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…

Banner image: Sety’s temple at Kanais in the Wadi Barramiya (Photo Mutnedjmet).

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

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.

This episode of The History of Egypt Podcast was sponsored by Better Help. Try online therapy at betterhelp.com/EGYPT.

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