Latest / Ramses the Great: Egypt's Most Powerful Pharaoh — Fexingo History / Ramses the Great's Nubian Gold Mines: The Riches of Kush
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked about Ramses' temples, his chariots, his diplomacy, but there's one thing that made all of it possible — gold. Luna: Gold from Nubia, right? Lucas: Exactly. The gold mines of Nubia — in the regions the Egyptians called Wawat and Kush — were the economic engine of the New Kingdom. Ramses didn't just inherit those mines; he expanded them aggressively. Lucas: We're talking about the Eastern Desert between the Nile and the Red Sea, and deep into what is now Sudan. The geological formation there — the Arabian-Nubian Shield — is rich in gold-bearing quartz veins. Luna: So how did they actually get the gold out? Lucas: It was brutal, labour-intensive work. Miners used a technique called fire-setting: they would heat the rock face with fire, then douse it with water or vinegar to crack it. Then they'd pound the quartz with stone hammers — dolerite, very hard — to break it into smaller pieces. Lucas: These hammerstones have been found by the thousands at sites like the Wadi Hammamat and the Eastern Desert mines. The broken ore was then ground into a fine powder on stone anvils, and mixed with water to wash away the lighter rock, leaving the gold dust. Luna: So basically panning, but on an industrial scale. Lucas: Exactly. And the scale is staggering. One surviving document — the Turin Papyrus Map, from around 1150 BC, a few decades after Ramses — actually shows a topographic map of the gold mines in the Eastern Desert. It's the oldest surviving geological map in the world. Lucas: It labels the roads, the wells, the gold-bearing hills, even the quarry where the bekhen-stone was mined. That map was drawn for Ramses IV, but it describes the same mining infrastructure Ramses the Great used. Luna: Who did the actual digging? Slaves? Prisoners? Lucas: It's a mix. The hard labour — breaking rock, hauling ore — was often done by prisoners of war. Ramses brought back thousands of captives from his campaigns in Syria and Nubia. But there were also conscripted Egyptian workers, probably rotating in from peasant villages. Lucas: Conditions were terrible. Greek and Roman writers later described Nubian gold mines as a death sentence. Diodorus Siculus, writing centuries later, said the mine slaves worked day and night, shackled, with no rest, until they dropped dead. It's grim. Luna: But the gold itself was seen as divine, wasn't it? Lucas: Absolutely. The Egyptians called gold 'the flesh of the gods.' Amun-Re, the king of gods, was often described as having skin of gold. So when Ramses covered the walls of Karnak and the Ramesseum with gold leaf, he wasn't just showing off wealth — he was making the temple literally divine. Lucas: And gold was the currency of diplomacy. The peace treaty with the Hittites — we talked about that in Episode 72 — was sealed with Ramses marrying a Hittite princess. But the real glue was gold. The Hittites were desperate for it, and Ramses used it to secure their loyalty. Luna: So controlling the Nubian gold mines gave Ramses an edge over every other power in the Near East. Lucas: Exactly. The Hittites had silver and copper, but they didn't have gold in any significant quantity. Egypt did. And Ramses exploited that advantage ruthlessly. He also built a series of fortified towns along the Nile in Nubia — like Wadi es-Sebua and Gerf Hussein — to protect the supply routes. Lucas: The gold was shipped down the Nile in special boats, under guard. One inscription from the reign of Ramses III — but the same system was in place under Ramses II — describes a shipment of gold from the mines, weighed and recorded by scribes before being sealed in the treasury at Per-Ramesses. Luna: How much gold are we talking about? Do we have any numbers? Lucas: We have some figures. The Harris Papyrus, from Ramses III, mentions over 1,300 kilograms of gold donated to temples in just a few years. For Ramses II, the amounts would have been even larger, given his long reign and building frenzy. But exact totals are lost. Lucas: We do know that the gold mines of Nubia were so valuable that later pharaohs, even when Egypt was in decline, tried to keep control of them. And when they lost them — well, that's when the empire started to crumble. Luna: So in a way, gold built the empire, and the loss of gold contributed to its fall. Lucas: Absolutely. The New Kingdom's wealth was built on Nubian gold. And Ramses the Great was the master of that system. He understood that controlling resources — not just winning battles — was the key to lasting power. Lucas: And speaking of lasting power — if you've found this dive into Ramses' economy useful, and you want these episodes to keep coming without ads, there's a way to help. Luna: Yeah, listener support is what keeps this show independent. Lucas: It's simple: buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's it. No pressure, just if you get value from what we do. Luna: We really appreciate it. Lucas: Anyway, back to the gold — one more fascinating detail: the Egyptians also mined gold in the Eastern Desert near the Red Sea, at sites like the Sukari mine, which is still active today. So the same geological formations that fed Ramses' treasury are still producing gold. Luna: That's incredible. So you could stand in a modern gold mine and know that Ramses' miners worked the same veins. Lucas: Exactly. And that continuity — the fact that the desert still holds the same riches — is a powerful reminder of how deeply intertwined Egypt's history is with its geography. Ramses didn't just rule people; he ruled a landscape that gave him the means to build an empire.