Ophir

Ophir (/ˈoʊfər/;[1] Hebrew: אוֹפִיר‬, Modern Ofir, Tiberian ʼÔp̄îr) is a port or region mentioned in the Bible, famous for its wealth. King Solomon received a cargo of gold, silver, sandalwood, pearls, ivory, apes, and peacocks from Ophir every three years.

Biblical references

Ophir in Genesis 10 (the Table of Nations) is said to be the name of one of the sons of Joktan.[Note 1] 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.[Note 2] The famous 'gold of Ophir' is referenced in several other books of the Hebrew Bible.[Note 3]

Early Christian traditions

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."[2]

Archaeology

In 1946 an inscribed pottery shard was found at Tell Qasile (in modern-day Tel Aviv) dating to the eighth century BC.[3][4] It bears, in Paleo-Hebrew script the text "gold of Ophir to/for Beth-Horon [...] 30 shekels"[Note 4][5] The find confirms that Ophir was a place where gold was imported from,[6] although its location remains unknown.

Theorized or conjectural locations

India

A Dictionary of the Bible by Sir William Smith, published in 1863,[7] notes the Hebrew word for parrot Thukki, derived from the Classical Tamil for peacock Thogkai and Cingalese "tokei",[8] joins other Classical Tamil words for ivory, cotton-cloth and apes preserved in the Hebrew Bible. This theory of Ophir's location in Tamilakkam is further supported by other historians.[9][10][11] Locations on the coast of Kerala conjectured to be Ophir include Poovar and Beypore.[12][13]

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.[14][15]

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 sub-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, are 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 hypothesis[16] has asserted that it stems from the Berber word ifri (plural ifran) meaning "cave", in reference to cave dwellers.[17] This is proposed[17] to be the origin of Ophir as well.[18]

Americas

The 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.[19]

Other assumptions

In 1568 Alvaro Mendaña became the first European to discover the Solomon Islands, and named them as such because he believed them to be Ophir.[20]

In Jewish tradition, Ophir is often associated with a place in India, named for one of the sons of Joktan.[21] The 10th-century lexicographer, David ben Abraham al-Fasi, identified Ophir with Serendip, the old Persian name for Sri Lanka (aka Ceylon).[22]

In Spain there is a book called Coleccion General de Documentos Relativos a las Islas Filipinas found in the Archivos de Indias de Sevilla. Its Tomo III (1519-1522), pages 112-138, contains Document No. 98 describing how to locate the land of Ophir. The travel guide started from the Cape of Good Hope in Africa to India, to Burma, to Sumatra, to Moluccas, to Borneo, to Sulu, to China, then finally Ophir which is said to be the Philippines.

See also

  • Tarshish, another Biblical location providing Solomon with riches.
  • Ophur, Chicago, IL based rock band circa 1997 - 2004
  • Karl Mauch, an explorer who inadvertently discovered Great Zimbabwe when searching for Ophir.

Notes

  1. ↑ This is also stated in 1 Chronicles 1:22
  2. ↑ 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
  3. ↑ Book of Job 22:24; 28:16; Psalms 45:9; Isaiah 13:12
  4. ↑ 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 Lipiński, p. 197

References

  1. ↑ "Ophir". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
  2. ↑ Badge, William (1927). The Book of The Cave of Treasures by Ephrem the Syrian: Translated from the Syriac Text of The British Museum. London: The Religious Tract Society. p. 32 – via Google Books.
  3. ↑ Maisler, B., Two Hebrew Ostraca from Tell Qasîle, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Oct., 1951), p. 265
  4. ↑ Boardman, 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
  5. ↑ Kitchen, Kenneth A.; Handy, Lowell K. (ed.), The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium, BRILL 1997, p. 144
  6. ↑ Lipiński, p. 144
  7. ↑ Smith, William, A dictionary of the Bible, Hurd and Houghton, 1863 (1870), pp.1441
  8. ↑ Smith's Bible Dictionary
  9. ↑ Ramaswami, Sastri, The Tamils and their culture, Annamalai University, 1967, pp.16
  10. ↑ Gregory, James, Tamil lexicography, M. Niemeyer, 1991, pp.10
  11. ↑ Fernandes, Edna, The last Jews of Kerala, Portobello, 2008, pp.98
  12. ↑ https://books.google.com/books?id=FVsw35oEBv4C&pg=PA58
  13. ↑ https://books.google.com/books?id=htArUg0OMpcC&pg=PA60
  14. ↑ Benjamin Walker (1968). The Hindu world: an encyclopedic survey of Hinduism. Praeger.
  15. ↑ The Hindu world: an encyclopedic survey of Hinduism, Volume 2-page-515
  16. ↑ Names of countries, Decret and Fantar, 1981
  17. 1 2 The Berbers, by Geo. Babington Michell, p 161, 1903, Journal of the Royal African Society book on ligne
  18. ↑ Lipiński, p. 200
  19. ↑ Shalev, Zur (2003). "Sacred Geography, Antiquarianism and Visual Erudition: Benito Arias Montano and the Maps in the Antwerp Polyglot Bible" (PDF). Imago Mundi. 55: 71. doi:10.1080/0308569032000097495. Retrieved 2017-01-17.
  20. ↑ HOGBIN, H. In, Experiments in Civilization: The Effects of European Culture on a Native Community of the Solomon Islands, New York: Schocken Books, 1970 (1939), pp.7-8
  21. ↑ Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (Book 8, chapter 6, §4), s.v. Aurea Chersonesus
  22. ↑ 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)

Further reading

  • Edward Lipiński (2004). Itineraria Phoenicia Studia Phoenicia 18. Peeters Publishers. ISBN 978-90-429-1344-8.
  • Onshore explorations at Sopara and Kalyan, India
  • Wikisource Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ophir". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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