In the east of Egypt, not far from the Red Sea, were the largest and most important emerald deposits of the Roman Empire. The coveted gemstone was mined and shipped here well into the sixth century. But as new archaeological finds in Wadi Sikait show, these mines were apparently no longer under Roman rule from the fourth century onwards, but were controlled by the nomads native to the region.
The area around Wadi Sikait and the parallel Wadi Nugrus was known as “Mons Smaragdus” – “Emerald Mountains” – until late antiquity. Because in this eastern Egyptian desert strip, around 45 kilometers from the coast of the Red Sea, there were rich deposits of the mineral beryl, from whose greenish colored variant the emerald is extracted. The historical writings of ancient authors such as Pliny the Elder, Claudius Ptolemy or Olympiodorus already report on emerald mining in this region.
Temple, warehouse and a sprawling mining settlement
Archaeological finds in the area of ”Mons Smaragdus” show that mining had been going on there since the first century and that emerald mining continued until the sixth century. “The most intensive mining activity took place in the Roman and early Byzantine periods, when an extensive network of mining settlements existed in the region,” report Joan Oller Guzmán of the Autonomous University of Barcelona and his colleagues. “The most notable of these settlements was in Wadi Sikait, stretching 560 meters north-south and 270 meters east-west.” This ancient mining settlement comprised around 150 to 200 buildings.
An international team of archaeologists led by Guzmán have been conducting excavations in Wadi Sikait since 2018. Already in the first season of excavation they uncovered parts of a large temple, a residential building and a warehouse. In addition to ritual figures and vessels, amulets, bones and other traces of religious activities were also found in the temple. Now the team has also published the results of the second and third seasons of excavation in 2020 and 2021. Work began with a detailed analysis of the area which identified up to eleven mining workings in and around Wadi Sikait.
Inscriptions reveal mining methods
Two of the most important mines were also mapped for the first time. One of them included hundreds of corridors and reached down to a depth of around 40 meters, as the archaeologists report. Even more exciting, however, were the clues to mining methods and logistics of ancient mining that Guzmán and his colleagues discovered in the mines. They reveal that large scale emerald mining only began after the highest yielding mineral veins were identified. Then the mine was expanded and processing areas for the mined rock material, ramps, paths and warehouses were built above ground.
As one of the most notable finds, the archaeologists describe a series of ancient inscriptions that enabled them to reconstruct who worked there and how the individual work steps were carried out. It also mentions the presence of a Roman legion. This is the first evidence that the Roman army was directly involved in the exploitation of Egyptian emerald mines. “Not just to defend them, but probably to help build them,” Guzman explains.
Blemmyer took over the mines
However, the military presence only seems to have been of limited use: the Blemmyers apparently took control of the mining region as early as the fourth century. This ancient nomadic tribe lived on the right bank of the Nile and is mentioned by Roman historians – mostly not very positively as plunderers and robbers. However, the archaeological finds in Wadi Sikait, including some buildings, indicate that these nomads not only conquered the emerald mines, but also continued to operate them or allowed them to continue under their rule. This is also evidenced by relics of offerings and locally shaped sanctuaries in the Great Temple of Sikait, the team reports.
The last two centuries of emerald mining in this region may have been under Blemmy control. “Our discoveries confirm the importance of religion and local rituals in this late period,” says Guzman. “At the same time, it suggests that mine exploitation had already fallen into the hands of the Blemmyians by this time.” As the team explains, the new finds give another glimpse of how this region entered the Graeco-Roman and Byzantine eras time was lived and worked.
Source: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona; Specialist article:; Thetis 26, pp. 25-35. 2021