Station.Latitude N.Longitude E.Altitude above Sea.
metres.
Edfu24° 58′32° 54′90
Kanais25° 0 ′33° 19′205
Gariat Abu Medrik24° 55′33° 41′295
Samut24° 49′33° 54′340

The next station after Samut appears to have been the ruins near Gebel Dweig. Further on, after passing over the watershed, is another station with two cisterns in a semicircular enclosure. The road continues past Gebel Abu Had to the Wadi Gemal, where there are two more cisterns, this time in a triangular enclosure, and thence up to the Wadi Nugrus and Wadi Sikait to the mines. The Edfu-Sikait road may have joined the Quft-Berenice road at the Wadi Gemal station.

A third ancient road is believed to have led northward from Berenice to Qoseir, along the coast; while a fourth, from near Dakka on the Nile up the Wadi Alaqi to the gold mines of the south, is now a regular route to the Nile Valley Company’s mine of Um Gariart.

The ancient emerald mines of Zabara and Sikait consist of numerous irregular shafts, mostly of no very great depth, excavated in schists of micaceous and talcose types. The old gold mines, such as those at Sukari, Um Eleiga, Seiga, Romit, and the Darahib district, are on a considerable scale, excavations having been carried on in quartz veins to fair depths. The dwellings at the mines were for the most part only miserable hovels of rubble stone. A view of those of Um Eleiga is given on [Plate IV.] The ancient quartz-grinding mills, mostly made of a hard diorite, are frequently found among the ruins of the hovels. There is no clear evidence that any of the mines yielded a very rich output; the workings were of the nature of penal settlements (Prof. Mahaffy[52] has aptly termed them a “tropical Siberia”) in times when life and labour were cheap, and a very moderate yield may under those conditions have been satisfactory.[53]

PLATE IV.

Ruins of Um Eleiga. Gebel Abu Dahr in the Background.

Ruins in Wadi Shenshef.

Besides those at the mining camps and stations, there are some other extensive collections of ruins in the district, two of the most considerable being at Shenshef and Bir Meneiga. The ruins at Shenshef (see [Plate IV]) are in part those of well-built houses, furnished with doors and windows, formed of slabs of fissile quartzose schist, quarried in the neighbouring hills. There are wells at Shenshef, but apparently no mines; the presence of watch towers on the hills, and the peculiar situation of the place, suggest that it may have been a slave dealer’s stronghold where slaves were herded till they could be shipped from Berenice. The better houses may have been those of the overseers, while the ruder hovels accommodated the slaves, and sentinels at the watch towers prevented any attempt at escape. The ruins at Bir Meneiga, though extensive, are very rude, and probably only represent a camping ground near the springs. A large rubble enclosure near Abraq springs has been thought by Purdy[54] to have been a hunting station of the Ptolemies.