Egyptian territory. The conquest of the Edomites in their mountain
fastnesses would have been a matter of difficulty, nor would anything
have been gained by it. Edom was rich neither agriculturally nor
commercially; it was, in fact, a land of barren mountains, and the trade
which afterwards passed through the Arabah to Elath and Ezion-geber in
the Gulf of Aqabah was already secured to the Egyptians through their
possession of the Gulf of Suez. The first and last of the Pharaohs, so
far as we know, who ventured on a campaign against the wild tribes of
Mount Seir, was Ramses III. of the twentieth dynasty, and his campaign
was merely a punitive one. No attempt to incorporate the "Red Land" into
his dominions was ever made by an Egyptian king.

The Sinaitic peninsula, the province of Mafkat or "Malachite," as it was
called, had been in the possession of the Egyptians since the time of
Zosir of the third dynasty, and it continued to be regarded as part of
the Egyptian kingdom up to the age of the Ptolemies. The earliest of
Egyptian rock-sculptures is engraved in the peninsula, and represents
Snefru, the founder of the fourth dynasty, slaughtering the Beduin who
inhabited it. Its possession was valued on account of its mines of
copper and malachite. These were worked by the Egyptian kings with the
help of convict labour. Garrisons were established to protect them and
the roads which led to them, colonies of officials grew up at their
side, and temples were built dedicated to the deities of Egypt. Even as
late as the reign of Ramses III. the amount of minerals produced by the
mines was enormous. They existed for the most part on the western side
of the peninsula, opposite the Egyptian coast; but Ramses III. also
opened copper mines in the land of 'Ataka further east, and the name of
the goddess Hathor in hieroglyphics has been found by Dr. Friedmann on
the shores of Midian.