STUDYING TORQUOISE MINING.

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 21, 2 January 1907, Page 2

STUDYING TORQUOISE MINING.

The Goddess of Turquoise and the turquoise mines in old Arabia are the things Professor Petrie, the archaeologist, has been studying. As a member of a scientific exploring party, he spent several months among the mountain ranges of the Sinai district of old Arabia on a strefth of level ground some 2,300 ft. above sea level. There they pitched their tents, accompanied by 30 workmen and the native chief of the district.

At the top levels was the sandstone in which were caverns worked by parties of ancient Egyptians for torquoise. Some tablets still remaining showed that those parties were carefully selected, arfd carried on their labours systematically. Here in this desert region, to which supplies of food and water had to be brought from a long distance, the men mined in companies of 500 or 600. The usual time for the search was from December to March. One expedition had conveyed to it daily something like five tons of food. The caraverns themselves were examples of patient industry, The famous temple of the Goddess of Turquoise, to whom the workers did homage, was* 250 ft. long, and contained a range of chambers or courts. From one of the tablets .it appeared that a party went out of the recognised season. But its labours were successful, and were therefore duly acknowledged with great gratitude to the patron goddess. Of the ancient inscriptions 250 have been copied. They have an important bearing on the age of the torquoise expeditions, long before the birth of Christ, as well as on the Semitic form of worship in vogue before the establishment of Judaism.