Mons Smaragdus
About
This stretch of Egypt's Eastern Desert held the only emerald deposits known anywhere in the Roman world, and Cleopatra's own emeralds are traced to these hills. Eleven separate extraction galleries have been mapped around the valley, cut into stone still green-flecked today. Roman mining here began under Augustus around 30 BCE, and by 117 CE the gems had traveled the length of the empire as luxury stones for imperial jewelry.
What happened here
Work goes on underground by lamplight in shifts, and the lamp is also the clock. Galleries follow the ore, propped with timber, drained by wooden screws and bucket wheels worked by hand in stages up the shaft. Ventilation is a second shaft and a fire to draw the air. The labour is convicts, slaves and paid men working side by side on different terms, and the paid men do the skilled cutting. Above ground the ore is crushed, washed in long channels, and smelted, and the smoke kills the vegetation for miles. Mines of any size are imperial property, leased to contractors under written regulations covering shifts, drainage, bath-house charges and who may open a new gallery. Settlements grow around them fast and empty just as fast.
In ancient writing
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History 37.62–75
On emeralds and the stones sold as them: Egyptian mines worked in the desert behind Coptos, and the trick of soaking poor stones in oil to deepen the colour.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →