The Oldest Mine?

Archaeologists have long been intrigued by the heaps of brownish-gray slag scattered amid the sandy soil of Israel's southern Negev Desert. First spotted by the late American biblical scholar and archaeologist Nelson Glueck, the heaps seemed to be remnants of an ancient copper-smelting operation of pre-Roman origin. Now, after excavating at the site with a team of West German mining experts, Israeli Archaeologist Beno Rothenberg reports that the slag is only the tip of an archaeological treasure. A short distance away, he says, is the oldest underground mining system ever found.

The traditional view is that the first really large-scale attempts at underground mining, in which extensive shafts and subterranean galleries were used, were not made until the time of the Romans, who mined everything from Spanish silver to British iron and Near Eastern copper. Rothenberg's discovery just about destroys that theory. From the stone hammers, bronze chisels and a cooking pot found in the labyrinthian tunnels of the Negev mine, he concludes that the mine dates back to 1400 B.C. --near the end of the Bronze Age and more than a millennium before Rome's large-scale mining endeavors.

Underground Maze. Archaeologists once thought that Bronze Age people got their metals largely by chipping away at surface rocks; at most, they would tunnel only a few dozen feet. The newly discovered mine shows that the Bronze Age miners were far more skilled and adventurous than that. Located at the base of towering, 2,200-ft. red sandstone cliffs, the mine contains a complex, multilevel network of some 200 shafts and galleries. Although only a small portion has been excavated so far by Rothenberg's team, which included ten West German coal miners, the maze apparently reaches hundreds of yards into the mountain. Perhaps 1,000 workmen--or slaves--toiled inside the tunnels, most of which were no more than 2 ft. wide and 4 ft. high. The underground network included ventilation tubes and shafts to bring fresh air into the galleries, support pillars that prevented collapses and even steps and handholds for climbing from one level to another.

The ore taken from the mine was a copper-rich material called malachite. It was worked free with stone hammers and bronze chisels, crushed into small pieces and placed in large, saucer-shaped pits. When winter rain flooded the pits, the lighter malachite swirled to the surface and could be more readily separated from the other rock. Half a mile away there were 13 furnaces, where the Bronze Age metallurgists smelted the ore, using iron as a flux (a substance that combines with impurities, forming a molten mix that can be easily removed). Bronze Age miners were able to produce 22-lb. copper ingots that were 97% to 98% pure, a degree of purity not exceeded until modern times.

Rothenberg thinks that the mine was built by Egypt's pharaohs of the 19th and 20th dynasties. If so, it could be the mysterious Atika, a fabled source of copper mentioned in ancient papyri. The Egyptians may well have borrowed the metallurgical techniques from the Midianites, a little-known people who dwelled in the area and are identified in Genesis as the first metalworkers. With the help of the Midianites, the pharaohs apparently ran the mine for some 150 years, until about 1250 B.C. Subsequently, the Egyptians pulled out of Canaan and the neighboring Sinai --perhaps, says Rothenberg, under pressure from their enemies, the Philistines and Israelites.

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