Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

Because of Fan Meng's exclamation, Liang En and Zhende were immediately attracted to him. As a result, I saw him holding a stone no bigger than a soybean with his fingers and showing an excited expression.

"Let me take a look." Liang En took the small stone and took out the magnifying glass. What appeared in front of him was a green stone with stripes like growth rings on it.

"This is a piece of malachite, a mineral that was widely used in ancient Egypt." Liang En told Fan Meng and Joan of Arc that the reason why he could recognize it so accurately was because the shape of malachite looked really different. Too easy to spot.

"Malachite? I seem to remember that this thing should be one of the raw materials used by ancient people when casting bronze wares." Fan Meng said after thinking for a while. "Did the ancient Egyptians also use this when refining copper metal?"

"Yes, and in addition to being used for smelting metal copper, the ancient Egyptians also used this thing as an amulet and dye for children who died in infancy." Liang En nodded and explained.

“In ancient Egypt, colors were believed to have special powers, with red usually representing life and victory, green representing health and prosperity, white representing omnipotence and purity, black representing death and night, blue representing life and rebirth, and yellow representing Eternal and immutable.”

"So the reason why parents of children who died young would bury their children with green malachite was because they wanted their children to live a healthy life in the next life."

"In addition, the ancient Egyptians also used malachite in murals and eye shadows. Because they believed that it could drive away evil and infuse people with the power of life——"

"Of course, there were a lot of mosquitoes in ancient Egypt. So this kind of eye shadow made of malachite powder can prevent some nasty parasites from parasitizing near the eyes to the greatest extent. I remember that there are some parasites in North Africa that can parasitize animals. around the eyes and blinding the victim."

Speaking of this, Liang En suddenly stopped and looked at the cave used as a temple, with a thoughtful look on his face. After he suddenly became quiet, Fan Meng and Joan of Arc immediately turned their heads with puzzled expressions.

"I don't think this place is a copper mine." Liang En immediately explained after seeing Fan Meng and the others' eyes turning to him. "Because this place is deep in the Sinai Peninsula."

"What do you mean-" After hearing what Liang En said, Joan felt even more confused, because she didn't understand the contradiction between the copper mine and the depths of the Sinai Peninsula, so that the two sides could not coexist.

"The core of ancient Egyptian civilization was along the Nile River." After noticing that Jeanne and the others had puzzled expressions, Liang En made a calm gesture, and then slowly began to tell.

"This place is the Sinai Peninsula. Not only is it far away from the core area of ​​ancient Egypt, but the local ecology cannot support the lives of too many people."

"Especially through the stone carvings of the Pharaohs outside, we can determine that the mining of this mine probably started in more than 4,000 BC. Judging from the productivity at that time, it maintained a team of several thousand people far away from civilization. Mining in core areas is a hugely expensive undertaking.”

"You know, there are copper mines in the eastern desert of Egypt. So if the ancient Egyptians wanted to smelt metallic copper, there was no need to go far to this place to mine."

"Is that because there is not enough copper ore?" Fan Meng interrupted at this time. "At least today Egypt's specialty minerals are mainly non-metallic minerals, such as natural gas, oil, marble, gypsum, etc., and the rest are some rare earth ores."

"No, although the 85,000 tons of reserves of Egypt's largest copper mine are not that large today, in the era before the industrial revolution broke out, human demand for metal mines was far from what it is today -" Liang En shook his head. said.

After discussing this matter for a while, the three of them spread out and searched on the ground. If this is really a mine, then the products of the mine are likely to be brought to the temple.

"Look at this, Liang En. I think this piece of malachite looks a little different from the previous one." Three or four minutes later, Jeanne suddenly raised her hand to Liang En and shouted.

Unlike other Europeans, she usually calls Liang En by his Chinese name. Because she felt that when addressing the lord, one must use the correct name.

"Let me take a look." Liang En, who was also searching the ground just now, straightened up and turned off the flashlight, then walked to Joan of Arc and took the stone that was just found in her hand.

This is a stone that looks angular and is only about the size of a mung bean. If you don't search carefully, you can easily miss this stone.

Obviously, this stone should be some waste or scraps generated during the mining process, and was then brought into the cave by miners or others who came to worship the gods.

"This is not malachite, this is turquoise -" Liang En quickly identified the identity of the stone. As a gemstone with huge reserves and widely distributed mineral deposits, it is not difficult to identify the origin of this stone.

This thing is called turquoise in China because it looks like a pine cone and is almost pine green in color, hence its name. In the West, it is called Turquoise, which is Turquoise.

Of course, Turkey does not produce this kind of stone, but in the past, all European turquoise flowed in through Turkey as a middleman, so it was called this name.

"Are you talking about turquoise?" Fan Meng, who was standing next to him, also straightened up and asked. "I remember that we saw a lot of ancient Egyptian jewelry inlaid with turquoise in the National Museum in Cairo. I feel that the ancient Egyptians liked this stone."

"You are right, the ancient Egyptians were the first people in the world to use turquoise as jewelry." After Fan Meng said this, Liang En suddenly became energetic and said excitedly.

"In 5500 BC, during the First Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the ancient Egyptians had already come to the Sinai Peninsula and started mining turquoise. The pharaohs at that time would carry jewelry decorated with turquoise beads."

"Even in order to obtain this kind of gem, the pharaohs would send a large expedition of two to three thousand people to the Sinai Peninsula starting from the end of the First Dynasty."

"This team will practice arriving here in November and digging until they leave in May of the following year to avoid the scorching heat of summer. If the time on the road is included, it will take them three years to dig at one time."

"In other words, what we are finding now should be the turquoise mine in ancient Egypt, right?" Joan of Arc asked through the hole looking at the red and yellow mountain below.

Just as Liang En was about to answer, he heard a noise coming from the valley below. When Liang En and the others followed the sound to the door, they saw several people running out of a cave over there, seemingly cheering for something while running.

When Liang En concentrated his attention, he vaguely heard a few scattered words coming from the wind. These include the words mine, turquoise and copper ore.

"It seems you are right." Liang En turned to Jeanne and nodded. "Listen to the shouts of the group of people below, they must have discovered a mine that produces turquoise."