Egyptian Silver Bracelets, a Travel Tale

While archaeologists have found an abundance of golden jewelry in Old Kingdom tombs, they have not found much silver. That’s because silver is not native to Egypt. That makes a startling exception of the Egyptian silver bracelets of of Hetepheres I, wife of the founder of the 4th Dynasty, Snefru (reigned ca. 2575–2551 B.C.). In 1925, excavators found Hetepheres’ wooden jewelry box in her Giza tomb. (Photo of her tomb up top, photo by MusikAnimal, Wiki) However, no one had studied the pretty silver bangles decorated in colored stones with butterflies or some other winged bug.

Surprising Egyptian Silver

Now someone has. They are not made of electrum that could be produced in Egypt, as expected. Instead, an artisan made them of pure silver mined in the Cyclades islands in the Aegean or Lavrion on mainland Greece. This nugget of information presumes trade between Egypt and those regions (which aren’t really all that far apart). You can read Archaeology Magazine‘s short article about this recent study of the Egyptian silver in “The Queen’s Jewels.”

Egyptian Silver Shows More Trade than Expected, Again

By the period in which I set my fiction, the Late Bronze Age around 1250 BCE, such trade is a given. Apparently not in this earlier millenium. This early trade surprises researchers. I have now heard so many variations of this push-back of trade dates, that I am no long surprised. I think human beings have from the earliest imaginable times been traveling and trading over long distances. This example seems relatively tame. Someone sailed to the islands in the bordering sea (or to Greece) to get a rare metal to make Egyptian silver bracelets for Pharaoh’s wife.

The Eye of the Beholder

Isn’t it ironic that silver was the rare and most valuable metal? Not gold. In a similar vein, when writing about the Trojans and Hittites, I’ve been mindful of how precious tin was to them. They needed it to mix with copper to make bronze. They had bountiful copper and traded also with nearby Cyprus (Alasiya to the Hittites) which was the ancient center of copper mining. But they had to go farther to get tin, such as Afganistan if I’m remembering correctly. So I once designed part of a goddess’ ritual throne out of tin. Hard to believe a tin roof is a not what we think of as a lofty, fancy architectural choice. How much scarcity and other random factors create the “value” of the materials from which we construct our cultures.

Fictional Uses of “Precious” Metal

Here’s the description of that divine throne from my novel:

Briseis entered the sanctuary with its soaring midnight blue columns trimmed in red, took a deep breath, and slipped behind a gold-plated door into the goddess’s inner sanctum. Kamrusepa rested on a throne covered in tin, a precious metal brought by traders from a land far away. She had heard her father negotiating for it many times. Milos used tin in his workshop, mixing it with native copper to make bronze. The throne stood on a base of red stone carved as twin stags. The goddess wore a blue woolen robe with a tall, cylindrical hat decorated with lapis lazuli rosettes. A gold necklace set with precious stones hung from her neck. Briseis peered into her lapis eyes, but their deep blue wore a distant expression. –from Chapter 5 Hand of Fire