Emeralds in Ancient Rome

[guy]

Votive offering found inside the Large Temple. Credit: SIKAIT PROJECT
 

There was a previous thread about the importance of emeralds in Ancient Rome. The Romans referred to emerald as smaragdus.

 

Current excavations are being conducted in the area of emerald mining. The dig is at the Roman site of Sikait, Egypt. The Romans referred to the mountains they mined as Mons Smaragdus or Emerald Mountain. This was the only place within the Roman Empire where emeralds could be found.*

Quote

“ Among [the finds] is an inscription by a Roman legion, which would for the first time demonstrate that the Roman army was directly involved in the exploitation of Egypt's emerald mines "not only to defend them, but also probably to help in their construction," Oller explains. The researchers continued to add to the documentation of emerald mines within the Wadi el Gemal National Park, of which over 300 have already been studied. In addition to the discoveries, the surveying of the area has led researchers to document dozens of new settlements, mines, infrastructures and even a new necropolis with over 100 tombs, which has added to the knowledge of ancient funerary rites and social features of the community living there shortly before the site was abandoned. The research is a huge step forward in understanding how emeralds were extracted and commercialized in the Graeco-Roman and Byzantine periods.”

Quote

“The first structure, referred to as the "Administrative building," was likely a temple long occupied between the 1st and the 4th-5th centuries. Nineteen coins were recovered at the site, along with other items indicating ritual use like incense burners and bronze and steatite figurines. The "Large Temple," one of the most well-preserved structures standing in Sikait, also contained religious artifacts like bones, terracotta body parts, and amulets, and was likely occupied between the 4th and the 5th centuries AD, although inner shrines were possibly used earlier, based on surviving traces of Egyptian hieroglyph and other materials. Finally, the "Six Windows Building" complex, possibly a residential space, included an older inner cavity, which may have been related to mining activity.”

https://phys.org/news/2022-03-roman-empire-emerald-fallen-nomads.html

 

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/504053
 

Quote

* Egypt was probably the only source of emerald and other green beryl for the ancient civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean region. Although it has been suggested that the emerald deposit at Habachtal near Salzburg, Austria was worked as early as the Roman period, there is no conclusive evidence that it was known prior to the Middle Ages (Sinkankas, 1981, p. 371-377). However, Giuliani et al. (1998, 2000) have shown that the green beryls from Egypt and Austria are distinguishable by their oxygen-isotopic composition, and such testing, if applied to Roman jewelry, may yet reveal Habachtal's true historical significance.
 

 The first mention of beryl (smaragdus) mining in Egypt was by the Greek geographer Strabo about 24 BC (Strabo's Geography 17.1.45 in Jones, 1959, p. 120-121). When mining began in Wadi Sikait is not known precisely but, given the almost total absence of green beryl in Ptolemaic jewelry, it must have been late in the Ptolemaic period and probably not much before Strabo wrote about it.

https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/gc/article/view/2752/3212

Edited March 2, 2022 by guy