Wadi Maghara

Wadi Maghara ("Valley of Caves") is an ancient Egyptian turquoise and copper mining site in the southwestern Sinai Peninsula, lying east of the modern coastal town of Abu Rudeis and immediately north of Wadi Feiran. It is the earlier of Egypt's two major Sinai turquoise-mining locations, and was eventually eclipsed in importance by Serabit el-Khadim, roughly 18 km to the north-northeast. The rock inscriptions cut into its cliffs record state-sponsored turquoise mining in Sinai across more than a thousand years of Egyptian history.

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Old Kingdom Expeditions

The earliest inscriptions at the site belong to the Third Dynasty. A pair of rock-cut inscriptions of Sanakht carries the oldest known Egyptian reference to turquoise (mefkat), and reliefs of Sekhemkhet and Djoser were cut nearby. Successive Old Kingdom pharaohs sent mining expeditions through the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, among them Sneferu and Khufu, then Sahure, Niuserre, Menkauhor and Djedkare Isesi, and finally Pepi I and Pepi II, whose expedition is recorded in an inscription at the site. Several of these reliefs depict the pharaoh smiting Asiatic captives, an expression of state authority over the region and its foreign labor rather than a record of any particular battle.

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Middle and New Kingdom Activity

Mining continued intermittently after the Old Kingdom. Amenemhat III and Amenemhat IV left inscriptions here during the Twelfth Dynasty, by which point Egyptian effort in the Sinai was shifting decisively toward Serabit el-Khadim, and Thutmose III is attested at the site in the New Kingdom. In total the surviving monuments span the Third to the Nineteenth Dynasty, though the great majority of Sinai inscriptions of the later periods come from Serabit rather than from here.

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Transport and Supply

Extracted turquoise and copper were carried overland from the mines to the port of Markha on the Gulf of Suez, where they were loaded for transport by sea to the Nile Valley. The track between the mines and the coast is still traceable.

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Excavation History

The site was rediscovered by Western travelers in 1809, and its reliefs were recorded through the nineteenth century by a succession of visitors, including a British Ordnance Survey of 1868-1869. Flinders Petrie carried out the first systematic exploration during his 1904-1905 survey of southern Sinai, documenting twelve bas-reliefs. Many of the inscriptions have since been damaged by modern mining activity at the site, and several were removed to museum collections.