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Nevine al-Aref – Ahram Online
“An Egyptian archaeological mission unearthed the remains of an ancient mining workshop dating to Ancient Egypt’s Middle Kingdom in South Sinai”, the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) announced on Monday.
The edifice was unearthed in the Wadi Al-Nasab area in South Sinai, six kilometres West of the Serabit Al-Khadim site near the turquoise mines and the temple of goddess Hathor; the lady of turquoise.
“The Egyptian archaeological mission is the first ever to work at Wadi Al-Nasab site. The building was used as an administrative centre for mining teams which headed to Sinai searching for turquoise and copper”, Mostafa Waziri, Secretary General of the SCA explained.
According to a preliminary study, “the building was erected during the Middle Kingdom and continued to be used with little change to its interior design during the New Kingdom and the Late Roman period”.
The building consists of two main halls, two rooms and a staircase leading to the roof of the building. The edifice has an area of 225 square metres, and features sandstone slabs covered floors.
Several furnaces were discovered on the top layer along with copper ore, four rectangular copper ingots, tuyeres, crucibles and slag which is the waste material produced in the process of copper extraction.
“The building was modified over its lifetime, finally ending up as a copper workshop”, head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities at the SCA, Ayman Ashmawi, noted.
Wadi Al-Nasab was the largest ancient Egyptian smelting site on the Sinai Peninsula. The site is among the most important and ancient smelting sites in the Eastern Mediterranean. It is a very important site, famous for its unique rock inscriptions from the Middle and New Kingdom.
