Solomon's Mine Believed Found (Published 1976) (2024)

King Solomon's legendary “lost” gold mine, the biblical Ophir that yielded much of the fabulous wealth of the Kingdom of Israel nearly 3,000 years ago, may have been “found” in Saudi Arabia.

American and Saudi geologists, working in a mountainous region between Mecca and Macdina known as Mand adh Dhahab, or Cradle of Gold, say they have found evidence that a long‐known abandoned mine was probably the only one within range of ancient Israel capable of producing the quantities of gold attributed to Ophir.

Although Ophir is mentioned in at least four books of the Bible, its precise location is never specified and subsequent documents offer little more than speculation that Solomon's El Dorado was somewhere in India or southern Africa or the Urals.

Most authorities, however, have assumed that the mine was most likely to have been in the Middle East.

According to the Bible (I Kings, chaps. 4 through 10) 1,086 talents, or about 34 tons of gold were brought to Jerusalem from Ophir by Solomon's workers. This quantity, worth about $125 million at today's prices, is thought to have constituted about half the known gold supply of the ancient world.

Biblical Accounts

According to biblical accounts, gold was so plentiful during Solomon's reign, from 974 B.C. to 937 B.C. by one method of reckoning that it was used not only to overlay the walls of temples and palaces but also for the manufacture of pots and pans and other utensils in wealthy households.

“Our investigations have now confirmed that the old mine could have been as rich as described in biblical accounts and, indeed, is a logical candidate to be the lost Ophir,” said Dr. Robert W. Luce, a geologist with the United States Geological Survey who was part of an American‐Saudi team exploring in the area.

Dr. Luce and four other U.S.G.S. scientists have been working in Saudi Arabia for several years under a scientific exchange program paid for entirely by Saudi Arabia. The team includes three scientists from Saudi Arabia's Directorate General of Mineral Resources.

Guess by Engineer

Since Solomon's day scholars made little effort to find the lost mine until the 1930's when an American mining engineer, T. A. Rickard, reviewed the recorded history of Ophir and doubted the existence of any gold mine in Arabia that could have been that rich.

About the same time, however, another mining engineer, K. S. Twitchell, visited the mine and reported “the workings of Mand adh Dhahab are the largest I saw in Arabia [and] it is reasonable to guess that this might have been the source of King Solomon's gold.”

According to an announcement by the United States Department of Interior, the agency over the United States Geological Survey, the American‐Saudi team “believes it can now turn Twitchell's ‘reasonable guess’ into a fairly airtight case.”

Among the findings offered as evidence by Dr. Luce and his colleagues is 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 sixtenths 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.

Slopes Are Littered

Ophir's early yield, said in the Bible to be 420 talents, or more than 13 tons, of gold could have been recovered in the form of nuggets wires and crystals by simple panning and winnowing, the scientists said.

The Bible says that an additional 666 talents, or about 21 tons, was brought from Ophir at a later time. This, the scientists said, must have been obtained by crushing ore, grinding it with stone hammers and grindstones to extricate the particles of gold. Today thousands of stone hammers and grindstones litter the mine slopes.

An additional body of evi??ience is the fact that ??? adh Dhabab was within ??? of Israel's transport capability.

Solomon's empire relied on the port of Aqaba. Ships frequently sailed from there south through the Red Sea. Mand adh Dhahab would have been easily accessible just 372 miles south of Aqaba and 149 miles inland.

Furthermore, the scientists said, Mand adh Dhabab could easily have been known to Solomon or his advisers because it lies on a north‐south trade ??? that has run to Aqaba for some 4,000 years. If gold was to be seen on the surface of the ground, word of such a thing would surely have reached Judea.

“Thus,” Dr. Luce said, “we conclude that Mand adh Dhahab could have produced 34 tens of gold in ancient times anci was the biblical Ophir. We believe that the legendary ‘King Solomon's Lost Mines’ are no longer Lost.”

The American‐Saudi study team has also established that the mine and the surrounding area still contain workable deposits of gold, silver and other metals. At least one mining company has applied to the Saudi government for a license to reopen the mine.