaeological evidence - including furnaces and tuyeres.
During the Middle and New Kingdoms galena was mined in the Eastern Desert near the Gulf of Suez at Gebel Zeit, which was investigated in the 1980s by the French Archaeological Institute, Cairo, under the direction of Georges Castel and Georges Soukiassian. At Site 1,
Where there was a base camp/settlement, a Middle Kingdom shrine was built in a natural cave. The shrine, which was dedicated to Hathor, Horus, and Min of coptos, was made into a larger sanctuary with a circular stone wall in the New Kingdom. Votive ceramic female figurines of nile Valley types (Middle Kingdom and later) were found there. The miners subsisted on whatever was available locally - including gazelle - and on mollusks and fish from the sea.
The main mines for galena, which the Egyptians used as eye paint, were to the south of Site 1, at Site 2, which was about 1.8 kilometers in length. The mines were tunneled in three main levels, to a vertical depth of ca. 150 meters. The difficult working conditions of these deep mines, in an isolated desert location, demonstrate the logistical skills needed to obtain this highly desired mineral. But since these operations were small in scale it is likely that this mining was not conducted by state-organized expeditions but by independent operators assisted by traders, such as those depicted transporting galena in the Beni Hasan tomb of Khnumhotep II.
World History
