historians
Strabo, Diodorus, Agatharchides, and others, no description of them
appears to have been written from actual examination. This probably
arose from the difficulty of visiting them. Olympiodorus laments his
ill success in this direction, and it is probable that a jealous watch
was kept over the miners.
The
Emeralds of Egypt, are, however, often mentioned with high praise.
Cleopatra gave, as presents to ambassadors, portraits of herself
engraved on Emeralds, and the stones during her reign appear to have
been considered as strictly royal property.
Maundeville, 500 years ago, described Egypt as "a country of fair Emeralds."
When
and under what circumstances the mines were abandoned must remain
matter of conjecture. They probably shared the fate of the numerous
gold mines and topaz workings which are found in their neighbourhood.
All
the mines in Egypt appear to have been first worked by some unskilled
people, possibly those negroid tribes, who now work the copper and iron
mines in the Soudan. It was to these people that Herodotus, not
knowing why they burrowed in the earth, gave the name of Troglodytes
or cave-dwellers.
These
people were probably driven south about 2,000 years ago by the Greek
miners employed under Ptolemy after the death of Alexander the Great.
At each mining town may still be seen the open-air cuttings and the
rude stone dwellings of an ancient mining people. And close by these
are found in almost every case, the temple, the well-built rectangular
houses and covered galleries of their European supplanters. There is
hardly a quartz reef which does not bear marks of working.
The Emerald mines are in the centre of a great
