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Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. In a remote desert of southern Israel lies a labyrinth of ancient tunnels. Unlikely discoveries have unearthed evidence that they may have belonged to the richest man who ever lived.
Solomon's wealth was absolutely out of this world. He had gold, silver, precious jewels, monkeys, peacocks. This was an incredibly wealthy man. According to legend, mining made the biblical King Solomon unimaginably wealthy. A single season of mining brings him around $800 million. Today, archaeologists are scouring the region for these mines. What is the truth?
How did King Solomon get his incredible wealth and could these tunnels really be the answer? It's one of the greatest treasure hunts of all time, the hunt for King Solomon's Mines. Timna National Park, southern Israel, home to a labyrinth of sandstone tunnels which could be the historical remains of King Solomon's Mines.
If this is correct, in the 10th century BC, they would have been a hive of activity, mining precious metals that made Solomon one of the wealthiest men who ever lived. If we compare King Solomon's wealth to today, then he would probably be the richest man in the world by far. We're talking like a trillionaire. King Solomon and his great wealth has been the subject of many books and blockbuster films.
Yet the truth of how the king became so rich is a mystery. One of the great intriguing questions has to be what happened to the source of Solomon's wealth. As archaeologists aim to uncover the truth, they're faced with a problem. Jerusalem, which was the heart of Solomon's empire, has been reconstructed many times over the centuries. As an archaeologist, it is plausible that
treasures associated with King Solomon is still out there. For many, the key to finding the source of Solomon's wealth is understanding the truth behind the man himself. Biblical texts tell us he was the son of King David who had united the tribes of Israel under one religion. Yet according to the Bible, it was Solomon who built the first temple on earth to the Old Testament God.
King Solomon's temple is very important in Judaism, in Christianity, in Islam. King Solomon appears right at the start of the life of Israel as a nation. But why was Solomon chosen to build the first temple instead of his all-conquering father David? Getting to the roots of the legend, Ben-Aman-Tel is in Jerusalem.
So the Bible is very clear to us in telling us why is it Solomon who gets to build the temple and not David. And the Bible says that David is unworthy of building a house for God because of the blood that's on his hands. King Solomon, however, the son of King David, already inherited this full-blown kingdom and never had to shed blood over it. And therefore, he could be the one to build a house for God.
If the story is to be believed, Solomon made his temple one of the most lavish buildings ever constructed, with two bronze pillars welcoming worshippers inside the gold-laden building.
Solomon's temple would have been very impressive and would have been constructed using the finest masons at the time. And so no doubt it would have been an architectural wonder. To some who were going into this temple, it would have been literally like entering paradise. I mean, we're talking about something with huge columns and gold and jewels and everything painted richly and ornately. While the stories of grandeur make for a wonderful tale,
Today, the archaeological evidence for this great temple is non-existent. Solomon Temple in Jerusalem is a big riddle. We know very little about it. We don't have any archaeological remains, of course. It's not possible to dig in the place where the temple was built. Today, it's a very important and holy place for Islam. With a lack of hard evidence, the holy scriptures offer the best clues to how Solomon became so wealthy.
They say that during a dream, the king was visited by God. So we have a wonderful story about Solomon praying to God and then God essentially appearing before Solomon and asking him, "What does he want?" Typically in these kind of stories, kings ask for power, money, domination, this kind of thing. But what Solomon asked for was wisdom.
The Bible claims God grants the young king his desire. And in the 3,000 years since his reign, Solomon has become synonymous with wisdom. And there's a classic story, and it's two women who come to the king with a baby, and both are claiming ownership of this baby. The way Solomon chose to resolve the issue was to say he was going to cut the child in half, and they can have half each. Now, one of the women says,
"Yeah, alright, I'll take my half." The other one says, "No, keep the baby whole, give it to her." And Solomon realizes that must be the mother, because what mother would want to see such a terrible thing happen to her child? But according to legend, wisdom wasn't the only thing God gave Solomon. God is so pleased that he tells him, "Not only I will give you wisdom, but I will give you the wealth and all the other things that go along with it."
If the Bible is to be believed, it was from this point that Solomon became one of the richest men who ever lived. Solomon's wealth, it's been estimated, is the equivalent today of something like two trillion dollars. He had everything a man could possibly want. Despite the Bible claiming Solomon's wealth was a gift from God, today scholars are hunting for a more tangible source.
There wasn't much being written about where his wealth really came from. It's opened up this possibility of mines, but where are these mines? In the time of Solomon, 1,000 years before Christ, kings became powerful by controlling natural resources. Many believe that precious metals dug from ancient mines were the source of Solomon's wealth. Yet if this is the case, it's a mystery why they are not mentioned in the Bible.
When you go to the Bible, we don't hear about King Solomon's mines. There are actually no mines in the text. Strangely, the idea of these mines didn't enter public consciousness until the late 19th century. There's no mention of any ancient source of King Solomon's mines. In fact, they were only invented in the Victorian period by an English author, H. Ryder Haggard, who wrote a rip-roaring Victorian adventure story and called it King Solomon's Mines.
While Haggard's best-selling book was fiction, some scholars argue that the tale it tells could be based in reality. Well, I think like a lot of Victorian colonial authors, he was probably a man who'd gone and done service in the Empire. He heard local myths, local folklore. He will have heard something that excited his interest and that he turned into a best-selling novel.
Ever since the release of the book, treasure hunters and archaeologists alike have been dreaming of finding King Solomon's mines, with many believing if you find the mines, you may find the source of Solomon's treasures within. So if we are wondering to ourselves where are Solomon's mines? Well, I would have to look to the nearest most likely place, and the nearest place would be the desert.
The Timna Valley, southern Israel. Many 20th century scholars have dismissed any connection between this place and King Solomon. But one archaeologist, Professor Erez Ben Yosef, believes they're wrong. He spent over a decade trying to unearth its secrets. This is the Timna Valley.
This is where I think we found evidence for King Solomon's mines. Legend has it that the Old Testament king had a number of gold mines, which were the source of his great riches. We are inside one of the mines. The entire sandstone is full of tunnels and shafts. After nearly a decade of research, Erez is convinced that around the year 1000 BC, these were the source of King Solomon's wealth.
You can see also the chisel marks. There are thousands of mines like that all over the Timna Valley. The work here was extremely challenging. It's barely one person that can go inside. In some places, we believe it was only children. It's fair to say that life for a miner in the Timna mines would have been horrendous. Utilizing very simple tools to extract these ores
We know they had to dig down as much as 60 feet. And then they're crawling around in these underground tunnels, zero ventilation, very little water. It would have been absolutely horrible. Stretching over 27 square miles, for Erez, these mines are on a scale large enough to have generated King Solomon's fabled riches.
It's incredibly exciting to think that the mines at Timna could have been owned by King Solomon. This is something that wouldn't have been glamorous, but it certainly would have been impressive. It would have been industry on a scale that we don't think of existing in the ancient world. Incredibly, there is still evidence of what Solomon's miners could have been digging for. Copper would have been incredibly important in the time of Solomon.
since his reign was during the Bronze Age. Given the centrality of copper to the ability to produce wealth in the Bronze Age, it's absolutely possible that King Solomon's wealth properly should be measured in copper. During the time of Solomon, most tools and weapons were made of bronze, which is a metal alloy made using copper.
These mines must have been incredibly lucrative. Copper was essential to making bronze, and you need bronze for weapons. So this could very well be King Solomon's mines. Don't fixate on gold, fixate on copper instead. You cannot exaggerate the importance of copper at the time of King Solomon. Whoever had control over this metal had the source of power.
But if these mines were the source of King Solomon's wealth, an industrial-sized process of turning ore into metal would have been required. Investigating the smelting process, historic metalworker Fergus Milton has spent the last 20 years researching ancient metallurgy.
For copper smelting, you would start with raw materials, rocks that we call ores that are dug from the ground. This particular ore is called malachite. This is an oxidized ore that would normally be found closer to the surface. And at Timna, they would have exploited these, but then they would have had to follow the copper underground. Fergus is processing the copper ore using the same techniques that were employed in the Bronze Age.
For the smelting process to work, we need a lot of heat.
By pushing air into the burning charcoal, we can get it above 1600 Fahrenheit, which is the temperature we need to start changing the copper ore into copper metal. The flames are a weak purple and that tells me this carbon monoxide gas being produced. The carbon monoxide just helps to break down the chemical bonds in the rock so that we can separate out the components and be left with the metal that we're actually after.
After 20 minutes of purple flames, all of the green ore should have turned into copper, with the other chemicals burning off as gas. We can cast it to make axes, knives, arrowheads, anything we want. Or we can combine it with other metals like tin to make bronze. For these mines to have been the source of Solomon's wealth, industrial-scale smelting would have happened here, and Erez may have found the remains of just that.
This is the largest smelting site in Timna. This is the center of copper production. This is a pile of slag. This means that some of the furnaces were here, in this location. Slag is the byproduct of smelting, and there's an abundance of this ancient remnant at this site. Erez believes that during the time of Solomon, this hill would have had dozens of smelting furnaces, operated by over a hundred people.
Yet despite the name "Slave's Hill," he believes that these people were anything but slaves. We excavate these slag mounds and find fantastic stuff that tells us that the metalworkers were part of the elite of the society, maybe even priests. During Solomon's reign, the process of smelting copper would have been seen as divine magic to the common worker. Therefore, because of their connection to God,
Priests would have led the copper production, making it a ritualistic process and making King Solomon one of the wealthiest men to ever live. But the Timna mines have long been controversial. One mainstream archaeological dig carried out at the site in the 20th century dated these mines much earlier than the era of King Solomon.
What's kind of interesting about the Timna mine specifically is that there's a great deal of evidence that the Egyptians were implicated in this mining. Over the past 50 years, many archaeologists have claimed these mines were under the control of the ancient Egyptians during the 19th and 20th dynasties, hundreds of years before the time of Solomon. Like the biblical king, copper would have been crucial to the Egyptian pharaohs.
But Erez is sticking to his new theory. For years, people believed that these were Egyptian mines. And this is why we have Egyptian statues here. And I believe that the park now should change these figures to King Solomon.
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Although Eris is sure that these mines belong to the Old Testament king, half a century of archaeological research says otherwise. The Timna copper mines are in an area of the ancient Middle East that was actually associated with the Egyptian Empire, with the pharaohs. Ancient Egyptian records show that the pharaohs ruled the region 300 years before the time of Solomon.
And archaeological evidence found in 1969 supports this theory. This is the famous Egyptian temple of Timna. It was found by Benno Rothenberg. And this was a major discovery because he didn't know what they are excavating. And then they started digging and artifacts came from the ground telling the story of Egypt.
The Egyptian temple was dedicated to the goddess Hathor, the goddess of the sky, women and love. And the date of this temple was around about 1300 BC, so that's about 300 years older than King Solomon. For the archaeologist who found this temple, Benno Rothenberg, its discovery was only the tip of the iceberg that proved that the Timna mines were part of the ancient Egyptian empire.
by Benno Rothenberg found almost 10,000 artifacts. It was beautiful stuff with inscriptions telling the story of the Egyptian expeditions to Timna. About 150 years of Egyptian activity in the mines. For many archaeologists, this evidence was overwhelming. The mines of Timna predated Solomon by centuries.
But Erez made a bizarre discovery that he thinks proves these mines could still have been the source of King Solomon's wealth. The secret lies in something that is found all over the site: donkey droppings. So first we thought maybe some Bedouins were here 50 years ago, but this is dated by radiocarbon to the times of King Solomon.
This three millennia old dung is safe to handle and proves that centuries after the Egyptian pharaohs, during King Solomon's reign, these mines were active. It is historically extraordinary that that donkey excrement has survived to the present day. But the sand and atmospheric conditions at Timna are so unique that they preserved it.
Erez has found so much ancient dung dating to the time of Solomon that he is sure the mine's heyday was during the biblical king's reign. The archaeological evidence suggests that 300 years after the Egyptians mined the site, during the time of Solomon, it was expanded into an industrial powerhouse. So what's become obvious through excavation and analysis is that when the Egyptian temple was built,
the Timna mines were functioning at a very small scale. But within just a couple hundred years, it grew into this vast operation, an industrial operation during King Solomon's era. But geographically, the mines fall on the outskirts of Solomon's empire, 150 miles from his capital, Jerusalem. That has many questioning if they actually belonged to the king.
Yet, intriguingly, Erez believes he's found something inside the donkey droppings that connects them directly to Solomon. And within this dung, we find interesting material. This is a grape peep. It's a grape seed. So we have hundreds of grape seeds within this dung, and we didn't understand at first what it was doing here.
Although grape seeds may seem like a trivial find, they reveal something unexpected: grapes are not grown in this area. The nearest grape-growing region is on the Mediterranean coast near Jerusalem, the heart of Solomon's kingdom. Fundamentally, the donkey excrement is a link
a link between the mines at Timna and King Solomon. Because what it shows is that foodstuffs were being brought from the heart of King Solomon's kingdom on the Mediterranean all the way into the desert to the mines at Timna. If Erez is correct, this donkey dung is a surprising link to King Solomon's mines and therefore his fabled wealth.
But while skeptics question if this is enough to conclusively say that these mines belong to the biblical king, Erez has made another discovery which could prove the connection. So in this location, this is where we found the purple fabric. These were three tiny fragments and we took them from here to the lab. In the Old Testament era, purple was the color of gods and royalty.
Therefore, the discovery of purple fabric at the Timna mines suggests that a great king once visited. Could these fragments have been left at the site by King Solomon? So this is the smoking gun that connects the mines in Timna to King Solomon, to Jerusalem. These three small scraps of material, they matter because they're dyed purple, which was the most expensive dye in the ancient world, only used by the wealthiest people.
The kolo, it was the most expensive dye in antiquity. It's made out of sea snails that are endemic to the Mediterranean. These sea snails are hard to harvest and the dyeing technology was very sophisticated.
Only produced in the ancient city of Tyre, which today is located in Lebanon, this purple color was made from the dehydrated mucus glands of Murex sea snails, which can grow up to nearly 4 inches long. It would take tens of thousands of snails to produce enough dye to make a small strip of purple fabric, which is why it was only accessible to the very rich. The Bible says Israel and Tyre had a close trading relationship,
So this dye would have been within reach of Solomon. The purple cloth that was found at Timna is an extremely fascinating discovery. And this is because it tells us that somebody of elite prestige would have visited Timna. This matches the description that we have of King Solomon as the wealthiest man. It is highly likely that Solomon wore purple clothes.
The Bible even says that he bought purple dyed material. It's very much possible that King Solomon himself wore a purple garment like that, exactly like that. Could Solomon have come to Timna to inspect the mines that provided him with his wealth and power? These fragments of cloth are as close as archaeologists will ever get to confirming that the Timna mines belonged to the king.
However, could the copper mines at Timna really have been Solomon's only source of wealth? While today many scholars do believe the copper from Timna would have heavily contributed to the king's treasury, the Bible claims that at least a portion of it came from gold.
The Bible seems to be quite clear that Solomon's wealth came from gold. There is a mention of this place Ophir. Ophir is a mysterious place that allegedly sent a tribute of gold, silver, pearls and ivory to Solomon every three years. But where it is remains something of a mystery. Among all the treasures said to have come from Ophir,
It is most famous for its gold. According to the Bible, Solomon received a cargo of the precious metal from the biblical land every three years. While to some the frequency of the shipments may seem low, the volume of gold received demonstrates the significance of Ophir as a source of wealth for the king.
Solomon comes back with about 14 tons of gold from a single trip to Ophir. If you want to do the math, in today's terms, a kilo of gold currently is somewhere in the neighborhood of $56,500. Multiply that and now you're already making somewhere in the neighborhood of about $800 million.
To have generated such quantities of gold, some scholars believe Ophir must have held gold mines. So the Bible tells us that Solomon went to Ophir. Now, why would Solomon himself go to Ophir if it was just another trading center? I think that Ophir must have been a mining land
So, in my opinion, Ophir is definitely a gold mine. I don't know exactly the nature of mining that was conducted there, that they physically had to go into the ground itself or was water involved, but without a doubt at all, Ophir is a name of a place where gold is being mined. Yet modern-day scholars are at a loss to identify where Ophir was located.
One of the biggest mysteries is the location of Ophir, which we know was a real place and clearly a place of significance. But yet we really have no clue where it was. Is Ophir the key to King Solomon's wealth? And if it is, where could this golden land be? The Holy Book describes the king receiving gold in huge quantities from a place called Ophir.
Today, all records of its location are lost. Traditionally, Ophir was key to all of Solomon's operations where his treasure was concerned. The problem is, where is it today? In biblical references, there are many theories as to where Ophir is located. Some believe it lies along the Red Sea, East Africa, Southern Africa, even as far as Spain.
In the late 19th century, one of the theories as to where Ophir was located was Great Zimbabwe in Zimbabwe. What's interesting about this part of Africa is that all over that area, there's hundreds of ancient mines where they were mining gold.
Great Zimbabwe is an absolutely fantastic ruin in Southern Africa which provides evidence for an incredible civilization that existed once. And it flummoxed people what civilization this was. And it's not surprising that some people have thought maybe King Solomon had forged links all the way down to Southern Africa to the kingdom of Great Zimbabwe.
First investigated by Europeans in the 19th century, Great Zimbabwe is a stone city spanning nearly three square miles. Thinking it was too complex to have been built by the indigenous people, white explorers assumed the site was ancient, which led some to suspect it was Ophir. Yet modern archaeology has proved this is not the case.
So Great Zimbabwe does tick many boxes regarding it being the location of Ophir. However, in recent times with carbon dating, it's only been dated to like a few hundred years old. So it's well out of the time range of King Solomon. Even though Great Zimbabwe has been proven not to be Ophir, nor the source of Solomon's gold, many other possibilities still exist.
like the gold mines of South Africa, which inspired writer Haggard to write his book, King Solomon's Mines. Dr. Elena Lyle has spent nearly a decade researching the Old Testament, trying to unlock its secrets. So one of the key clues as to the location of Ophir is the fact that Solomon himself traveled there. The Bible says that he went there to get gold. It had to be easily accessible.
In the time of Solomon, journeys by sea were long and arduous. Therefore, Elena believes it's likely that Solomon travelled over land by camel caravan. So the location of Ophir must have been closer to Jerusalem. So I think Ophir is located along the Arabian Peninsula, which is modern-day Saudi Arabia and Yemen. And this is because of Ophir's occurrence in Genesis 10.
The tenth chapter of Genesis contains a list of the descendants of Noah and describes three brothers with kingdoms named after them in the time of Solomon. Ophir in Genesis 10 is the son of Yoctan and he has brothers Sheba and Havilah. By the time of Solomon, both Sheba and Havilah are also the names of kingdoms on the Arabian Peninsula.
Most scholars tend to think that Havilah and Sheba are located along the Arabian Peninsula. I think the land of Ophir has to be around Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Elena believes these kingdoms were connected in some way, with perhaps Ophir being a region of Sheba. The Bible tells of Solomon receiving a wealthy visitor from one of these lands, which could suggest a trade connection.
The Queen of Sheba in 1 Kings 10 comes to test Solomon. She hears of his infamous wisdom and she wants to experience it for herself. So she comes to test him. She asks him riddles and really hard questions and he answers them correctly. She then gifts him gold. Now if we are to assume that the land of Ophir is part of the land of Sheba, it makes sense for their ruler, the Queen of Sheba, to go herself to visit King Solomon.
For some, Eleanor's theory that Ophir was connected to Sheba on the Arabian Peninsula supports the idea of it being Solomon's gold mine. If Ophir was in southwest Arabia where we think Sheba was, there were also mines down there, gold mines that apparently had nuggets the size of walnuts according to the ancients. So this could be not just Ophir, but King Solomon's mines.
One of the most likely countries on the Arabian Peninsula to be the location of Ophir is Yemen, which today is stricken by civil war, making archaeology almost impossible. Yet until someone finds solid evidence, Ophir's whereabouts will remain a mystery. But where is Solomon's wealth hidden today? Is there any trace of it left?
Some believe that the Copper Scroll could be a map to the location of King Solomon's fabled wealth. Some scholars hope that an archaeological discovery made in the 20th century might shed some light on this biblical treasure hunt. One of the most important discoveries made in recent times is the Dead Sea Scrolls in the area of Qumran. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a set of ancient religious manuscripts dating from around the time of Christ.
While this is about a thousand years after King Solomon's reign, some believe one may hold the key to finding his treasure. What was found was what's called the Copper Scroll. This is really interesting because it's completely different to the other scrolls. Unlike the other scrolls, which are made of animal skin or papyrus, this scroll is made of copper and it contains a detailed list of someone's treasure.
The Copper Scroll is enormously detailed. Great lists of all sorts of treasure, of weights of gold, weights of silver. In the years since its discovery in 1952, no one has successfully identified the owner of the treasure described in the Copper Scroll. But some believe it might have belonged to the man said to be the richest in the ancient world, King Solomon.
One of the interesting things that I find about the Copper Scroll is the fact that it may indicate where King Solomon's treasure is because no one knows exactly who wrote the Copper Scrolls, when it was written, and when it was buried and hidden. It's entirely understandable that people have sought to associate the Copper Scroll and the treasures of King Solomon. And that's because the treasures that the Copper Scroll enumerates are astonishing.
It is estimated that the wealth described in the Copper Scroll would today be worth over $1 billion. Many believe these riches were hidden when the Second Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD. The Copper Scroll, it's a list
of treasures, treasures from the temple at Jerusalem, which was about to be destroyed by the Romans. And many of those treasures would have been the treasures that King Solomon put in the temple all those centuries before. Where do all those riches lie now?
So nothing has actually been found using the Copper Scroll as a treasure map. Nothing has actually been discovered. It never says anywhere on the Copper Scroll we are talking about Solomon's treasure. But there's a lot of could-haves in this story. There's no solid answers. According to the Bible, 3,000 years ago King Solomon walked among us. Some believe that the source of his fortune was in these copper mines in southern Israel.
Well, now we have evidence that shows that this might have been the source of King Solomon's wealth. Copper was the most important material at that time. It was used for agriculture and weapons and the temple in Jerusalem. And this might be the reason why King Solomon became the richest man alive at the time. Yet others believe this is not the full story. And Solomon's riches came from many sources. So while
Many theories suggest numerous locations for Ophir, numerous ideas as to where Solomon's wealth came from. The sad truth is we will never know unless some kind of archaeological dig happens. Whatever the truth, the hunt for these treasures is still on. King Solomon's mines and the treasure, none of it has been discovered, none of it has been found by anybody, so where could it be?
The jury's out. We really don't know where it is. But considering he had a value of $2 trillion, it does suggest there's much to be discovered. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to say, "Hey, if King Solomon had this great treasure, and if it's out there, that it still remains to be found."
It's by no means assumed that we would have found it already. We don't actually have a map leading to it. If the treasure of King Solomon really was on the scale that the Bible suggests, then we could be looking at a future discovery that would be on a scale of several Tutankhamun tombs with huge amounts of gold, silver, and jewels that will be yielded at some point from the earth.