from which the largest supply of Egyptian gold was derived. They are located in an almost inaccessible mountain group surrounded on all sides by a waterless desert. Here may be seen tunnels and shafts penetrating the mountains to unknown depths. Three hundred stone huts shelter three hundred mills used in pulverizing the ore, immense cisterns once caught the scanty water supply from the higher slopes, and near them stand the sloping stone tables on which the pulverized ore was washed. Records show that these mines were worked with but little interruption for twenty centuries by the Egyptians, and we have no means of knowing how long they were worked by the Nubians before them.
Inscriptions near the mines recount the difficulties of the journey by which the region was reached, and, judging by the loss of life on the way and the distress suffered by those who reached the goal, the 'Forty-niner' and the Klondiker could not tell of greater hardships. The miners were largely prisoners of war and criminals. The Greek writer, Diodorus (III. 11.), describes the operation of the mines in the time of the Ptolemies, and the terrible sufferings of the laborers under their brutal taskmasters.
The oldest charts or maps of any kind in existence are two papyri showing the topography of the country, and the position of the workings, mills, miners' houses and other buildings connected with some of these ancient mines. One of these maps was made in the reign of Ramses II., the second king of the nineteenth dynasty, which began about 1320 u.c. The locality mapped is in the Bechen Mountain, east of Coptos. The other, better preserved, but having lost the name, shows the position of four short ranges or rows of mountains with the valleys between them; the position of the mines, high on the slopes of one of the peaks; the workmen's houses; the water-tanks, the place where the gold washing was done, the areas of cultivated ground; a temple site and other details. Some of the mountains are colored red, and across them are written the words: 'These are the mountains where the gold is washed; they are also of this red color.' Von Meyer[1] says that in the time of Ramses II. the Nubian mines yielded $625,000,000 worth of gold annually. (The world's production of gold for 1903 was valued at approximately $327,000,000.) The kings of the eighteenth dynasty also received gold in considerable quantity from the Soudan and from the eastern shores of the Red Sea.
In all the Egyptian and Nubian mines the ore was in the form of native gold in a quartz gangue. Some of the veins are of large size and are considerably branched. The vein matter was fractured and loosened by building fires over it. The blocks were then dug out by the miners, possibly with iron tools; and old men, women and children carried the ore to the crushers. The earliest form of mill
- ↑ 'History of Chemistry.'
