FINDING THE LAND OF OPHIR

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1610, 7 January 1903, Page 16

FINDING THE LAND OF OPHIR

Dr Carl Peters, the German explorer in East Africa, returned from his latest journey in East Africa a few months ago with new proofs of a theory that has been put forward by himself and others —a theory that is of uncommonly popular interest, for it directly concerns the Bible. This theory that he has found indubitably the land of Ophir is worked out in a very fascinating manner in his new book “The Eldorado of the Ancients."

In an interview, Dr Peters says: “I have brougnt IZZt wha *. to be final proofs that the between the Zambesi and Sabi, stretching from the Indian Ocean almostpas far back as Bechuanaland, andincluding part of Portuguese East Africa and most; of Rhodesia, -was King Solomon's Klondike. It was likewise the Klondike of the Queen of Sheba, and before her day had contributed to the wealth of Egypt.

“Yet, with whole nations getting gold! from this wonderful 750,000 square mile® in greater or less quantities for 4000 years, apparently only the surface c-l it has been touched.

“They could not go below the water level, yet, in some of the mines at least, the further down you go the richer they get. It is the richest country the world ever knew, and I fully believe that its future is to be greater than ite past. “So there i 6 no doubt," continued Dr Peters after tenderly displaying some of his new proofs, “that this land is none other than the land of Ophir of the Bible, and also that it was to this country and not to Somaliland, as had been supposed before, that tha Egyptians sent aa expedition a few years before Moses was born.

“Their inscriptions tell a good deal about it, and speak of their getting copper among other things, but they couldn fc have got copper in Somaliland. They called the country Punt, and there are so many signs that Punt and Ophir are the same that the matter is hardly open to question now. “I had supposed at first that this Land of Ophir was discovered by the Egyptians, but I now believe it was in the possession of the Punic tribes when the Egyptians went down there to levy tributes, and afterwards apparently to establish colonies. It looks to me as if the Egyptians had gone up the Zambesi river, and later on King Solomon approached the district froan Sofala. though I can't prove this.

“Long after the Egyptian invasion tha Queen of Sheba, whose country is what we now call Yemen, in Arabia, was tha mistress of the whole east coast of Africa. Her Sabaeans had annexed this Land of Ophir, and made it a tributary colony, and thence came all the great wealth that she had, and that made the gold of Arabia so much talked about. As a matter of fact, there wasn't any gold in Arabia except what the Arabian, traders brought over from Ophir/ “When the Queen, went up overland to see King Solomon, aparently most of the gifts she took with her came from this treasure land of hers. Now, from my own rendering from the Hebrew and from the outside facts. I should say that there is a lapse of time, between the tenth and eleventh verses of 1 King x., for it appears that it was the Queen of Sheba who told Solomon and his naval ally Hiram about the Land of Ophir, and that she granted them a concession for working the mines, and provided them with pilots to lead them to the place. “One reason for her doing this may have been that she had to keep fighting the natives all the time in order to hold the colony. J. “One can guess at the tremendous amount of gold Solomon and Hiram got from these mines from the estimate, based on Bible figures, that on one trip alone they took <£33,000,000, estimating the value by weight. And apparently they made an expedition every three years, ‘bringing gold and silver, ivory and apes, and not ‘peacocks/ as it says in King James's version, but guinea fowl. “All these things were to "be found in. the Zamoesi country, and not in Arabia or any of the other places where the Land of Ophir was supposed to be." Anyone can see for himself in the Book of Kings how Solomon plunged into luxury after he had discovered these gold fields. Apparently the Jews and Phoenicians kept this gold trade as long as the Jewish empire stood. After them the Sabaeans kept on working the fields until overrun by the Mahometans, but since then not much gold has been taken out. Dr Peters says the amount of life supported by the fields can be judged from the fact that 75,000 ancient gold workings have been found in this marvellous district, and 500 ruins of cities and temples, some of them on the Zambesi dating back as far as 2000 B.C. Dr Peters believes that the natives of .the district show distinct traces of the ancient invasions.

The Hottentots, he says, are probably half-castes of the Egyptians and Bushmen, and the Makalanga came from the Sabaeans and the Bantu tribe, whereas the Zulus are pure Bantu. “With all this working," said Dr Peters, “I believe that this territory, which takes in Mashonaland, parts of Matabeleland, Manica, Inyanga and the whole of the Makombe country, will prove to be by far the richest gold land on the planet. “I have also found there silver, copper, white mica, diamonds, almost any mineral in fact. The ancients had the better of us, though, in one way, for they had slaves. We have to pay for labour/*