Fortune and Glory

by David McIntee

  As for any other types of whipping, let’s just say it’s probably safer to bring your own than to trust someone else’s: you don’t know where it’s been.

  THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

  Ophir, Tarshish and Sheba were originally mentioned in the Old Testament as being people’s names, but by the time of the stories about Solomon these names had become the names of places with which Solomon’s land traded. Scholars suggest that these lands were perhaps founded by the people in question.

  Ophir was certainly a place – in 1946 some pottery was excavated at Tell Qasile, now part of modern Tel Aviv, bearing the notation ‘gold from Ophir for Beth-Horon’, which at least indicated that gold was imported to Beth-Horon from Ophir. The pottery dates from the 8th century BC, which is the right time to be trading with the Israelite kingdom.

  Sheba is now pretty much settled as having been in the Arabian Peninsula, in what is now the Yemen, at the bottom end of the Red Sea. Long story short, it was a Semitic kingdom more properly named Saba which existed from about 1200 BC until the 3rd century AD, at which point it fell apart in a civil war. None of the Saba cities, however, were fit with the requirements to be Ophir, because sandalwood did not grow there. The Queen of Sheba had to get sandalwood from elsewhere and transport it.

  Copper mines from Solomon’s time have been excavated in the Timna Valley in southern Israel. Thought to have begun as early as the 5th millennium BC, these were part of Edom in Old Testament times. From around 1000 BC and up until Roman times, these mines were worked by the Nabateans and Israelites.

  The Nabatean mines would have presumably had to pay taxes to, or be licensed by, Solomon, even if he didn’t actually own them. So in that sense these would kind of be King Solomon’s Mines.

  Being copper mines actually makes the Timna Valley mines more likely to have been watched over by a king such as Solomon, for two good reasons. Firstly, at the time, copper was the most valuable trade good, because this was, after all, the Bronze Age, and copper is one of the two ingredients in bronze (tin being the other, of course). So, a king controlling the copper trade could make himself wealthy. Secondly, weapons such as swords, axe heads and spearheads were all made from bronze as well, and the king’s government would definitely be sure to be in charge of that supply.

  Nevertheless, the mines at Timna are still not what treasure hunters are looking for.

  WHERE IS IT NOW?

  H. Rider Haggard’s legendary King Solomon’s Mines are – or, more accurately, is – the walled city of Great Zimbabwe, abandoned since around the 1450s. It’s now an UNESCO World Heritage Site, covering 600 hectares of Masvingo Province, in the hills of south-eastern Zimbabwe.

  This, however, is certainly not the source of the wealth brought to King Solomon in those ancient texts, and nor is it Ophir. It’s not what you’re looking for.

  That leaves the legendary source(s) of tons of Solomonic gold to find. Where is, or was, Ophir and/or Tarshish?

  If you’re standing in Great Zimbabwe, you need to turn around, and head to the nearest airport, because you are standing on the wrong continent. If you are standing in the excavations at Timna, sifting through the copper mines, you also need to get yourself to the airport because you are also standing on the wrong continent.

  Despite the Portuguese having thought so, and it inspiring Haggard, Ophir was definitely not Great Zimbabwe, on account of that city not being built for another couple of thousand years after Solomon’s time. It seems similarly unlikely that Sofala was Ophir either, since Sofala, even if it was sometimes called Sofir, was founded by Somali and Arabic merchants in the 8th century AD. That’s far too late to have shipped gold to a king who lived in the 900s BC, at least without access to a TARDIS.

  Where you place Ophir is really going to depend on two things. Firstly, what capabilities do you ascribe to shipping in Old Testament times? If shipping was purely coast-hugging, over relatively short distances, then logically you’ll be looking at the Red Sea coast. On the African side are the coasts of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, down to Djibouti. Ethiopia and Djibouti in particular are home to a people called the Afar, and you can see how that could be shifted by pronunciation into ‘Ophir’.

  Although the Queen of Sheba brings Solomon stuff from Ophir, nobody ever said Ophir was actually in Sheba – or Saba – itself, and the historical evidence increasingly suggests that it was not. So, the second thing upon which your placing of Ophir depends, is the question ‘where can I find gold, gems, apes, peacock feathers and sandalwood together for export in Old Testament times?’ As luck would have it, there’s actually only one answer: Southern India and Sri Lanka, under the Dravidians.

  The Dravidians were famed for their exports of gold, ivory, peacocks, peacock feathers and sandalwood. Not coincidentally, the Hebrew words for ivory, cotton and peacock – among others – all derive from, and are phonetically similar to, the Tamil words for the same things. Tamil, of course, being the Dravidian language. The Biblical wood Almug is almost certainly Red Sandalwood, native to Dravidian India.

  Oh, and there’s one last giveaway to the other end of that Saba trading route: the Coptic name for India is ‘Sofir’.

  Given that if you leave a Yemeni port on a southward heading and turn left, the first land you hit is India, it’s easy to see even coastal ships from Saba making that journey. In addition, the Persians could simply carry stuff across the Arabian Peninsula by land anyway. ‘Sofir’, India, became the legendary Ophir.

  Not everybody will ever agree on this, mind you, because over time, the stories have become so bound up with national identities in the region that a dozen countries all want to lay claim to the honour of being home to the Queen Of Sheba. That’s before even getting into the assorted ‘alternative archaeologists’ who want to assume that Ophir was in America, Antarctica, Atlantis, or, indeed, on a different planet altogether.

  Basically, though, the Islamic traditions seem to have the most accurate views on this, presumably because Islam was founded in the same area as Saba, not too long after. Everyone assumed Ophir was a city, and it isn’t. It’s a region.

  If you want a specific place to go to, and call Ophir, the most central town to visit would be Kudiramalai in northern Sri Lanka, which neighbours the ancient Thiruketheeswaram Temple, though large stretches of the coast of southern India and north and west Sri Lanka would all qualify.

  Though Sri Lanka was historically famous for gold (it was once called Rathnadveepa, or “island of gold”), there aren’t currently any major mines there. The deposits of gold and gems are scattered as alluvial deposits, and panning in the rivers has been a more common type of gold rush there, especially around the Kelani River.

  THE OPPOSITION IN YOUR WAY

  The main opposition in your search for King Solomon’s Mines is your own perception: what you are looking for is not what you think you’re looking for!

  If you’re hoping to acquire any gold, you’ll have to learn to pan for it, and you’ll find many local people doing likewise, and they may or may not be happy about you joining in. It would definitely be advisable to keep both an eye and an ear out to judge the lie of the land where local opinion on visiting prospectors is concerned.

  Thankfully you won’t have to deal with Thuggee cults a la Temple of Doom, but there have been more political conflicts in the region recently. In India there has long been strife between the Hindu, Sikh and Muslim populations, culminating most memorably in the Mumbai attacks a couple of years ago. This is much rarer in the coastal areas of the south, however. The Sri Lankan military fought a 30-year campaign against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, better known as the Tamil Tigers, famed for assassinations, torture, rape and the like. This civil war effectively ended in 2009, however, with the fall of their northern strongholds and death of their leader. Sporadic murders still take place.

  The most dangerous fauna in the region are snakes. Cobras are common through coastal India and Sri Lanka, as are various subspecies of viper. What
you’ll really want to watch for, however, are the Sri Lankan Kraits, striped nocturnal snakes which particularly like to come into houses, huts and tents, and have the deadliest venom on the island.

  Monkeys and apes in both countries have a gift for theft, exceeding even the human pickpockets.

  Dengue fever and malaria, both spread by mosquitoes, are still common as is yellow fever. Ticks are also common in the forests and ancient historic sites and can carry all manner of nasty infections.

  EL DORADO AND THE AZTEC GOLD

  Think of lost gold hoards in the Americas, and you probably think of El Dorado, and the fabulous lost city’s stash of Aztec gold. These are actually two completely separate types of lost treasure, so let’s take them individually.

  El Dorado

  WHAT IS IT?

  El Dorado was originally thought of as a lost city somewhere in South America, filled with gold hidden by the indigenous population to prevent it from being looted by the Spanish Conquistadores in the 16th century.

  That said, it’s now known even by the general public and in popculture that the name itself referred not to a city, but to a person. ‘El Dorado’ is Spanish for ‘the golden one’, a native chief who was painted in gold and engaged in a ritual that involved dumping lots of spare gold into water.

  This has never stopped anyone from believing in the city filled with gold being hidden from the Conquistadores, for two reasons. Firstly, it seemed like common sense to the Spanish that if a nation had so much gold that they were happy to simply dump the spares, then there must be vast stockpiles of it somewhere – such as in a city’s treasury. Secondly, and in more recent times, Machu Picchu was discovered at the end of the 19th century – a whole lost city perched on a cloud-shrouded mountaintop. Naturally, many people were and are more than happy to believe that, with so much of South America’s mountainous and jungle terrain unexplored, there is plenty of room for other such undiscovered cities to remain hidden.

  Even though the name El Dorado has long been known to refer to a man, the idea that he must have been the chief in charge of a city full of treasures yet to be found has persisted. Referring to the city in question by his nickname is simply a convenient shorthand.

  Interestingly, this treasure isn’t really specific to one location, or even one historical civilization, but is attributed to pretty much every Mesoamerican culture, of which there were plenty. It’s said to be an Aztec city, or an Inca city, or an Olmec city, or…

  HOW MUCH IS IT WORTH TO YOU?

  Billions. A city the size of Machu Picchu, with storerooms full of gold, would be worth a huge amount in the cash value of the gold alone, to the extent that the discovery would probably risk causing a crash in the market value of the stuff. Then there would be the historic and archaeological value, and possibly even a huge impact on local tourism, depending on the location.

  THE STORY

  By 1535, both the Inca and Aztec empires had been thoroughly trashed by the Spanish Conquistadores who had followed Christopher Columbus’s expedition to the New World, so Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo turned his attention to what is now Colombia.

  Oviedo led an expedition into the jungle, following the course of the Río Magdalena inland from the coast. His explorations overall would last until 1548, but after a year, he encountered a group of natives carrying fine textiles. This tribe was called the Muisca, and Oviedo’s men followed them home to a mountain village over 300 miles inland.

  The Spanish found gold artworks such as figurines and models throughout the village, in even the poorest of huts. The Muisca were happy to simply give them these artefacts, showing no desire to hang on to them. They had even tossed some of these golden objects away into pits and bushes.

  According to the Chronicle of Juan Rodríguez Freyle, Oviedo then witnessed a ritual in which, as part of his coronation, the Muisca chief was decorated in gold dust, and taken out on a raft into the middle of a lake, where he threw gold and emeralds into the water as an offering to the gods.

  The Spanish came to the only conclusion they were capable of understanding: that if the Muisca are willing to throw so much gold away, or give it to the Oviedo without a second thought, it could only be because they had much more kept back for themselves, in some hidden location. Thus the legend of El Dorado, the city of gold, was born.

  PREVIOUS SEARCHES IN FACT AND FICTION

  As soon as Renaissance Europeans discovered the Americas, they also noted that the natives had bling. They also discovered various spices and other resources. The Conquistadores were sent out to find not just gold and gems, but also cinnamon, as spices were a hugely valuable commodity.

  Although we tend to think of the Conquistadores as exclusively Spanish, the first military explorers striking out towards the Andes were Germans led by Ambrosius Ehinger, whose bankers had been given concessions by the Spanish king, in July of 1529, a few years before the Spanish really got into it.

  A couple of years later, the Spanish Governor of Paria (in Venezuala), Diego de Ordaz, set out to explore the course of the Orinoco River. He was willing to believe in hoards of gold somewhere, being a veteran of Hernán Cortés’s search for Aztec gold in Mexico.

  In 1531, Francisco Pizarro landed on the west coast of Peru with less than 200 men and 70 horses. He soon ran into the largest empire of the Andes, the Inca, and found that they had a lot of gold going spare. Pizarro quickly steamrollered the natives and got the local chief – King Atahualpa – to promise to fill a room with gold. In this case the room was his prison cell, and Atahualpa kept his word, filling it with six and a half tons of gold. Pizarro killed him anyway, started a war, and brought down the Inca Empire.

  Pizarro’s lieutenant, Sebastián de Belalcázar, coined the phrase ‘El Dorado’ as reference to a location in 1535. He was told by a Tacumga native about a Cundinamarca chief, who allegedly hid tons of riches in a valley of gold: dorado. Pizarro sent an expedition, and then various Conquistadores started heading east of Quito (in Ecuador) in search of this valley.

  Enter the aforementioned Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, who actually discovered the avocado on his travels, before stumbling across the Colombian Muisca tribe.

  The Muisca had lived in the northern part of Colombia since AD 1000, on the shores of what is now Lake Guatavita. There, the Muisca Chief anointed himself each morning so that he shone like gold before washing himself off in the lake, into which golden objects were discarded by the people. Oviedo, writing in his journal, called the chief ‘El Dorado’ – the golden man – and wished he could have the ‘sweeping rights to El Dorado’s rooms’, because so much gold dust must have fallen there.

  What the Europeans wondered was where did the gold come from? If they had so much of it that they were willing to throw it away, there must be a helluva lot stashed somewhere. Oviedo himself was offered gold by the Muisca everywhere he went, but he never found a central source.

  Next up, another Gonzalo, Jiménez de Quesada, gave up his search for a route over the Andes, to look for Muisca gold instead. He found 1,700lb of gold – 50 million dollars in today’s money – and 2,000 emeralds in the settlement of Tunha in 1537. Tunha’s chief, Satipa, promised to fill a room with gold in 20 days, but didn’t. In return, Quesada tortured him for the location of his source of gold, but Satipa died without revealing it. Two other expeditions in 1537 had the same result, and this quickly became the standard pattern for European imperialists in South America.

  Quesada and his brother Hernán spread the word that there were natives with gold to spare and that, by extension (and through Chinese whispers as the message spread), there was indeed a lost kingdom of gold somewhere in South America, from which the Golden Man, El Dorado, got his gold.

  A hundred years later, the tale was standardized by Juan Rodríguez Freyle, who wrote of how the chief was covered in gold dust and threw treasures into Lake Guatavita as part of his coronation. Freyle was editing and interpreting the journals of those adventurers to fit in with what had already b
ecome the prevailing opinion. An opinion which had already been coloured by both what had happened with the Aztecs in Mexico at around the same time, and by a completely separate legend: that of Cibola, the Seven Cities of Gold.

  This was a slight diversion from El Dorado, in which survivors of an expedition to Florida in 1539, who had been shipwrecked on Galveston Island in the Gulf of Mexico by a hurricane, had been told by locals about gold in Cibola, north of them. This led Francisco Vásquez de Coronado to take an army up as far as Kansas in search of the cities in 1540, before he eventually figured out that the whole thing had been a lie to get the Spanish lost in the Great Plains, where they couldn’t do any more harm.

  Lake Guatavita is a bowl-shaped crater lake, 10,000ft above sea level in Colombia. The first attempt to drain it was made in 1545 by Hernán Quesada (brother of Gonzalo Jiminez Quesada). His workforce simply used a bucket chain, and took three months to reduce the water level by 10ft. They did recover what in today’s money would be about £60,000 worth of gold.

  A generation later, in 1572, Antonio La Sepulveda was licensed to drain the lake and excavate part of the mountain. He had Muisca slaves strip the forest from the mountainside and build a channel through which he could drain the lake, which was then about 100ft deep. When the floodgates were opened in 1580, 70ft or so of the lake’s depth poured away, revealing the glint of gold and emerald under the water. A few pieces of golden ornaments were recovered…