The Gold of Ophir: Whence Brought and by Whom?

Abstract

IN the little volume before us Prof. A. H. Keane has undertaken an inquiry into the vexed question of the site of Ophir, and the source of the gold which the Hebrew Scriptures assure us was brought from that place to Solomon, son of David, by ships of Tarshish. The author himself feels that some apology to the reader is necessary, and that some explanation is due to him for having taken up the subject at all, and it is our duty to say at the outset that we wish he had left it for discussion to the class of people who triumphantly assert that Rhodesia is Ophir, and that Britons inherit this colony (which was founded by masterful Mr. Rhodes) as their natural right because they are descendants of some of the tribes of Israel. Prof. Keane thinks that so much evidence has accumulated on the subject during the last thirty years that it is time the question was reopened, and not only reopened, but decided once and for all. The evidence he refers to consists of the results obtained from the exploration and study of Rhodesian remains, from the Himyaritic inscriptions found in central and southern Arabia by Glaser and others, and from the explorations of the “Arabian frankincenseland”by the late Mr. Bent, and from parallels between the social and religious customs of the Malagasy inhabitants of Madagascar and “their Himyaritic, Phoenician and Jewish masters from the northern hemisphere.” Incidentally we may mention that Dr. Carl Peters, in 1901, enunciated the extraordinary view that, not only was the site of the Ophir of the Bible to be found in Rhodesia, but that Ophir was to be identified with the Punt of the Egyptian inscriptions.

The Gold of Ophir: Whence Brought and by Whom?

By A. H. Keane. Pp. xviii + 244. With one plate and one map. (London: Stanford, 1901.) Price 5s. net.