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{{short description|Biblical port famous for its wealth}}{{distinguish|Orphir}}{{About|the region mentioned in the Bible|other uses|Ophir (disambiguation)}}Ophir ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|oʊ|f|ər}};"Ophir". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. {{Hebrew Name|אוֹפִיר|ʼŌfīr|ʼŌp̄īr}}) is a port or region mentioned in the Bible, famous for its wealth. Its existence is attested to by an inscribed pottery shard found at Tell Qasile (in modern-day Tel Aviv) in 1946, dating to the eighth century BC,Maisler, B., Two Hebrew Ostraca from Tell Qasîle, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Oct., 1951), p. 265 weblinkBoardman, John, The Prehistory of the Balkans: The Middle East and the Aegean World, Tenth to Eighth Centuries B.C., Part 1, Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 480 weblink which reads "gold of Ophir to/for Beth-Horon [...] 30 shekels"{{efn|Beth-Horon probably refers to the ancient city 35 km south of Tell Qasile; another interpretation is that Beth-Horon means 'the temple of Horon', (a Canaanite deity also known as Hauron), see {{harvtxt|Lipiński|2004|p=197}}}}Kitchen, Kenneth A.; Handy, Lowell K. (ed.), The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium, BRILL 1997, p. 144 weblink The location of Ophir is unknown, though the find confirms it as a real place from which gold was imported.{{sfn|Lipiński|2004|p=144}}

Biblical references

Ophir in Genesis 10 (the Table of Nations) is said to be the name of one of the sons of Joktan.{{efn|This is also stated in 1 Chronicles 1:22}} The Books of Kings and Chronicles tell of a joint expedition to Ophir by King Solomon and the Tyrian king Hiram I from Ezion-Geber, a port on the Red Sea, that brought back large amounts of gold, precious stones and 'algum wood' and of a later failed expedition by king Jehoshaphat of Judah.{{efn|The first expedition is described in 1 Kings 9:28; 10:11; 1 Chronicles 29:4; 2 Chronicles 8:18; 9:10, the failed expedition of Jehoshaphat in 1 Kings 22:48}} The famous 'gold of Ophir' is referenced in several other books of the Hebrew Bible.{{efn|Book of Job (Job 22:24|22:24); 28:16; (Psalm 45:9); Isaiah 13:12}}In the Septuagint, other variants of the name are mentioned: Ōpheír, Sōphír, Sōpheír and Souphír.{{sfn|Mahdi, The Dispersal of Austronesian boat forms in the Indian Ocean|1999|p=154}}The New Testament apocrypha book Cave of Treasures contains a passage: "And the children of Ophir, that is, Send, appointed to be their king Lophoron, who built Ophir with stones of gold; now, all the stones that are in Ophir are of gold."BOOK, The Book of The Cave of Treasures by Ephrem the Syrian: Translated from the Syriac Text of The British Museum, Badge, William, The Religious Tract Society, 1927, London, 32, Google Books,

Theorized locations

Possible 1st century BC trade routes

Sri Lanka

The 10th-century lexicographer, David ben Abraham al-Fasi, identified Ophir with Serendip, the old Persian name for Sri Lanka (aka Ceylon).Solomon Skoss (ed.), The Hebrew-Arabic Dictionary of the Bible, Known as `Kitāb Jāmiʿ al-Alfāẓ` (Agron) of David ben Abraham al-Fasi, Yale University Press: New Haven 1936, vol. 1, p. 46 (Hebrew) Moreover, as mentioned above, A Dictionary of the Bible by Sir William SmithSmith, William, A dictionary of the Bible, Hurd and Houghton, 1863 (1870), pp.1441 notes the Hebrew word for parrot Thukki, derived from the Classical Tamil for peacock Thogkai or Sinhalese "tokei".Smith's Bible Dictionary Both Sinhalese and Tamil are native to Sri Lanka. {{citation needed|date=June 2021}}

Poovar, Kerala, India

File:Poovar Kerala.jpg|thumb|PoovarPoovarA Dictionary of the Bible by Sir William Smith, published in 1863, notes the Hebrew word for parrot Thukki, derived from the Classical Tamil for peacock Thogkai and Sinhalese "tokei", joins other Classical Tamil words for ivory, cotton-cloth and apes preserved in the Hebrew Bible. This theory of Ophir's location in Uvari in Tamilakam is further supported by other historians.Ramaswami, Sastri, The Tamils and their culture, Annamalai University, 1967, pp.16Gregory, James, Tamil lexicography, M. Niemeyer, 1991, pp.10Fernandes, Edna, The last Jews of Kerala, Portobello, 2008, pp.98Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, Volume IAlmug Tree Almunecar→ALMUG or ALGUM TREE. The Hebrew words Almuggim or Algummim are translated Almug or Algum trees in our version of the Bible (see 1 Kings x. 11, 12; 2 Chron. ii. 8, and ix. 10, 11). The wood of the tree was very precious, and was brought from Ophir (probably some part of India), along with gold and precious stones, by Hiram, and was used in the formation of pillars for the temple at Jerusalem, and for the king's house; also for the inlaying of stairs, as well as for harps and psalteries. It is probably the red sandal-wood of India (Pterocarpus santalinus). This tree belongs to the natural order Leguminosæ, sub-order Papilionaceæ. The wood is hard, heavy, close-grained, and of a fine red colour. It is different from the white fragrant sandal-wood, which is the produce of Santalum album, a tree belonging to a distinct natural order.Also see notes by George Menachery in the St. Thomas Christian Encyclopaedia of India, Vol. 2 (1973) Earlier in the 19th century, Max Müller and other scholars identified Ophir with Abhira, near the Indus River in modern-day state of Gujarat, India. According to Benjamin Walker Ophir is said to have been a town of the Abhira tribe.{{citation|last=Walker|first=Benjamin|title=Hindu World: An Encyclopedic Survey of Hinduism, Volume 2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iGjXAAAAMAAJ|page=515|year=1968|publisher=Allen & Unwin}}In Jewish tradition, Ophir is often associated with Uvari, a place in the Indian subcontinent,{{efn|Fourteenth-century biblical commentator, Nathanel ben Isaiah, writes: "And Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab (Gen. 10:29), these are the tracts of countries in the east, being those of the first clime,"BOOK, Ben Isaiah, N., Nethanel ben Isaiah, Sefer Me'or ha-Afelah, Mechon Moshe, Yosef Qafih, 1983, Kiryat Ono, 74, he, and which first clime, according to al-Biruni, the sub-continent of India falls entirely therein.Sunil Sharma, Mughal Arcadia: Persian Literature in an Indian Court, Harvard University Press: Cambridge 2017, p. 66}} named for one of the sons of Joktan.Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (Book 8, chapter 6, §4), s.v. Aurea Chersonesus Ibn Sa'd says in his Kitab at-Tabaqat al-Kabir that the Indians, the Sindhis and the Bindis are the descendants of Yufir (Ophir).WEB,weblink Soebratie.nl - soebratie Resources and Information, File:The_World_as_Peopled_by_the_Descendants_of_Noah_Shewing_the_Countries_Possessed_by_Shem,_Ham_&_Japhet_and_their_posterity_after_the_confusion_of_tongues..jpg|right|thumb|250px|Robert Wilkinson's 1823 map of the descendants of Noah's sons which identifies Ophir with IndonesiaIndonesia

Philippines

In Tomo III (1519–1522), pages 112–138, of the book Colección general de documentos relativos a las Islas Filipinas existentes en el Archivo de Indias de Sevilla,BOOK,weblink Compañía General de Tabacos de Filipinas, Colección general de documentos relativos a las Islas Filipinas existentes en el Archivo de Indias de Sevilla, Tomo III--Documento 98, 1520-1528, 112–138, found in the General Archive of the Indies in Spain, Document No. 98 describes how to locate the land of Ophir. The navigational guide starts from the Cape of Good Hope in Africa to India, Burma, Sumatra, the Maluku Islands, Borneo, Sulu, China, then finally Ophir, which is speculated to be the Philippines. Parallel to this Spanish archive an older text called the "Periplus of the Erythean Sea" cited the directions to Chryse, a golden island in the Eastern Ocean, is an island right to the south of China, where the Philippines is.W.H. Schoff Longmans, trans. The Periplus of the Erythean Sea: Travels and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant in the First Century. Commercial Museum of Philadelphia. 1912. Pages 45-48

Africa

Biblical scholars, archaeologists and others have tried to determine the exact location of Ophir. Vasco da Gama's companion Tomé Lopes reasoned that Ophir would have been the ancient name for Great Zimbabwe in Zimbabwe, the main center of southern African trade in gold in the Renaissance period — though the ruins at Great Zimbabwe are now dated to the medieval era, long after Solomon is said to have lived. The identification of Ophir with Sofala in Mozambique was mentioned by Milton in Paradise Lost (11:399-401), among many other works of literature and science.Another, more serious, possibility is the African shore of the Red Sea, with the name perhaps being derived from the Afar people living in the Danakil desert (Ethiopia, Eritrea) between Adulis and Djibouti.Afri was a Latin name used to refer to the Carthaginians, who dwelt in North Africa, in modern-day Tunisia. This name, that later gave the rich Roman province of Africa and the subsequent medieval Ifriqiya, from which the name of the continent Africa is ultimately derived, seems to have referred to a native Libyan tribe originally, however, see Terence for discussion. The name is usually connected with Phoenician afar, "dust", but a 1981 hypothesisNames of countries {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170815062417weblink |date=2017-08-15 }}, Decret and Fantar, 1981 has asserted that it stems from the Berber word ifri (plural ifran) meaning "cave", in reference to cave dwellers.The Berbers, by Geo. Babington Michell, p 161, 1903, Journal of the Royal African Society book on ligne This is proposed to be the origin of Ophir as well.{{sfn|Lipiński|2004|p=200}}

Mahd adh Dhahab, Arabia

In 1976, the United States Department of Interior announced that a team formed by the United States Geological Survey together with experts from Saudi Arabia believes it has "a fairly airtight case” that Mahd adh Dhahab, or Cradle of Gold, in Saudi Arabia is the biblical Ophir. As evidence, the team states that "there are huge quantities of waste rock left behind by ancient miners, approximately a million tons, and that it has an average gold content of sixteenths of an ounce per ton, indicating that the mined ore must have been richer. From sampling old slopes and from production figures during the 1939 to 1954 period when the mine was reactivated to extract gold and silver, the geological survey scientists estimated that in biblical times much gold must have been found at or near the surface." Moreover, Mahd adh Dhahab is "within range of Israel's transport capability," and it "could easily have been known to Solomon or his advisers because it lies on a north‐south trade route that has run to Aqaba for some 4,000 years." Their conclusion is that "Mand adh Dhahab [sic] could have produced 34 tons of gold in ancient times and was the biblical Ophir."NEWS,weblink Solomon's Mine Believed Found, The New York Times, 24 May 1976, Rensberger, Boyce,

Inspiration or named after

Americas

In a letter written in May 1500, Peter Martyr claimed that Christopher Columbus identified Hispaniola with Ophir.De orbe novo decadesThe theologian Benito Arias Montano (1571) proposed finding Ophir in the name of Peru, reasoning that the native Peruvians were thus descendants of Ophir and Shem.JOURNAL, Shalev, Zur, Sacred Geography, Antiquarianism and Visual Erudition: Benito Arias Montano and the Maps in the Antwerp Polyglot Bible, Imago Mundi, 2003, 55, 71, 10.1080/0308569032000097495, 51804916,weblink 2017-01-17, 2021-02-25,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20210225102322weblink">weblink dead, The California Gold Rush boomtown, Ophir, was renamedWEB, OPHIR,weblink 2022-02-27, CA State Parks, en, after "the biblical source of Solomon's treasure."WEB, 1 Kings 10:11 (The fleet of Hiram that brought gold from Ophir also brought from Ophir a great cargo of almug wood and precious stones.,weblink 2022-02-27, biblehub.com,

Solomon Islands

After their discovery by Europeans in 1568 by Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña, the Solomon Islands were subsequently referred to as Islas Salomón (Solomon Islands) by others following reports of his voyage optimistically conflated with stories of King Solomon, believing them to be Ophir.WEB,weblink Alvaro de Mendaña de Neira, 1542?–1595, Princeton University Library, 8 February 2013, WEB,weblink Hansard, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), 27 April 1978, Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS, speaking in the House of Lords, HL Deb 27 April 1978 vol 390 cc2003-19, 19 November 2014, HOGBIN, H. In, Experiments in Civilization: The Effects of European Culture on a Native Community of the Solomon Islands, New York: Schocken Books, 1970

See also

• India (Bible)
• Tarshish, another Biblical location providing Solomon with riches.
• Karl Mauch, an explorer who inadvertently discovered Great Zimbabwe when searching for Ophir.
• Land of Punt

Notes

{{notelist|30em}}

References

{{reflist|30em}}

Bibliography

• {{citation |first=Edward |last=LipiÅ„ski| title=Itineraria Phoenicia Studia Phoenicia 18| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SLSzNfdcqfoC&pg=PA200| year=2004| publisher=Peeters Publishers| isbn=978-90-429-1344-8}}
• {{citation |first=Waruno |last=Mahdi |chapter=The Dispersal of Austronesian boat forms in the Indian Ocean |title=Archaeology and Language III; Artefacts, languages and texts |editor1=Roger Blench |editor2=Matthew Spriggs |publisher=Routledge |year=1999 |isbn=0-415-10054-2 |pages=144–179 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h8jfBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA144 |ref={{sfnref|Mahdi, The Dispersal of Austronesian boat forms in the Indian Ocean|1999}}}}
• {{citation |last=Schroff |first=Wifred H. |title=The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean |url=https://archive.org/stream/cu31924030139236 |year=1912 |publisher=Longmans, Green, and Company |location=New York |ref={{sfnref|Schroff, The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea|1912}}}}
• (fr) Quatremère (1861), Mémoire sur le pays d’Ophir, in Mélanges d'histoire, Ducrocq, Paris, p. 234 (read @ Archive).

For many references and a comprehensive outline of the products exported from Muziris, Ariake &c. cf. George Menachery ed. The St. Thomas Christian Encyclopaedia of India, 1973, 1982, 2009.

External links

• weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20060928071427weblink">Onshore explorations at Sopara and Kalyan, India
• EB1911, Ophir,