THE WEALTH OF THE NILE -- THE CULTURE AND ECONOMY OF ANCIENT EGYPT

Most of the things mined were of little interest to anyone but a small number of rich people. Precious metals were not in general circulation until the New Kingdom Period and even then remained in the hands of few. The metals used for tools - copper, bronze and, from the New Kingdom Period onwards, iron - were expensive and the implements fashioned from them were beyond the reach of many. Poorer people continued to use stone and wooden tools for most purposes well into the bronze and even iron age.

 

 

Gems too remained in the possession of a wealthy minority and the stone quarried for temples and tombs served the same class of people and profitted only the craftsmen involved in building.

Natron needed for the embalming process, was mined in the Wadi Natrun. Embalming was too expensive for all but a few.

rocks for tombs and temples were found close to the Nile. Natron for embalming and salt were mined locally;

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Egypt was not exceedingly rich in metal, but it had quite a few gold deposits, only a little silver, iron, lead and some copper, not enough to satisfy the country's needs. The conquests of Nubia and the Sinai and the exploitation of their gold and copper mines were a major improvement and had international consequences. Significant amounts of gold were traded with Asiatic kings for their political support of the Egyptian empire and its policies.

Tin for the production of bronze, Asiatic copper which was a natural bronze alloy, and, from the New Kingdom onwards, small amounts of iron were imported. This was also the time when copper began to be shipped from Cyprus to Egypt and the country experienced occasionally shortages of the material.

From the Late Period on iron was mined in the eastern desert and worked in the Greek Delta town of Naukratis.

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Egypt is a country rich in stone and was sometimes even referred to as the "state of stone". In particular, Egypt has a great quantity of limestone formation, which the Egyptians called "white stone", because during the Cretaceous period Egypt was covered with seawater. The country is also rich in sandstone, but it was never really used much until the New Kingdom.

Limestone seems to have first been employed in the area of Saqqara, where it is of poor quality but layered in regular, strong formations as much as half a meter thick. This limestone is coarse grained with yellow to greenish gray shading. The layers are separated from each other by thin layers of clay and the coloration may vary according to layer. It could often be quarried very near the building sites, and quarries have been found at Saqqara, Giza, Dahshur and other locations.

In order to quarry this stone, the blocks were marked out with just enough space in between each to allow for a small passageway for the workers to cut the blocks. The workmen would use a number of different tools to cut the blocks, including copper pickaxes and chisels, granite hammers, dolerite and other hard stone tools.

The finer, white limestone employed in the pyramids and mortuary temples was not as easy to quarry, and had to be found further from the building site. One of the man sources for this limestone was the Muqattam hills on the west bank of the Nile near modern Tura and Maasara. This stone laid buried further from the surface, so tunnels had to be dug in order to reach the actual stone quarry. Sometimes these deposits were as deep as fifty meters, and huge caverns had to be built to reach the quarry. Generally, large chunks of stone were removed, and then finely cut into blocks. The blocks were then moved to the building site on large wooden sledges pulled by oxen. The path they took would be prepared with a mud layer from the Nile in order to facilitate the moving.

Pink granite, basalt and alabaster were used much more sparingly. Most of this material was moved from various locations in southern Egypt by barges on the Nile. Pink granite probably most often came from the quarries around Aswan.

Left: A stone worker in the quarries

Basalt, on the other hand was not as far away. Only recently have we discovered that most of the basalt used in pyramid construction came from an Oligocene flow located at the northern edge of the Fayoum Depression (Oasis). Here, we find the worlds oldest paved road, which led to the shores of what once was a lake. During the Nile inundation each year, this lake made a connection to the Nile, so at that time, the basalt was moved across the lake and into the Nile for transport.

Alabaster is quarried from either open pits or underground. In open pits, veins of Alabaster are found 12 to 20 feet below the surface under a layer of shale which can be two or three feet deep. The rocks have an average height of 16-20 inches and a diameter of two to three feet. Much of the alabaster used in the pyramids probably came from Hatnub, a large quarry near Amarna north of modern Luxor.

However, it should be pointed out that by even the end of the Old Kingdom, there were hundreds of various types of quarries scattered across the western and eastern deserts, the Sinai and southern Palestine.

Workers Making Mudbricks

Mudbricks, of course were made throughout Egypt and were a common building material everywhere, in common homes and palaces and probably many city buildings. The better mudbricks were fired, or "burnt" in an oven, though it was not uncommon for mudbick not to be fired, and so not as durable. Unfortunately, most structures built of mudbrick have not weathered the ravages of time well. They were built using wooden forms and Nile mud mixed with various fillers.

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