gems, beryl, emerald, Egypt, Sikait, archaeology, ancient emerald mining

The periods of Roman and Byzantine domination of Egypt* saw high levels of mining and quarrying in the Eastern Desert. Large quantities of porphyry, granite, gneiss and diorite were quarried at a number of sites (e.g., Mons Porphyrites, Mons Claudianus, and Wadi Barud). There were numerous gold mines, the largest Byzantine example probably being Bir Umm Fawakhir in the Wadi Hammamat. It was also in the Late Roman and Byzantine period that the emeralds of the Eastern Desert began to be quarried on a fairly large scale in the Eastern Desert between Myos Hormos and Berenice, principally in the Sikait-Zubara region (fig. 1). Because of these activities and the trade-routes via Red Sea ports such as Myos Hormos and Berenice, the desert was dotted with roads, watch-towers, way-stations and hydreumata (fortified wells) which attest to the presence of troops.5 The Egyptian emerald mines, which were perhaps first worked as early as the Ptolemaic period (c.332–30 B.C.), are believed to have been one of only two sources of emeralds for Europe and Africa during the Greco-Roman period (the other being the Habachtal mines in Austria).6 Although an uncut emerald has been tentatively identified in a necklace from the Predynastic site of el-Kubaniya, immediately north of Aswan,? such gem-quality beryls do not appear to have been used regularly in Egyptian jewellery until the Roman period, when techniques for polishing the stones probably began to be introduced. The Egyptian mines continued to be exploited until at least the Middle Ages, when Arab writers document the appearance of larger, heavier stones from the Indian subcontinent. In the 16th c., the Spanish conquest of the New World resulted in the export of emeralds from Colombia and Brazil to Europe and Asia on a massive scale, finally eclipsing the trade in Egyptian emeralds. In more recent times, fine emeralds have also been mined in a number of other Old World countries, including Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Pakistan.