Ophir

The land of Ophir or Ofir ( Hebrew אוֹפִיר ʾŌfīr ) is a legendary gold country in the Hebrew Bible . It is best known for the wealth of gold. King Solomon is said to have got his gold from there . Ophir is often associated with the gold country punt, which is known from Egyptian sources .

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Mentions in the Old Testament

1. Book of Kings

The report ( 1 Kings 9,26-28 EU ): King Solomon also built a fleet in Ezjon-Geber , which is near Elat on the coast of the Red Sea in Edom . Hiram sent his people, skilled seafarers, to ship with the people of Solomon. They drove to Ofir, fetched 420 talents of gold from there and brought it to King Solomon . It is directly related to the mentions of the Queen of Sheba ( 1 Kings 10.10-11 EU ): She (Queen of Sheba) gave the king 120 talents Gold, plus a very large amount of balm and precious stones. Never again did so much balm come into the land as the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. Hiram's fleet, which brought gold from Ofir, also brought large quantities of almuggim wood and precious stones from there .

The precious “Almuggimholz” refers more to a region in Lebanon and is less associated with the location of Ofir. The information in chapter 10 regarding the almuggim wood is to be viewed as a supplementary editorial supplement to explain the origin of the building materials for Solomon's temple and to establish a connection between Solomon and Hiram. This information is therefore ruled out as a historical annal note .

2. Book of Chronicles

2 Chr 8,18 EU :

Hiram sent him (Solomon) ships and skilled seafarers through his servants. They drove with the people of Solomon to Ofir, fetched 450 talents of gold from there and brought it to King Solomon.

2 Chr 9.10 EU :

The people of Hiram and the people of Solomon, who brought gold from Ofir, also brought algum wood and precious stones.

Book Tobit

Tob 13.17 EU :

For Jerusalem will be rebuilt from sapphire and emerald ; its walls are made of precious stone, its towers and walls of pure gold; Jerusalem's squares are laid out with beryl and rubies and stones from Ofir .

Other sources

Besides the Bible and a Judean inscription from the 7th century BC BC, which mentions the "gold from Ophir", there are still some Arabic reports that mention the gold country "Afir", which should be identical with Ophir.

Localization

The starting point of the journey to the Land of Ophir was the port of Ezjon-Geber at the far end of the Gulf of Aqaba near the present-day port city of Eilat . The time of the journey ordered by King Solomon is around the year 940 BC. Adopted.

However, the localization of the country of Ophir is controversial among researchers due to the inexact description by the Bible. It may have been in Abyssinia or the Middle East . For the ancient Egyptians, Nubia was a "gold country". It is conceivable that Solomon also got his gold from there. Ophir was also sought in Somalia , Yemen , Persia or on the west coast of Africa . The search was also carried out in the New World. It was believed to be in Peru or the Caribbean . A Spanish expedition, led by Alvaro de Mendaña de Neyra , searched Ophir in the Pacific in 1567 . They discovered a group of islands and named them the Solomon Islands , although no gold was found there.

Sofala and Zimbabwe

In the 19th century, Greater Zimbabwe was known as the Ophir

1502 discovered Vasco da Gama the city Sofala and noticed the abundance of gold and precious stones. Three years later, the Portuguese opened a branch in Sofala. They thought they discovered Ophir. Two more years later, Greater Zimbabwe is reported to have been the source for the gold sofalas. However, the Portuguese never entered Zimbabwe.

In the 19th century, the German traveler to Africa, Karl Mauch, brought Ophir and Zimbabwe back together. His theory found many supporters , especially in Germany and England. The press spoke of the rediscovery of Ophir. The well-known author of adventure novels Sir Henry Rider Haggard (1856–1925) popularized the “Ophir” myth by having his hero Allan Quatermain search for the diamond mines of King Solomon in Southeast Africa - admittedly completely unhistorical. The allusions to the colonial pioneer Cecil Rhodes , who had gotten rich through diamond deals and brought what is now Zimbabwe under British control, were obvious.

At the end of the century, the German adventurer and colonial pioneer Carl Peters was particularly vocal in this view and tried to put the names "Ophir" and "Africa" into an etymological context. At the beginning of the 20th century, however, his theory was increasingly criticized. First in 1905 and finally in 1952, the analysis of archaeological findings proved that Greater Zimbabwe was founded by the black African Shona in the early Middle Ages . This means that contact with King Solomon is excluded due to the large time difference of almost 2000 years. However, the old “Ophir theory” was considered the official state ideology in white Rhodesia , today's Zimbabwe , because it could be used to claim that even in ancient times black Africans could only have been forced to work by force from light-skinned races. The archaeologist Peter Garlake, who had succeeded in finally proving the black African origins of the ruins, was not allowed to publish his research results in Rhodesia. Even today there are still some books that claim the non-African origin of the ruins and a connection with Phoenicians or Egyptians. The authors come almost exclusively from South Africa and represent a conception of African history that was generally accepted during the colonial era and that is still popular today in circles that mourn apartheid .

The theory of the Indologist Christian Lassen , also put forward in the 19th century, that Ophir was on the north-west coast of East India , near the mouth of the Indus River, and that the name Ophir was derived from the North Indian tribe of the "Abhira", came about through the dispute over Sofala and Zimbabwe marginalized.

literature

James Theodore Bent : The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland. Being a Record of Excavation and Exploration in 1891. Longmans, Green & C., London 1892 (New edition. Ibid. 1896), (classic of the “Ophir” theory).
Carl Peters : Ophir. In the gold country of antiquity. Research between the Zambezi and Sabi. Lehmann, Munich 1902 (facsimile print. Time Life Books, Amsterdam 1982, ISBN 90-6182-752-3 ).
Rolf Herzog: Punt (= treatises of the German Archaeological Institute Cairo. Egyptological series. Vol. 6, ISSN 0418-971X ). Augustin, Glückstadt 1968 (fundamental work on the history of the Egyptian gold trade).
Andries Johannes Bruwer: Zimbabwe. Rhodesia's Ancient Greatness. Keartland, Johannesburg 1965 (typical example of a younger proponent of the “Ophir” theory).
David Chanaiwa: The Zimbabwe Controversy. A Case of Colonial Historiography (= Eastern African Studies. Vol. 8, ISSN 0360-8433 ). Program of Eastern African Studies - Syracuse University, Syracuse NY 1973.
Peter S. Garlake: Zimbabwe. Goldland of the Bible or a symbol of African freedom? Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1975, ISBN 3-7857-0167-5 (meanwhile outdated standard work on the history and archeology of "Great Zimbabwe").
Heinrich Pleticha (Ed.): Zimbabwe. Voyages of discovery into the past. Thienemann - Edition Erdmann, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-522-60620-5 (collection of excerpts from travel reports as well as standard works on the “Ophir” theory).
Graham Connah: African Civilizations. Precolonial Cities and States in Tropical Africa. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1987, ISBN 0-521-26666-1 (therein pp. 183-213 on Great Zimbabwe and gold mining).
Manfred Görg : Ophir, Tarschisch and Atlantis. Some thoughts on symbolic geography. In: Biblical Notes. Vol. 15, 1981, ISSN 0178-2967 , pp. 76-86.
Herbert WA Sommerlatte: Gold and ruins in Zimbabwe. From diaries and letters of Swabian Karl Mauch (1837–1875). Published on the occasion of Karl Mauch's 150th birthday on May 7, 1987. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1987, ISBN 3-570-07918-6 .
Peter Hertel: To the ruins of Zimbabwe. Klett-Perthes, Gotha 2000, ISBN 3-623-00356-5 .