The cultural milieu of the Egyptian-Sudanese Eastern Desert and South Sinai: a study on society and interaction phenomena in mining frontier regions.

Adopting a bottom-up approach, informed by theoretical discourse on borderlands and culture contact studies, this thesis investigates the social and cultural milieu of the Eastern Desert and South Sinai mining sites, understood as microcosms interconnected in visible and invisible socio-cultural networks. Specifically, the sites selected for this study within the two desert macro-areas are Gebel Zeit, Wadi Hammamat, Wadi el-Hudi, Wadi Allaqi, Wadi Gabgaba, Wadi Elei, Wadi Maghara, Wadi Kharig, Gebel Hazbar, Rod el-Air, and Serabit el-Khadim. Furthermore, the thesis covers a time span ranging from the Early Dynastic period to the late New Kingdom (ca. 2985-1136 BC). This research has revealed, through a combination of textual and archaeological sources and the comparative approach adopted, different scenarios of interaction. In Lower Nubia, indeed, local communities were gradually encompassed by the Egyptian state economy through the regular payment of produce-work from mining resources. Nevertheless, until the New Kingdom, the southernmost communities devoted to gold mining acted more as trading partners for both Egypt and Kerma. In South Sinai after an initial control of turquoise and copper flow by the Levant mediated by small local communities, a peer-to-peer collaboration between Southern Levantines and Egyptians seemed to be established.