MINES OF CHAP. II. 



know too from the history of Joseph, that his 

 father sent from Arabia for food for his family. 

 It is also well ascertained that cotton, silk, 

 and linen cloth was made by the Egyptians. 

 This is asserted by ancient history, and confirmed 

 by recent proofs ; for cloth of those substances 

 has been found in the mummies taken from the 

 royal sepulchres by Belzoni and others. 



The chief sources of the wealth of the Pha- 

 raohs, however, were the mines of the neigh- 

 bouring countries of Nubia and Ethiopia, 

 which were productive of copper or brass in 

 great abundance, before iron was known in 

 Africa. According to the testimony of Aga- 

 tharchidas of Cnidus, who wrote about 170 or 

 180 years before our era, the abundance of brass 

 was such, that it formed the chief parts of the 

 domestic furniture, as well as of the chariots, 

 the swords, the bows, and the arrows, in use in 

 a prior age. The mines which produced the 

 copper yielded also gold, which the Africans 

 separated from the less valuable metal. There 

 is an exact and almost technical description of 

 those mines by an eyewitness, who visited them 

 in the reign of the fourth Ptolemy 1 . "They 

 are," he says, " near the mountain Altahi, not 

 far from the ancient Berenice Panchrysos, in 



n 



1 Agatharchidas de Rubro Mari,, in Diodorus, b. iii. c. 12 15. 



