Page 53 - Handbook of Gold Exploration and Evaluation

34 Handbook of gold exploration and evaluation

Santorini is believed to have devastated the Island of Crete about 1645±1628 BC.
After rebuilding, the Minoans rose to greater heights along with a sister
civilisation on the island of Thera. A further eruption about 1450 BC was credited
with destruction of the Minoan civilisation, the parting of the Red Sea, and the
sinking of the island of Thera, popularly believed to be the legendary continent of
Atlantis.

Egyptian era
Legend has it that it was from Ur of the Chaldes, some 350 km south-east of
modern Baghdad, that Abraham led his people along the Euphrates valley to
Haran, thence to Canaan and finally to Egypt (2100±1800 BC). The people of the
Nile had become competent metallurgists by this time and Egypt was probably
the first great power to contribute large amounts of gold to world markets. Gold
mining was conducted in two large, rich goldfields. One of these, mainly
alluvial, stretched along some 2,000 km of the beds and terraces of the Nile
between Luxor and Kartoum. Recovery methods ranged from a simple hand
picking of nuggets from river flats to a form of panning using woven reed
baskets and wooden dishes. Roughly contiguous with the alluvial deposits and
probably as provenances of the alluvial gold deposits, the second goldfield
comprising auriferous quartz veins in ancient schists and crystalline rock
formations was situated between the Nile and the Red Sea. These deposits were
apparently exploited around 1250 BC.
Gold recovery techniques are displayed on Egyptian monuments dating back
to about 900 BC and on wall paintings of the 20th Dynasty, 200 BC. Ancient
Egyptian tomb drawings also depict the use of scales for weighing the gold. As
shown in the upper part of Fig. 1.12, a scribe records the weight of gold bars;
below, gold bullion rings are balanced against a symbolic bull's head. The
hieroglyph for gold (inset a, centre left) depicts a gold collar similar to the richly
adorned collar depicted on the table below.
Although less well documented than in Egypt, gold workings were common
at about the same time in southern Russia, Africa and India. The rivers of
western Turkey and streams in the mountains of Afghanistan and Turkey were
said to be very rich in gold. By 2000 BC, trading in gold had spread throughout
the known world. The Mycenaeans were established in Greece, via the
Anatolian (Turkish) Highlands, and the Phoenicians, supposedly descended
from Shem, son of Noah, were the dominant seafarers and traders. The ancient
world, as envisaged by Herataeus a Greek traveller and historian of Miletus (a
regional centre on the southern coast of what is now known as Turkey), is shown
in Fig. 1.13. His conception of Europe and Asia was as semi-circles surrounded
by oceans (Hellemans and Bunch, 1988).
Strabo (63 BC to AD 24) travelled widely to collect first-hand information for
his book Geography (published around 7 BC), which records the first known