BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Tarshish: Hacksilber Hoards Pinpoint Solomon’s Silver Source

Hacksilber isotope analysis associates Biblical Tarshish with Sardinia

This Bible History Daily article was originally published in 2013.—Ed.


 

“Once every three years the fleet of ships of Tarshish used to come bringing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks … the king [Solomon] made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones.” – 1 Kings 10:22-27

“Tarshish did business with you out of the abundance of your great wealth; silver, iron, tin, and lead they exchanged for your wares.” – Ezekial 27:12 (Lamentation over Tyre)

A hacksilber hoard from Tel Dor. According to the Bible, silver from Tarshish brought great wealth to Solomonic Jerusalem. From the Jul/Aug 1998 BAR, courtesy of Ephraim Stern.

In the Bible, King Hiram of Tyre supplies King Solomon with timber, craftsmen and gold for the construction of the Jerusalem Temple, and the alliance with the Phoenician ruler undoubtedly helped Solomon amass his extraordinary wealth. Biblical and other ancient texts suggest that the seafaring Phoenicians brought silver and other precious metals from the western Mediterranean in the 10th century B.C.E., the time of Hiram and Solomon, and archaeology has revealed numerous Phoenician mercantile colonies across the Mediterranean dating to the first millennium B.C.E.

Did the Phoenicians trade in the western Mediterranean before establishing these colonies? Where is Tarshish, the Biblical source of the Phoenician silver trade? A Hacksilber Project study published by Christine M. Thompson and Sheldon Skaggs in Internet Archaeology points to Spain and Sardinia as the Biblical world’s source of silver in the 10th century B.C.E., lending scientific credence to textual associations between Biblical Tarshish and modern Sardinia.


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The researchers’ lead isotope analyses provide ore-provenance data on the Phoenician silver hoards, corroborating textual records of a Phoenician silver trade in the western Mediterranean before their colonial endeavors. The authors of the study collected samples from 48 silver artifacts from Akko, Dor, Ein Hogez and Tell Keisan in southern Phoenicia—identified as the “Cisjordan Corpus” of Iron Age hacksilber hoards—all of which date between 1200 and 800 B.C.E. Longtime Tel Dor excavation director Ephraim Stern described the Dor hoard in BAR in 1998:

Most of the hoard is made up of small, flat tokens cast in the shape of small coins, as well as other pieces of cut silver sometimes referred to as hocksilber. In short, this was a hoard of an early form of money, that is, silver weighted for payment.

The Hacksilber Project researchers describe the Cisjordan Corpus as “the largest identified concentration of pre-coinage silver hoards in the ancient Near East, and all of the silver in them is necessarily related to inter-regional trade.” The lead isotope data “substantiate both Sardinia and Spain as candidates for Tarshish.” In order to identify Tarshish, the researchers turned to the text.

Frank M. Cross with the Nora Stone.

Tarshish comes up some two dozen times in the Hebrew Bible and is mentioned in ancient Near Eastern and classical texts. The Phoenician text on Sardinia’s ninth-century Nora Stone begins with the words “at Tarshish,” leading many scholars (including the fragment’s esteemed translator, Frank Moore Cross) to associate the island with the Biblical site. In the 1990 BAR excavation report “Searching for the Phoenicians in Sardinia,” Joan G. Scheuer describes Cross’s analysis of the stone:

There Frank Cross showed us the Nora Stone with its famous inscription. Found in 1773, on Sardinia’s southern coast, at the site of Nora—a Roman city built, like Tharros, over an earlier Phoenician-Punic settlement—the Nora Stone is a slab of stone, called a stela, 3.5 feet high and nearly 2 feet wide, on which there is an eight-line inscription.

Cross believes the top of the stela has been broken off and that two lines from the top of the stela are missing. The Semitic letters are incised in Phoenician style. Based on an analysis of the letters’ shape and stance, Cross has concluded that the Nora Stone was inscribed in the second half of the ninth century B.C. His reading of the inscription supports the idea of a Phoenician presence in Sardinia as early as the ninth century B.C. According to Cross, the two missing lines told that Phoenicians fought with the local Sardinians. The inscription begins with the words “at Tarshish,” perhaps a reference to the place where the battle may have occurred…

Cross thinks that the Tarshish of the Nora Stone was probably a metal-refining town in Sardinia, since the Semitic root means “to smelt.” There were, in fact, many places known as “Tharsis” or “Tarsis” or “Tharros” or “Tarshish” in the ancient world. Other scholars, too, have noted that these places take their names from the Semitic root—that they were the “Smelt-towns” of the ancient world.

Thompson and Skaggs’s analyses provide the first archaeometric source data corroborating Cross’s association between Sardinia and Tarsish. While they cautiously state that “the evidence at hand does not compel us to believe that Solomon actually made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones, or that trips to Tarshish were as politically subordinated as they sometimes appear in Biblical sources,” the hacksilber studies do expand our understanding of the development of the Phoenician mercantile system, Iron Age trade networks and the wealth of Solomon in the Bible.

——————

Read “King Solomon’s Silver? Southern Phoenician Hacksilber Hoards and the Location of Tarshish” by Christine M. Thompson and Sheldon Skaggs in Internet Archaeology (2013).

Learn more about the Hacksilber Project. The Hacksilber Project is associated with Open Context, an innovative web-based research data publication.


This Bible History Daily article was originally published in December 2013.


 

Learn more in the BAS Library:

Ephraim Stern, “Buried Treasure: The Silver Hoard from Dor,Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1998.

Joan G. Scheuer, “1990 Excavation Opportunities: Volunteer’s Report: Searching for the Phoenicians in Sardinia,” Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1990.

Daniel M. Master and Lawrence E. Stager, “Buy Low, Sell High: The Marketplace at Ashkelon,Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2014. Includes the sidebar “Where Tyre Traded.”

Not a BAS Library member yet? Sign up today.


 

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

The Phoenician Alphabet in Archaeology by Josephine Quinn

Who Were the Phoenicians?

Ancient Coins and Looting

Hoard of Gold Coins Found in Caesarea Harbor

Coins Celebrating the Great Revolt Against the Romans Unearthed near Jerusalem

Treasures in Clay Jars


 

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18 Responses

  1. Francesco Biancu says:

    Tarshish ships, are not only to west,but to Ofyr too. Tarshish ships, are high seas travelling, and commerce, with Sardinia and Cadiz Huelva, full metal mines. Tin, Silver and Copper was in this package. Tin was brought, from Galicia and Corwall, to Huelva and Sardinia.

  2. Joseph Tracy says:

    There is no archeological evidence for Solomon’s Kingdom. Jerusalem was very sparsely populated at that Time. (Bible Unearthed, Finkelstein) What you seem to have is some silver from what you weirdly call southern Phoenicia. Since Phoenicia was a set of city states along the Mediterranean and is now long gone there is no reason not to say the current geographic locations for the origin of the silver. It clearly is not Jerusalem and there is nothing linking the silver to Solomon.

  3. Giacomo says:

    The British islands had absolutely no advanced civilizations or fleet there while Sardinia was home to the oldest civilization in the Western Mediterranean (The Nuragic civilization) which built the oldest statues in Europe, if anything it should be Britain to be ruled out.

  4. Michael Hayes says:

    Absolute rubbish tarshish is the British isles as the four metals tarshish traded silver, lead, iron, tin, tin is a rare commodity not found in many places in ancient times it was mixed with copper to make bronze so would be very sought after…was tin mined in Sardinia? I don’t think it was so that rule them out

    http://youtu.be/6Ekz4kGGdwQ

  5. Kurt says:

    Trade Relations With Solomon. Phoenician trading with Tarshish is clearly borne out by the record of King Solomon’s time (some 13 centuries after the Flood), when maritime commerce also began to be engaged in by the nation of Israel. Solomon had a fleet of ships in the Red Sea area, manned in part by experienced seamen provided by Phoenician King Hiram of Tyre, and trafficking especially with the gold-rich land of Ophir. (1Ki 9:26-28) Reference is thereafter made to “a fleet of ships of Tarshish” that Solomon had on the sea “along with Hiram’s fleet of ships,” and these ships are stated to have made voyages once every three years for the importation of gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks. (1Ki 10:22) It is generally believed that the term “ships of Tarshish” in course of time came to stand for a type of ship, as one lexicon puts it: “large, sea-going vessels, fit to ply to Tarshish.” (A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, by Brown, Driver, and Briggs, 1980, p. 1077) In a similar way, the name Indiamen originally was derived from the name applied to large British ships engaged in trade with India and in time came to apply to ships of that type no matter what their origin or destination. Thus 1 Kings 22:48 shows that King Jehoshaphat (936-911 B.C.E.) “made Tarshish ships to go to Ophir for gold.”
    http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200275418

  6. melquiadesp says:

    Good Day, Thank you very much for this very impormative article regarding king Solomon’s treasures,this help me to enlight regarding bible account about Solomon’s wealth., greetings from the Philippines !

  7. MH says:

    Mesmerizing brilliance.

  8. Giacomo Pozza says:

    Sardinia was also known as the Silver island in ncient times, also Tarsis is often mentioned for its fleet and Sardinia has been trading with Continental Europe since the neolitic, nuragic ceramics of the bronze age are found in many regions of the Mediterranean sea including Cyprus, Crte, Greece, Sicily and Spain. The Nuragic civilization of Sardinia was the oldest and most monumental civilization of western Europe and produce more than 7000 fortresses called Nuraghi, some like the Arrubbiu, originally reached the height of 25-20 meters making them the tallest structure in the mediterranea sea, they also built hundreds of water well temples, giant graves and megaron temples. Sardinia was one of the most inhabitated regions of Europe during the neolitic and the bronze age, the Nuragic civilization of Sardinia also rpoduced the alrgest bronze figures collection out of any other ancient civilization, including 157 bronze models of ships, indicating it had a large fleet, also almost a thousand of terracotta model of ships have been found. Since Tharshish is often associated with its fleet Sardinia who produced the largest collection of ancient ship model ever must have been known for its fleet in ancient times. Also the Nuragic civilization imported melons from the middle east since 1310 bc, many centuries before any other European people, The Nuragic Sardinians also learned hwo to produce wines during 1600-1450 bc, long before other Europeans, this indicates how much Sardinia traded and knew the middle east in comparison with the rest of Europe.

  9. Sal says:

    Found artifact in northeast ct.that is a unusual forms of metal that have several micro pictures that are effected by different light sources almost like a negative then a photo.The overall images are combined into a left profile of a man with beard and the word rasasu is o top of piece.Tarshish is rasasu when spelling on computer and refers to these people as smelters and refiners of metals.Hopefully somebody replied out of curiosityof this artifact.

  10. Abel Beth Maacah Excavations discover Silver Hoard at an ancient CrossroadsSignals News | Signals News says:

    […] jug, nonetheless a china can have been shaped during a after date–the early Iron Age–based on comparisons with other hacksilber finds in a region. since a investiture of an accurate chronology during a web site would need some-more than a […]

  11. Brett says:

    Darwin, there are different sites that acquire the name Tarshish over time (the authors of this particular paper focus on the Tarshish of biblical legend and Solomon’s time, which was identified as large island located far west of the eastern Mediterranean shores – they say that eventually part of Spain was also called Tarshish, at least by the much later time of Herodotus). When and where the name Tarshish was applied elsewhere is another interesting topic – for the one you mention, see Burke’s 2006 paper in Maarav here: http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/4r6540gk#page-1 “Tarshish in The Mountains of Lebanon: Attestations of a Biblical Place Name.”

  12. Darwin Newton says:

    I wonder if analysis of Tarshish Lebanon soil isotopes would have given some explanation. I heard That the area had lot of iron and ancient people had extracted iron from it. There are old mines and smelting remains scattered in it. Phonecians had left some burial and altar sites in the area. The fleet was named after that small village. The metal products were sent to Tyre and from there shipped to Solomon.

  13. Abel Beth Maacah Excavations Uncover Silver Hoard at an Ancient Crossroads | newsantiques.com says:

    […] B.C.E. jug, yet a china might have been made during a after date–the early Iron Age–based on comparisons with other hacksilber finds in a region. While a investiture of an accurate chronology during a site will need some-more than a singular […]

  14. Abel Beth Maacah Excavations Uncover Silver Hoard at an Ancient Crossroads - Creation RevolutionCreation Revolution says:

    […] B.C.E. jug, though the silver may have been shaped at a later date–the early Iron Age–based on comparisons with other hacksilber finds in the region. While the establishment of an exact chronology at the site will require more than a single […]

  15. MFD says:

    Wonderful. Important to observe how the original paper shows that Tarshish was an island.

  16. Jamie says:

    I really enjoyed this article. The argument is 100% on point, and so is the evidence.

  17. palaic says:

    Fascinating study.

  18. fecalator says:

    I really doubt this. As far as I know, the silver came from Ethiopia.

Write a Reply or Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


18 Responses

  1. Francesco Biancu says:

    Tarshish ships, are not only to west,but to Ofyr too. Tarshish ships, are high seas travelling, and commerce, with Sardinia and Cadiz Huelva, full metal mines. Tin, Silver and Copper was in this package. Tin was brought, from Galicia and Corwall, to Huelva and Sardinia.

  2. Joseph Tracy says:

    There is no archeological evidence for Solomon’s Kingdom. Jerusalem was very sparsely populated at that Time. (Bible Unearthed, Finkelstein) What you seem to have is some silver from what you weirdly call southern Phoenicia. Since Phoenicia was a set of city states along the Mediterranean and is now long gone there is no reason not to say the current geographic locations for the origin of the silver. It clearly is not Jerusalem and there is nothing linking the silver to Solomon.

  3. Giacomo says:

    The British islands had absolutely no advanced civilizations or fleet there while Sardinia was home to the oldest civilization in the Western Mediterranean (The Nuragic civilization) which built the oldest statues in Europe, if anything it should be Britain to be ruled out.

  4. Michael Hayes says:

    Absolute rubbish tarshish is the British isles as the four metals tarshish traded silver, lead, iron, tin, tin is a rare commodity not found in many places in ancient times it was mixed with copper to make bronze so would be very sought after…was tin mined in Sardinia? I don’t think it was so that rule them out

    http://youtu.be/6Ekz4kGGdwQ

  5. Kurt says:

    Trade Relations With Solomon. Phoenician trading with Tarshish is clearly borne out by the record of King Solomon’s time (some 13 centuries after the Flood), when maritime commerce also began to be engaged in by the nation of Israel. Solomon had a fleet of ships in the Red Sea area, manned in part by experienced seamen provided by Phoenician King Hiram of Tyre, and trafficking especially with the gold-rich land of Ophir. (1Ki 9:26-28) Reference is thereafter made to “a fleet of ships of Tarshish” that Solomon had on the sea “along with Hiram’s fleet of ships,” and these ships are stated to have made voyages once every three years for the importation of gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks. (1Ki 10:22) It is generally believed that the term “ships of Tarshish” in course of time came to stand for a type of ship, as one lexicon puts it: “large, sea-going vessels, fit to ply to Tarshish.” (A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, by Brown, Driver, and Briggs, 1980, p. 1077) In a similar way, the name Indiamen originally was derived from the name applied to large British ships engaged in trade with India and in time came to apply to ships of that type no matter what their origin or destination. Thus 1 Kings 22:48 shows that King Jehoshaphat (936-911 B.C.E.) “made Tarshish ships to go to Ophir for gold.”
    http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200275418

  6. melquiadesp says:

    Good Day, Thank you very much for this very impormative article regarding king Solomon’s treasures,this help me to enlight regarding bible account about Solomon’s wealth., greetings from the Philippines !

  7. MH says:

    Mesmerizing brilliance.

  8. Giacomo Pozza says:

    Sardinia was also known as the Silver island in ncient times, also Tarsis is often mentioned for its fleet and Sardinia has been trading with Continental Europe since the neolitic, nuragic ceramics of the bronze age are found in many regions of the Mediterranean sea including Cyprus, Crte, Greece, Sicily and Spain. The Nuragic civilization of Sardinia was the oldest and most monumental civilization of western Europe and produce more than 7000 fortresses called Nuraghi, some like the Arrubbiu, originally reached the height of 25-20 meters making them the tallest structure in the mediterranea sea, they also built hundreds of water well temples, giant graves and megaron temples. Sardinia was one of the most inhabitated regions of Europe during the neolitic and the bronze age, the Nuragic civilization of Sardinia also rpoduced the alrgest bronze figures collection out of any other ancient civilization, including 157 bronze models of ships, indicating it had a large fleet, also almost a thousand of terracotta model of ships have been found. Since Tharshish is often associated with its fleet Sardinia who produced the largest collection of ancient ship model ever must have been known for its fleet in ancient times. Also the Nuragic civilization imported melons from the middle east since 1310 bc, many centuries before any other European people, The Nuragic Sardinians also learned hwo to produce wines during 1600-1450 bc, long before other Europeans, this indicates how much Sardinia traded and knew the middle east in comparison with the rest of Europe.

  9. Sal says:

    Found artifact in northeast ct.that is a unusual forms of metal that have several micro pictures that are effected by different light sources almost like a negative then a photo.The overall images are combined into a left profile of a man with beard and the word rasasu is o top of piece.Tarshish is rasasu when spelling on computer and refers to these people as smelters and refiners of metals.Hopefully somebody replied out of curiosityof this artifact.

  10. Abel Beth Maacah Excavations discover Silver Hoard at an ancient CrossroadsSignals News | Signals News says:

    […] jug, nonetheless a china can have been shaped during a after date–the early Iron Age–based on comparisons with other hacksilber finds in a region. since a investiture of an accurate chronology during a web site would need some-more than a […]

  11. Brett says:

    Darwin, there are different sites that acquire the name Tarshish over time (the authors of this particular paper focus on the Tarshish of biblical legend and Solomon’s time, which was identified as large island located far west of the eastern Mediterranean shores – they say that eventually part of Spain was also called Tarshish, at least by the much later time of Herodotus). When and where the name Tarshish was applied elsewhere is another interesting topic – for the one you mention, see Burke’s 2006 paper in Maarav here: http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/4r6540gk#page-1 “Tarshish in The Mountains of Lebanon: Attestations of a Biblical Place Name.”

  12. Darwin Newton says:

    I wonder if analysis of Tarshish Lebanon soil isotopes would have given some explanation. I heard That the area had lot of iron and ancient people had extracted iron from it. There are old mines and smelting remains scattered in it. Phonecians had left some burial and altar sites in the area. The fleet was named after that small village. The metal products were sent to Tyre and from there shipped to Solomon.

  13. Abel Beth Maacah Excavations Uncover Silver Hoard at an Ancient Crossroads | newsantiques.com says:

    […] B.C.E. jug, yet a china might have been made during a after date–the early Iron Age–based on comparisons with other hacksilber finds in a region. While a investiture of an accurate chronology during a site will need some-more than a singular […]

  14. Abel Beth Maacah Excavations Uncover Silver Hoard at an Ancient Crossroads - Creation RevolutionCreation Revolution says:

    […] B.C.E. jug, though the silver may have been shaped at a later date–the early Iron Age–based on comparisons with other hacksilber finds in the region. While the establishment of an exact chronology at the site will require more than a single […]

  15. MFD says:

    Wonderful. Important to observe how the original paper shows that Tarshish was an island.

  16. Jamie says:

    I really enjoyed this article. The argument is 100% on point, and so is the evidence.

  17. palaic says:

    Fascinating study.

  18. fecalator says:

    I really doubt this. As far as I know, the silver came from Ethiopia.

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