ATHENS – Bracelets found in the tomb of the ancient Egyptian queen Hetepheres I, mother of  Khufu, the pharaoh who commissioned the Great Pyramid of Giza – also showed trading was then going on with Ancient Greece.

That was determined after an international team of archaeologists analyzed samples of the bracelets that contained copper, gold and lead with other semiprecious stones common in Egyptian jewelry then.

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/ancient-egyptians/ancient-egyptian-queens-bracelets-contain-1st-evidence-of-long-distance-trade-between-egypt-and-greece

But one of the pieces, including one depicting a butterfly, also contained traces of silver, although there weren’t any known sources in Egypt at the time in 2600 B.C. when the jewelry was made.

The team looked at the ratio of isotope and concluded the materials were “consistent with ores from the Cyclades,” a group of Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, as well as with those from Lavrion, a town in southern Greece., said a study in the June issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

“The origin of silver used for [artifacts] during the third millennium has remained a mystery until now,” lead author Karin Sowada, a lecturer in the Department of History and Archaeology at Macquarie University in Sydney, said.

“This new finding demonstrates, for the first time, the potential geographical extent of trade networks used by the Egyptian state during the early Old Kingdom at the height of the Pyramid-building age,” she said.

The silver on the bracelets is the first evidence of long-distance exchange between Egypt and Greece, the team said, the study said to have shown more details about how the bracelets, some at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, were forged.