The bronze age in Egypt had begun by 3100 bc.
That doesn’t mean they made everything with bronze. But they must have been obtaining tin from somewhere. There are still overland and Mediterranean sea routes that could have been used that didn’t require long travel through the open ocean. Even in the Mediterranean they would have mostly stayed close to shore and only crossed short distances. But it hardly matters, the Egyptians were trading along the land and sea routes in the Mediterranean and didn’t need a canal to do that.
Of course you can. Just ask the Chinese.
You can have bronze without tin. And the closest tin source to Egypt was not Italy.
Also, note that brass is just as common as bronze in archaeological contexts, so add zinc to the mix.
Closeness isn’t always the same thing as geographic proximity. If it’s a five day sail and a 20 day wagon train, then the former could be called closer despite whatever the actual mileage is.
But, certainly, at times Egypt’s domain did expand up almost all of the way to Turkey, so during those periods at least, a Turkish source does seem pretty likely.
I’d personally guess that they were taking it all in from all directions, and probably there wasn’t any extra that Egypt would have been willing to skip on to let those carrying it try to barter for a higher price further away.
It’s faster to sail to Turkey as well, but it’ll be coasting.
But yes, any Bronze Age empire would take all the tin it could get, from anywhere. I was just countering the idea that Egypt necessarily had to go to Western Europe to get it. Hell, an as-yet undiscovered Southern source for Egyptian tin is just as, if not more, probable - certainly, the Kerma culture wasusing bronze.
Kerma antedates the start of the Egyptian bronze age by half a millennium.
Irrelevant to my point.
Egypt was never much of a naval culture and whatever it had happened in the New Kingdom. I don’t think links began until the New Kingdom (where sea going culture did develop).
ETA: And you mean postdates
The construction of the Abydos fleet kind of gives the lie to that line of thinking. As does the import by sea of all that Lebanese cedar - Byblos was essentially an Egyptian colony for most of the Old Kingdom period.
I don’t think a culture that makes trade ships you could disassemble, as the Middle Kingdom finds at Mersa Gawasis show, could reasonably be called “never much of a naval culture”
I disagree. Shipping and ships were obviously important to the Egyptians from early on. Look at the importance of the solar barques and ship burials culturally.
New findsare shedding more light on the nature of Egyptian seafaring, and not just New Kingdom.
I also think you meant they weren’t really a maritime culture, because river and lake shipping is still “naval”.
Just a bump to post a video of a lecture by Dr. Eric Cline (Levantine archaeologist and author of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed.) It’s long (1h10m) but it presents a nice insight into Levantine trade and interrelationships pre-BAC.
Cline says Levantine tin for bronze came from Afghanistan, BTW.
This is about events later than the time period under consideration in the OP, but I, for one, find any and all archaeology of the Levant fascinating, especially stuff about trade, merchants, and the like, so I thought I’d share.