"Tradition has it that not only concerned himself with the unification of Egypt but also with the control of the river: to him is attributed the first damming of the Nile, the digging of dikes for agricultural purposes and indeed the first attempt to control and apportion the waters of the river. The wealth of Egypt was thus, with , based upon its agricultural output. However, unlike Mesopotamia, the Egyptians had on their doorstep a number of mineral resources that they were able to exploit with little effort, including copper ores, gold and a wide range of rocks suitable for building and the making of a wide variety of ornaments. [S]hortly before the year 3000 metallurgists made a discovery that was to transform the entire "industry." ...by mixing a small quantity of tin ore with the copper ores when... smelted... they discovered the alloy . The occurrence of tinstone... does not occur in the same type of deposit as do the ores of copper, but rather, [near] veins of gold. ...Thus tinstone ...may well have been noticed during washing for gold... finding that the little black lumps of ore were relatively heavy, presumably made various attempts at smelting them until they arrived empirically at a suitable alloy... [T]he effect is to reduce the melting point... they had a far more fluid metal that was much easier to cast. ...the quality of casting improved dramatically."