Gold ore processing. Project development and operations / Переработка золотой руды. Разработка проекта и его эксплуатация

From ancient times to the present day, gold has been valued by humans. Egypt was the principal gold-producing country in ancient times. Coptos, the present Quft on the eastern side of the River Nile, was the chief town of the Nomos of Harawi and was once politically important. In the eleventh dynasty (2133e1991 BC) it was overshadowed by Thebes, 50 km to the south, which became the capital of the Middle Kingdom (2133 BC) of ancient Egypt, the present-day Luxor (Figure 1.1).
Coptos was the world’s first gold boom town. It was there in the Wadi Hammamat that alluvial gold had been washed down from the gold-bearing veins found later in the granite hills above. The world’s oldest mine map (Figure 1.2), which is made on papyrus and held at the Turin Museum (Museo Egizio di Torino) in Italy, shows the huts of the Egyptian miners, the road to the gold mines, and the hills within which the gold veins occurred. <...>