196: The Golden Path

The plan of an honest ruler. Around 1300 BCE, as today, gold was big business. King Sety I personally led an expedition into the eastern desert, to establish a new mining operation. Back in the Nile Valley, high-ranking officials leave monuments testifying to their work delivering, securing, and recording that gold. And thanks to art and artefacts, we can reconstruct the items these gold-workers produced. From the Red Sea Mountains to the Temple of Abydos, we follow the paths of gold… For records of Sety and his contemporaries, see Kenneth Kitchen. Ramesside Inscriptions, Volume I. Versions: Hieroglyphs; English translations; Commentary and References. Sety’s Temple at Kanais in the Wadi Barramiya via Flickr.com. Show details (note: Apple Podcasts services restrict formatting and may cause links to appear incorrectly or not at all. Please check podcast website for proper links): Website www.egyptianhistorypodcast.com. Logo image: Silver and gold statuette of a New Kingdom pharaoh, possibly Sety I (Louvre). For records of Sety and his contemporaries, see Kenneth Kitchen. Ramesside Inscriptions, Volume I. Versions: Hieroglyphs; English translations; Commentary and References. Sety’s Temple at Kanais in the Wadi Barramiya via Flickr.com. Sety’s monuments including the Abydos and Kanais temples, in P. J. Brand, The Monuments of Seti I: Epigraphic, Historical and Art Historical Analysis (2000). Available free online at Academia.edu. Music and interludes by Keith Zizza www.keithzizza.net. Music and interludes by Luke Chaos www.chaosmusick.com. Select bibliography: 1. J. C. Cooper, Toponymy on the Periphery: Placenames of the Eastern Desert, Red Sea, and South Sinai in Egyptian Documents from the Early Dynastic Until the End of the New Kingdom (Probleme der Ägyptologie 39; Leiden, 2020). 2. R. David, Handbook to Life in Ancient Egypt (Revised edn, Oxford, 1998). 3. A. Dodson, Sethy I King of Egypt: His Life and Afterlife (Cairo, 2019). 4. K. A. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions Historical and Biographical, I (Oxford, 1975). 5. K. A. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions Translated and Annotated: Notes and Comments, I (Oxford, 1993). 6. K. A. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions Translated and Annotated: Translations Volume I: Ramesses I, Sethos I and Contemporaries (2nd edn, Wallasey, 2017). 7. R. Klemm and D. Klemm, Gold and Gold Mining in Ancient Egypt and Nubia: Geoarchaeology of the Ancient Gold Mining Sites in the Egyptian and Sudanese Eastern Deserts (Berlin, 2013). 8. C. D. Reader, A Gift of Geology: Ancient Egyptian Landscapes and Monuments (Cairo, 2022). 9. B. M. Sampsell, The Geology of Egypt: A Traveler’s Handbook (Cairo, 2014).