Egyptian Turquoise: The Historic Sinai Mines
Egyptian Turquoise Turquoise — A Stone Study
← Part of the T.Skies Turquoise Stone Study
Real Egyptian turquoise from a private collection, photographed in the T.Skies studio: a bundle of heishi strands and polished stones in bright blue with dark brown spiderweb matrix. Tap any stone to see it up close.
Heishi bead strands, blue with dark brown matrix
Polished stones, bright blue with brown spiderweb matrix
Documented stone examples from a private collection, photographed in the T.Skies studio. Not for sale individually — shown for reference. © Turquoise Skies Inc.
Turquoise sold as Egyptian turquoise takes its name from one of the oldest turquoise sources in the world. The stones shown above are from a private collection, photographed in the T.Skies studio. They were acquired as Egyptian turquoise; we do not have documentation tying them to a specific mine, so we describe them by trade name only.
The historic source: the Sinai mines
Egypt’s first major turquoise came from two mining areas in the Sinai Peninsula, Wadi Maghara and Serabit el-Khadim, ten miles apart. They were among the world’s first important hard-rock mines for turquoise, malachite and copper. By 1915 the geologist Joseph Pogue judged them exhausted, “or, at least,” not “successfully operated for a very long period.”
Lowry & Lowry, Turquoise: The World Story (2010), p. 45; Pogue, The Turquois (1915), pp. 8, 29.
What the old sources say about the stone
Pogue described Sinai turquoise as “of pleasing color,” but “held in less esteem than the Persian product because of its somewhat glassy appearance and greater tendency to fade.” George F. Kunz, Tiffany’s gemologist, noted that the stone, “although dark-blue when found, often changes in a short time to a verdigris green.”
Pogue (1915), p. 134; Kunz, Gems and Precious Stones of North America (1890), p. 54.
See every mine we document, by location, in our Turquoise Mines Identifier.