USE OF METALS BY ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. 689 



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 pene- 

 trating 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. Eecords 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 work- 

 ings, mills, miners' houses and other buildings connected with some of 

 these ancient mines. One of these maps was made in the reign of 

 Eamses 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* says 

 that in the time of Eamses 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 eight- 

 eenth dynasty also received gold in considerable quantity from the 

 Soudan and from the eastern shores of the Eed 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.' 

 vol. lxvii. — 44. 



