King Solomon’s Gold: Ophir in an Age of Empire

Abstract

Contemplating King Solomon’s enormous importation of gold from the mysterious land of Ophir filled Victorians with vicarious pride and glutted their pedantic appetite with no end of tempting antiquarian puzzles concerning the identity of his trading partners. This article provides details and context regarding the various putative Ophirs proposed by British travellers during the nineteenth century, which ranged from Sumatra to the Gold Coast. It concludes in the latter decades of the century, when the legend of King Solomon’s mines converged with the discovery of gold in South Africa. As scholars have noted, the mid-century discovery of ancient ruins in present-day Zimbabwe by the German explorer Karl Mauch rekindled the Ophir debate and focused most people’s attention on South Africa as its location. This was also the immediate context to Rider Haggard’s fascination with ancient African civilization in his immensely popular novel King Solomon’s Mines. Numerous subsequent explorers, adventure novelists, a...