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Gold was not 'made' as such.
Millions of years ago moderately reactive metals like copper and iron reacted with the other elements in the earth's crust to form ores that can be smelted (heated with carbon/coal/charcoal) to extract the metal. Very reactive metals like aluminum and magnesium cannot be extracted by smelting as their compounds in the earth's crust are too stable, These are extracted by using electrical power.
However, there are a small number of metals that are so unreactive that they do not react at all with the other substances in the earth's crust. These are metals like silver, platinum, iridium - and of course gold. Gold is so unreactive it will not even tarnish in air - as does silver after a while.
So in ancient times, gold was discovered in the metallic state and not as an ore, and was not 'made'. It was something of a curiosity - a beautiful shiny substance, unlike any other. No wonder it became so sought-after.
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Steve
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RossGold and silver were highly valued in ancient Egypt. Silver had to be imported from other lands, which made it expensive; gold could be mined in Egypt but it also came from Nubia to the south.
The Egyptian word for gold was nbw, written in hiroglyphs with a sign depicting a pottery crucible supported over a fire on a kind of frame; this shows how the gold was melted. Gold melts at just over 1,000 degrees celcius, so some form of bellows were certainly needed to increase the heat of the furnace. In Old Kingdom pictures, groups of men blow through tubes to provide extra oxygen, but these were soon replaced by more efficient bellows.
Once cooled, gold would be beaten into extremely thin sheets or foil; this was then used to cover objects of wood or other materials - the gold was rarely worked into objects of pure gold. Sometimes, objects such as royal sceptres were "gold-plated" by dipping them into molten gold.
Gold was considered to be closely connected with the Egyptian gods and it had religious as well as royal qualities.
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