Abstract
In the south-eastern part of the Mediterranean, there was a country about which Herodotus thought that its inhabitants "established manners and customs for themselves in a way opposite to other men in almost all matters". As for the Early and Middle Bronze Age, earlier and most recent analyses rather prove that ancient Egyptians followed the path of other contemporary cultures, with the use of almost pure copper, arsenical copper and occasional application of bronze.
Ancient Egyptian written and iconographic sources, which provide more fascinating insights into the organization of metallurgy, have been rarely systematized in the past with the aid of material culture. I would like to approach the phenomena of technological innovations and cross-craftsmanship in earlier periods of ancient Egyptian history using all available sources.
The chronology from the Early Dynastic Period to the end of the Middle Kingdom is established in broader terms, making it possible to follow the pace of technological change and innovation within rather precise time estimates. As these periods followed a set of rules for the organization of burials, it is possible to single out the tombs of patrons ordering the craftwork on the one hand, and the graves of the metalworkers and craftsmen themselves on the other hand.
The sources speak not only about metalworking specialists but also about the nature of cross-craftsmanship in the studied periods. It followed a chaîne opératoire, and a metalworker was likely to be specialized also in the related crafts of carpentry or masonry.
The highest-ranking metalworkers in the administration were moreover engaged in ancient Egyptian religion and in the production of three-dimensional depictions of the deities themselves. On the whole, ancient Egyptian sources cast light on the organization of EBA and MBA metallurgy in the framework of the early state.