196: The Golden Path

The plan of an honest ruler. Around 1300 BCE, as today, gold was big business. King Sety I personally led an expedition into the eastern desert, to establish a new mining operation. Back in the Nile Valley, high-ranking officials leave monuments testifying to their work delivering, securing, and recording that gold. And thanks to art and artefacts, we can reconstruct the items these gold-workers produced. From the Red Sea Mountains to the Temple of Abydos, we follow the paths of gold…

Logo image: Silver and gold statuette of a New Kingdom pharaoh, possibly Sety I (Louvre).

For records of Sety and his contemporaries, see Kenneth Kitchen. Ramesside Inscriptions, Volume I. Versions: Hieroglyphs; English translations; References and Commentary.

Photos of Sety’s Temple at Kanais in the Wadi Barramiya.

Sety’s monuments including the Abydos and Kanais temples, in P. J. Brand, The Monuments of Seti I: Epigraphic, Historical and Art Historical Analysis (2000). Available free online at Academia.edu.

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Music and interludes by Keith Zizza www.keithzizza.net.

Music and interludes by Luke Chaos www.chaosmusick.com.

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