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A Possible Source of Copper Ore Fragments Found at the Old Kingdom Town of Buhen

An archaeological investigation of the Old Kingdom town of Buhen in 1962 revealed an ancient copper ‘factory’, some copper ore fragments from which have been examined by modern analytical methods. The results show that the main copper-bearing mineral in the ore is malachite but this has been extensively altered (in situ) to the green copper chloride, atacamite. The ore also contains a very high proportion of gold. The mineralogy of the ‘Buhen’ ore has been compared with known copper ores from Egypt and Northern Sudan. These other ores either do not match the Buhen specimens or they occur very long distances from the town. The only mining activity close to Buhen was at the gold mines of Kush, some of which were on the Nile immediately up-stream of the town and were worked in Middle Kingdom times. No mineralogical details of the Kush ores are known but it is possible in view of their location, and also because of the high proportion of gold found in the Buhen specimens, that it was the Kush ores which were used, in the Old Kingdom, for the extraction of copper.