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 (collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010032431)).
For records of Sety and his contemporaries, see Kenneth Kitchen. Ramesside Inscriptions, Volume I. Versions: Hieroglyphs (archive.org/details/KennethA.KitchenRamessideI…); English translations (abercrombypress.com/books/ramesside-inscriptio…); References and Commentary (meretsegerbooks.com/pages/books/M8346c/kitchen…).
Photos of Sety’s Temple at Kanais (flickr.com/photos/26330013@N08/albums/72157644…) in the Wadi Barramiya (flickr.com/photos/12819143@N08/albums/72157610…).
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 (academia.edu/40610263/The_Monuments_of_Sety_I_…).
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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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