Before the beginning of the 1st Dynasty in 3100 BC, the Egyptians had access to precious metals, and throughout this period they acquired it in ever increasing quantities, at first from the Eastern Desert and Nubia, later too from the war in Syria and the north.
The Egyptian craftsmen used enormous amounts of gold in many and varied ways, to gild lesser materials, to plate wood and stone, solid casting it into small statuary, hammering and cutting sheets of it into elements of religious and ceremonial furniture and funerary equipment.
