THE GOLD OF OEHIR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11986, 7 June 1902, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE GOLD OF OEHIR.

* Professor A. 11. Kkake has written an interesting little book to prove that Ophir, whence the gold which the Hebrew Scriptures asf/ure us was brought to Solomon by ships of Tarshish, is identical.with at least some part of .modern Rhodesia. The suggestion is by no means new, though this is the first time an attempt has been made to demonstrate the accuracy of the statement by scientific analogy and deduction. While some may probably agree with Professor Ketone there will be many who think he lias fai'ied to justify his conclusions, and that the land of Ophir still remains a. terra incognita. His conclusions are briefly that Ophir on the south coast of Arabiathat is Aloscha or Farters Nobilis—was the distributing port of the gold of Havilah, which we now know as Rhodesia. The mines of Rhodesia .were'first worked by South African; Himya rites, who were followed in the time of Solomon by the. Jews and Phoenicians, and these in turn much later by the Moslem Arabs and Christian Portuguese. Tarshish was the outlet for the preious metals, and was near the modem Sofala. The Himyarites and the Phoenicians reached Havilah through Madagascar, where they maintained commercial and social intercourse with the Malagasy natives. With them were associated the Jews by whom the fleets of Hiram and Solomon were partly manned. These propositions are based on certain assumptions, and if every assumption were correct the deductions would no doubt be acceptable, but as some of these are doubtful the construction of the theory rests on an unstable basis. Dr. Carl Peters in 1901 enunciated the peculiar view that not only was the.site of the Ophir of the Bible to be found in Rhodesia but that Ophir was identical with the Punt of Egyptian inscriptions. Professor Keane tells us that the original Punt was South Arabia Arabia Felix, Yemen—whence the name was extended during the eighteenth .dynasty, say about 1700 B.C. This, however, is impossible, for in the sixth dynasty Punt was in Africa, and was probably reached by way of the Nile, and while there is very conclusive evidence on this point there is an entire want of authority for the statement that the original Punt was in Africa. But anyway Professor Keane has failed to establish the view that the Ophir of the Bible was in Rhodesia, though his failure does not prove it was not so. * It simply leaves the question, which is interesting rather than important, still an open one.