Gold, silver, lead, and copper were among the metals exploited by Egyptians since the pre-Dynastic period (prior to ca. 3100 BCE). The main sources of these metals were the deposits in the ancient rocks of the Eastern Egyptian desert near the Red Sea and in the Sinai. Iron implements, although present in Egypt since the 26th Dynasty (ca. 665–525 BCE), did not become common before the Ptolemaic period (305 BCE–30 BCE), because Egypt did not have access to major sources of iron ore. The most common metals for daily use were copper and bronze (a copper-tin alloy).
With no written descriptions of the mining or metallurgical operations, we rely on vignettes of metalworking that appear in some funerary art as well as marks from actual tools for our understanding of the processes involved in procuring and using metallic resources. Although nuggets of relatively pure metals can sometimes be found, these must certainly have been used up very quickly, forcing the ancient Egyptians to develop...
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DeYoung, G. (2014). Metallurgy in Egypt. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_9274-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_9274-2
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