5,000-Year-Old Sinai Panel Shows Egypt’s Early Copper-Driven Conquest

Archaeologists have identified a 5,000-year-old rock panel at Wadi Khamila in Sinai depicting an Egyptian victor subduing a bound local, with iconography and inscriptions linking the scene to the god Min and the copper-rich frontier. The discovery suggests an early, religion-justified Egyptian expansion into Sinai to secure mineral resources, constituting paleocolonialism and revealing a broader imperial network centered on copper mining.