Emerald In Ancient Egypt
Far to the southeast of modern-day Cairo in the midst of a bleak desert lies a place called by the Romans, Mons Smaragdus, or Emerald Mountain. It was from the mines in this region that most of the worlds emeralds were produced, that is until the 16th century when the Spanish began to export emeralds from Columbia and flooded the market with these incredible stones.
While we know that most of the emeralds in the ancient world came from the desert of Egypt what we are unsure of, and is the subject of some controversy, is when and by whom the emeralds first began to be exploited. One would assume because of the high esteem emeralds held in the ancient world and because geographically emeralds are located in Egypt that the ancient Egyptians were the first to mine this green beryl. A number of scholars have suggested very early dates for emerald’s first exploitation, some going back as far as 3,500 B.C. The challenge with these early dates is that they are based almost entirely off of written records and not archeological findings. As John Sinkankas states in his Emerald and other Beryls:
“The problem of dating is complicated by uncertainties attending the use of ancient terms for emerald. Apparently the Egyptian mafek and the Greek smaragdus (the latter believed to be derived from a similar term in Sanskrit) were both applied indiscriminately to any greenish stone that either was emerald or looked like emerald. It is this ambiguity which is the crux of the problem. Furthermore, as A. Lucas, an authority on the nature and uses of ancient Egyptian materials, was careful to point out, many archeologists made the same mistake, as evidenced by collections in which many greenish stones were labeled “emerald” when they were not, or described by the even vaguer appellation “mother-of-emerald.””
When one looks purely at the archeological evidence everything seems to point toward the Graeco-Roman period, specifically the time of the Ptolemies, roughly equating to around 330 B.C., as the periond when the mines were first opened. From this time forward the mines appear to have been worked pretty much continuously until approximately 1237 A.D. during the reign of Sultan al-Kaamel. The mines were then abandoned and fell into such obscurity that their location was even “lost” with some even questioning whether they ever existed at all. The French explorer Frederic Cailliaud reconfirmed their existence when he rediscovered them in 1816.
When one considers how important emerald was to the ancients and the great number of years the Egyptian mines were worked (probably close to around 1500) it is puzzling why there are so few surviving examples of emerald jewelery from antiquity. The answer to this dilemma may lie in the quality of material produced from the mines. “Compared to Columbian stones, those of Egypt were murky, filled with disfiguring inclusions and flaws, generally quite small, and frequently of inferior color… and suited only for shaping into beads or rudely polished geometric shapes.” (Sinkankas pgs 7-8) Because only the finest examples of gemstones usually survive the passage of time it is highly probable that due to the Egyptian emeralds inferior nature and small size they were either simply lost or incorporated into lesser jewelry causing their Egyptian origins to become lost to us.
In addition to poor quality and size it is possible that in spite of the extensive time the Egyptian mines were worked they may not have produced a large quantity of material. Furthermore, since the Egyptian mines were more than likely supplying most of the worlds emeralds it is easy to see how the little that was produced could disappear easily across the vastness of the globe.
Strange as it may seem folklore and magic may have played a contributing role in the disappearance of emeralds from the historical evidence. The construction of amulets for protection was common in the ancient world. And since amulets tend to follow their owners into their graves at death the few that were made into amulets probably went with them into the ground at burial. With gemstone medicine as popular as it was during this time it is possible that many emeralds were crushed and consumed by the sick in an attempt to relieve various ailments further contributing to the paucity of evidence.
We are left then with the conclusion that because of the difficulties in being able to confidently rely on the ancient Egyptian references to emerald as actually referring to green beryl, and because of the lack of archeological evidence to support this ancient view, and since the archeological evidence all points to a late date of around 300 B.C. roughly coinciding with the Ptolemaic period, one must then assume that the ancient Egyptians either had no knowledge of emerald or at least no knowledge of the emerald resources lying in their desert waiting to be exploited. If they did they know of it they left no trace of evidence indicating an interest in the gem or its extraction. The exploitation of this green beryl had to wait until a later date, that of the Graeco-Roman era.
