Ariab (

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

: أرياب) is a region of

Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...

, located in the

Nubian Desert The Nubian Desert ( ) is in the eastern region of the Sahara, Sahara Desert, spanning approximately 400,000 km2 of northeastern Sudan and northern Eritrea, between the Nile and the Red Sea. The arid region is rugged and rocky and contains s ...

. It is inhabited by the

Beja people The Beja people (, , ) are a Cushitic-speaking peoples, Cushitic Ethnicity, ethnic group native to the Eastern Desert, inhabiting a coastal area from southeastern Egypt through eastern Sudan and into northwestern Eritrea. They are descended from ...

, and is home to the country's only commercial

gold mine Gold mining is the extraction of gold by mining. Historically, mining gold from alluvial deposits used manual separation processes, such as gold panning. The expansion of gold mining to ores that are not on the surface has led to more comple ...

, run by French giant

Areva Areva S.A. was a French multinational group specializing in nuclear power, active between 2001 and 2018. It was headquartered in Courbevoie, France. Before its 2016 corporate restructuring, Areva was majority-owned by the French state through t ...

. Gold mining has historically been crucially important for the desert region since Pharonic times. The Canadian company LaMancha Resources (TSX:LMA) operates the Hassai open pit mine, and from May, 2011, plans to expand operations, once additional electrical and water resources are in place.LaMancha website
/ref>

Wadi Wadi ( ; ) is a river valley or a wet (ephemerality, ephemeral) Stream bed, riverbed that contains water only when heavy rain occurs. Wadis are located on gently sloping, nearly flat parts of deserts; commonly they begin on the distal portion ...

Ariab is oriented E-W. Gold mineralization is associated with a zone of massive sulphide mineralization in a marine

rhyolite Rhyolite ( ) is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained (aphanitic) in texture (geology), texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals (phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained matri ...

environment. According to Klemm and Klemm, the gold would have been "undetectable to ancient prospectors" due to its "extremely fine grain" nature. Furthermore, "no traces from ancient mining are known", and the 7 current

opencast Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique that extracts rock or minerals from the earth. Open-pit mines are used when deposits of commercially useful ore or ro ...

mines were discovered with modern

geophysical prospecting Geophysics () is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and properties of Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. Geophysicists conduct investigations acros ...

methods.{{cite book , last1=Klemm , first1=Rosemarie , last2=Klemm , first2=Dietrich , title=Gold and Gold Mining in Ancient Egypt and Nubia , date=2013 , publisher=Springer , location=Heidelberg , isbn=9783642225079 , pages=382–383

External links

Hassai Mine or Ariab Mine

References

Regions of Sudan Geography of Sudan Gold mining

See also

External links

References