miles
according to caravan computation) from Coptos, which were admired for
their brilliant green, though not usually clear, nor of the same tint
throughout : " acriter virides, sed non facile puri aut concolores."
The
two mines last mentioned, the Coptic and the Ethiopian, doubtless
furnished their chief supply of the true Emerald to the Romans, as they
did even to the Egyptian Caliphs. Extensive traces of these workings
are still to be discovered under Mount Zubara (" the Mountain of
Emeralds "), first pointed out by M. Caillaud. His report stimulated
Mohammed Ali to reopen the shafts : he had fifty miners employed there
when Belzoni visited that region in quest of the ancient Berenice, but
their researches had been totally unsuccessful. Belzoni considered that
the veins had been quite worked out by the ancients, the vast extent of
whose explorations was still attested by the mounds of rubbish covering
the ground about the village Sakyat, the former Senskis, as existing
inscriptions prove. Heliodorus also (iEth. ii. 32) speaks of the
Emerald mines as lying in the debatable ground between Egypt and
Ethiopia : his introduction of the subject into his romance shows that
they were still of importance in the 4th cenÂtury.* From these Sakyat
-workings Sir G. Wilkinson
