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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (62246)	11/9/2014 1:10:32 PM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 69300

They were slaves in Egypt and did all the many varied work slaves do. Manual labor, skilled labor, house servants. Joseph for a time was given responsibility to run an Egyptian VIP's household. Certainly there would have been smiths and metalworkers among them. As it happens, the Egyptians got much of the copper they needed for bronze from mines in the Sinai: Mentions of slaves in Egypt re their duties: I appointed slaves as watchmen in thy harbour, in order to watch the harbour of the Heliopolitan canal in thy splendid place. I made door-keepers of the slaves, manned with people, in order to watch and protect thy court. I made slaves as watchmen of the canal-administration, and the watchmen of the pure barley, for thee likewise. Donation of Ramses III to the temple of Re at Heliopolis Harris Papyrus James H. Breasted Ancient Records of Egypt Part Four, § 266 Many slaves laboured on the estates of the pharaohs, the nobility and the priests. The master might employ a slave in many different manners, such as in domestic service as the guardian of children, cooks, brewers or maids. They might be used as gardeners or field hands or in the stable. They were sometimes made to work in quarries and mines. Many monuments in ancient Egypt like the pyramids were built by slaves. ........... Copper is probably the first metal to be worked in Egypt during the Neolithic (6th millennium BCE). It was found in ores containing 10 to 12% copper, which had to be smelted. Crucibles found at the mines indicate that the art of extracting the metal included some refining. At first it had to be worked cold as the necessary heat could not be achieved to melt and cast the copper droplets produced. The Wadi Maghara region was conquered by Djoser and exploitation of the ore seems to have begun during the third dynasty, though some experts claim there was never enough copper there to be exploited. There are traces of copper working at Buhen dating from the 4th and 5th dynasties. The ore in the Eastern Desert became available to the Egyptians during the Middle Kingdom. The copper mines in the Sinai desert were the aim of the first major Egyptian forays abroad and an important reason for imperial expansion into southern Canaan later. Since the 18th dynasty Egypt controlled this deserted region, thus breaking the monopoly the town of Arad had exercised over the locally extracted copper. Copper was generally mined under dreadful conditions. The miners were the least fortunate captives from Egypt's wars of expansion, enslaved and worked to death in the mines in western Sinai, Timna and other locations in the Arabah Valley, which stretches from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Dead Sea. A slag-heap in the Sinai desert has been estimated to contain 100,000 tons of dross, which would have meant a yield of about 5,500 t of copper. The amount of copper the Egyptians produced annually was about four tons during the Bronze Age. This quantity is quite small compared to the 17 tons extracted yearly in the eastern Alps during the same period. Therefore, considerable quantities of copper had to be imported from Syria, Cyprus and other countries of the region. Tin, a necessary ingredient for bronze, was not mined in Egypt and had to be imported from Syria. ................