Myth Hunters | Episode 4: The Real King Solomon's Mines | Free Documentary History

According to the great stories of the Bible, King Solomon, son of David, ruled Israel 3,000 years ago. He was famous for his wisdom, his women, and his amazing wealth. King Solomon surpassed all the

king

s of the earth in wealth and wisdom and when the rich were powerful and exotic The Queen of Sheba visited King Solomon, brought him gifts from the mystical land of Ophiia and arrived in Jerusalem with a very large entourage with camels carrying spices and much gold, but where was the hearing from, where did everything come from? Did that gold even exist? For thousands of years, ancient Greeks, Renaissance adventurers, Victorian explorers, and modern scientists have searched for the source of Solomon's gold, a mysterious place that would become known as the Minds of King Solomon.

This is the story of a man who

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ly believed he had found them and found something, but it was not what he expected. Carl Mal, the explorer who would be forever linked with the discovery of the Minds of King Solomon, was a man of humble origins. , was born in 1837 in Steton, a small town in Germany, his father was a carpenter and later went to the army and M had three brothers so the family was not very rich and perhaps you could even say that they were poor but when he was a child he received a gift that changed her life forever for her 10th birthday gift she received a world atlas that showed Africa almost blank on the map and this actually inspired Mal to become an explorer to fill in the gaps on the map of Africa .

At first, Mark's interest had nothing to do with King Solomon; He was attracted by the mystery of Africa. and the opportunity it presented to an ambitious young man, Africa was a good destination for explorers because the interior of Africa was still unknown to Europeans and therefore there were still opportunities for heroism and adventure as the bush grew. His obsession with Africa continued during this time. He avidly consumed virtually every book on the geography of Africa from the 16th century onwards, including accounts, in particular, of the early Portuguese explorers, and one story jumped off the page to catch M's attention in 1531.

Vincente paid a captain of a Portuguese garrison on the south coast. of Africa wrote that among the gold

mines

of the inland plains between the Limpopo River and the Zambisi River there is a fortress built of stones of wonderful size and there does not seem to be any mortar joining them together. Hegard and his Portuguese explorers were convinced that this fortress was the Palace of the Queen of Sheba and the gold

mines

were the source of King Solomon's wealth. The Bible tells us that King Solomon was the son of the great King David, who killed the giant Philistine warrior Goliath.

How Solomon became famous for his wisdom, his women, and his fabulous wealth. but the Bible also describes Solomon's great meeting with the queen of Sheba, who brought him tons of gold and spices from her land. She arrived in Jerusalem with a retinue of camels laden with spices and other precious objects intended as gifts for Solomon and gave them to the

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. 120 talant of gold and spices great store and precious stones no longer came such an abundance of spices like these that the Queen of Sheba gave to the King of them this is the story that we all remember but in

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ity there is not a shred of evidence that Solomon or the Queen of Sheba ever existed or that any of this story was actually true as soon as we can.

Track our sources. Bible readers have been fascinated by the question of where exactly Solomon's wealth came from in the first century, for example. The Jewish historian Josephus speculated that his wealth came from India and since then interpreters have been struggling to reconstruct the Bible's clues to discover his exact location. The Bible offers some intriguing clues about the source of Solomon's wealth. He tells us, for example. that Solomon had to send ships to recover this wealth. Solomon's ships traveled to a place called ophir and they also mentioned a place called tarish because the King had at sea the Navy of tarish with the Navy of ham once every 3 years the Navy of tarish bringing gold and silver Ivory and apes and peacocks no one knows the exact meaning of the words ofir and tarish ofir is often associated with gold kashish, some scholars believe that it actually refers to a type of ship intended for traveling long distances the location of these places is unknown but M had discovered an important clue Vincente paid the Portuguese captain who described The fortress of marvelous size was based on soup on the southern coast of Africa the Europeans who sought the riches of Solomon did not usually read the Hebrew Bible, they usually read the Bible Greek or Latin translation of the Bible and in the Greek translation of the Bible the word ophir actually has an S that appears at the beginning of the word that is spelled Sophia, so when the portuguese arrived on the coast of Africa to a port city called sofa, They made a linguistic connection between the name of that port city and the biblical Greek word for ophia or Sophia, believing it was evidence that they had found the source of Solomon's well, so soup could be a cause for fear.

M started digging for more evidence and again it was the Portuguese. stories that provided more clues The Portuguese sailor named Tomás López arrived at the port city of Sofa in southern Africa in 1502 and there he was received by Muslims who told him that native sources described something very curious: they described how Solomon's ships sailed. They arrive once every 3 years and extract a tremendous amount of gold from a nearby town and they went with the Servants of Solomon to AIA and then took 450 talant of gold which they delivered to King Solomon. They had the correct name Soup was AIA and they seem to have found the gold, so if the Portuguese were right, they may have stumbled upon one of the most amazing finds ever seen.

Mal was sure he had it figured out. King Solomon's wealth was in southern Africa and he was determined to find him, but he realized that he was missing. Unfortunately he was not qualified, so for the next 11 years he dedicated his entire life to preparing for his expedition to Africa. Every day he prepared himself both mentally and physically for the day when he would realize his dream. M was always good in school and was interested in natural sciences. He studies and he would have liked to go to university, but his parents like the financial means to pay for his expedition.

He trained as a teacher and became a private tutor in Austria. M must have been really determined to go to Africa all these years. He had no support, he had no money, but still he continued with his plans. He learned English, French and Arabic on his own. He attempted to acquire specialized knowledge by reading specialized books and magazines such as Pitman's Geographic News. In his

free

time he studied Latin medicine and astronomy. He visited the botanical garden and the Gas Natural History Museum, where he worked at the time as a teacher. There he acquired some knowledge of botany, geology and natural

history

.

He built his own mineral and insect collections in 1863. Mal was convinced that he was ready. So he wrote to August Peterman, the editor of Germany's highly respected geographical journal. His goal was to sell himself as an explorer worth investing in. I think that intellectually and considering my modest means I have done everything I could, but the body also requires preparation for such a thing. Companies walking 6 miles or more each day in every Seas season over any terrain, often without food or drink until my return to the starting point and always wearing the same warm clothing. I have tried to steal my body.

Other than this, I haven't done it. Sloppy gymnastics and musket stature I am tall and stout and in excellent health considering these facts I believe I am capable of participating in an expedition along these lines Mal's letter received an immediate response from the magazine's editor Peterman's response was negative and quite discouraging. He explained to Mom how difficult and strange such an exploration would be, but he proposed that if Mom managed to reach Africa, he would consider publishing letters or reports despite Peterman's rejection at the age of 26. 11 years in the making Mal was ready to leave, but Mal decided to spend a few months researching in London before going to South Africa and by the end of that time he had run out of money.

Mal worked as a sailor. on a steamboat to finance himself before arriving in Durban, South Africa in January 1865, his search could now begin with only the best of Necessities, a small pocket compass, a hunting knife, a blanket, a set of paint and a gun. Ma set out to explore southern Africa in search of land. hearing in June 1865. I tried to acclimatize by diligently walking around the country without worrying if I wandered through unknown fields for 2 or 3 days without food or even if I had an unpleasant encounter with the larger carnivores, but Mal soon got into trouble.

Mal's travels were not entirely easy, he went through a lot of suffering almost to the point of starvation, this was the fifth day of hunger for me and it can be understood that he contemplated the future with a Jaist view, even the small birds seemed fly. away from me while I'm still miles away from them there was no pheasant or partridge to be seen and an hour long effort to try to catch fish also failed hungry thirsty tired with almost unbearable pain in my knee still had 25 miles to go and bad luck Wanted that I didn't get a chance to take one last shot and therefore didn't get anything to eat in their desperation.

M sent a messenger with a letter to August Peterman, the editor of Germany's geographical magazine, to support his African expedition, this time his luck. was in Peterman appealed to his readers to support Mal, we believed that he had to be helped, he is the only capable explorer in all of South Africa at the moment, it would seem a patriotic and scientific duty to support Herau and not leave him defenseless. in the far interior, the pet man's appeal to support mom in his magazine was successful, several of his readers donated small sums as M had no money, it was a great help to him, but compared to other explorers he was still a A very small sum, however, these donations helped Mal continue his exploration of southern Africa for the next 8 years.

Two years after his journey, Mal entered the Tarti region, an area located on the borders of Botswana and Zimbabwe, and with the help of the famous British hunter Henry. Hartley Mal made his first significant discovery of it on July 27, 1867. Heartley brought me news that, following a wounded elephant, he passed several shafts submerged in quartz. I arrived at a site that I recognized as a foundry site by examining some fresh stones I found. Gold very happy. I ran back to camp to impart the good news when M discovered the first gold field. He was really delighted to have made such a great and great discovery.

The next day M discovered another gold field. Could these be the minds of? King Solomon's news of the gold mine spread like wildfire across the plains of southern Africa, sparking one of its first gold rushes as newspapers headlined his great discovery. Germany's geographical magazine believed that Mal was onto something much bigger regarding the gold fields discovered by Ma. Not unlikely. which are identical to the oia of the Bible and the places where Solomon obtained his wealth in Gold but if finding gold mines was encouraging for M to be really sure that he was in the land of ophir he had to find the city worthy of the great Queen of Sheba, the same year that M discovered the Tarti gold deposits, began hearing rumors of an abandoned city with huge stone walls, described by locals as fabulous buildings.

Mal was told that the city was in the mountainous area between the two largest ones. rivers in southern Africa the Zambesi and the Lim Poo In May 1871 Mal wrote confidently to the geographical magazine of his country to tell them that he wanted to dedicate his next expedition to the newly united German people. I will make it the highest duty in my profession to add honor on behalf of the German nation. I hope that my next trip will offer that opportunity. The discovery of the AIA ruins would be a point that other nations would envy for the next 3 years.

M searched the ruins and shot elephants and rabbits. M tried to reach the ruins for a long period and often failed and he had to return to the European settlements. Mal survived the robberies and attempted to gain the trust of local tribes throughout his travels. He formed alliances with tribal rulers, feared the natives around him, thought they might even kill him and at one point was held prisoner in Matab land until a deal was made for his release, but was eventually found by members of the local Kuranga tribe. they faced. I faced the Magnificent City W finally on September 5, 1871.

I was fortunate to be the first white man to see them. The ruins represent a powerful fortress consisting of two parts, one of them on a mountain of about 400 feet with very large boulders are separated by a smalland narrow valley of the second, which is located on a slight elevation. M simply couldn't believe her eyes, nothing like it had been seen south of the equator and she simply shouldn't have been there. Mal was convinced that he had finally found the ruins of the Queen of Sheba's palace, but how could he be sure? He began to examine the structure of the ruins and discovered that the walls were built of stone without any type of mortar.

This matched exactly Vincente Bado's description of the ruins from the 16th century. He had read as a teenager, among the gold mines of the inland plains, between the Limpopo River and the Zambesi River, there is a fortress built of stones of wonderful size and there does not seem to be any mortar joining them together. The next step for the mountain was to discover who had created it. He couldn't believe that such a structure could have been built by native Africans. M's opinion was supported by local tribesmen. I have learned from the local people. The inhabitants who themselves have lived here only for 40 years and that the region was quite uninhabited before that time, all are absolutely convinced that once white people inhabited the region, because even now there are signs of homes and iron tools that could not have been produced. by blacks, so if the palace was built by white people, where did they come from?

Mount looked for clues in the Bible, there is no description of ophir in the Bible, but there is a description of the construction of the legendary Temple of King Solomon and the King ordered and they brought great stones, expensive stones and huge stones to lay the foundation of the home. While looking at the structures that make up Great Zimbabwe, he noticed a resemblance to Solomon's Temple as described in the Bible and to other structures that archaeologists were just then beginning to learn about. They considered it likely that the palace was built by an ancient people. called the Phoenicians in the 1850s and 1860s.

Archaeologists began excavating colonies that the Phoenicians had established throughout the Mediterranean and also sites in their homeland of Phoenicia in what is now Lebanon and east Ral to Europeans, this complex, vast and far-reaching civilization that predated the Greeks and Romans, which had spread throughout the Mediterranean and had an impact on culture stretching from the Middle East to North Africa, truly inspires the imagination of many. Europeans who began to believe that the Phoenicians were capable of traveling great distances, the Phoenicians built their structures without mortar and there was no Mort at this site, but this in itself was not proof of what else there might be to link it back to the Phoenicians.

The Bible offered a clue and made it clear that cedar wood was a critical ingredient at the time and was covered with cedar on top of the beams. Cedar was a famous wood found in modern-day Lebanon. The obvious place to look for the wood was where he held the M stone structure. He didn't really have the materials or manpower necessary for a major exploration of the site, but he did take some samples of the wood. I cut some splinters from the cross beam over the north entrance. The wood is still quite healthy and has a reddish color. color comparison with the wood of my pencil shows a great similarity and therefore I suppose is reinforced by a further hypothesis that Cedarwood must be convinced that cedars did not exist in the lower Zambesi Mal was sure that they must have been brought there by Solomon's Phoenician builders from Lebanon as the Bible says now therefore commands that humi sedar out of Lebanon suddenly everything came together for M here was a city that no African could have built it was built by Phoenicians in the same style as that of King Solomon In the temple of Jerusalem, the Phoenicians used stone without mortar and brought cedar wood from Lebanon to make the support beams and the local name for sop is Sofia, like ophia in the Bible and, to top it off , Mal had also discovered the two gold mines, the source of Solomon's wealth. so surely this was it I think I don't know.

While I suppose that the ruins on the mountain are an imitation of the Solomonic temple on Mount Mariah, the ruins on the plane are a copy of that Palace in which the Queen of Sheba dwelt during her visit. to Solomon, moreover, fit better with the well-known Phoenician buildings that the natives and the Arabs would have built differently, even the fact that I could not find traces of inscriptions anywhere seems to me to confirm the justification of my opinion, since Nowhere do we read that Solomon had an inscription of any kind posted in his temple. I believe that ofia is the current sofla or Safara, the name by which it is known and pronounced in the interior of Mal, there could be no doubt that AIA was not in the Middle East, it was here in southern Africa.

All the while, August Peterman, a long-time supporter of Ma, still waiting for more details from Mal, quickly published a brief report on his big discovery. It is already known from newspaper reports that on September 5, 1871, K Ma discovered the magnificent ruins in the mountainous region between the Limpopo and the Zambesi about 40 Mi inside soup that ancient Portuguese reports speak of and that were related to King Solomon's official expeditions in early times. Ma's great discovery had a great impact throughout the world and, in particular, inspired the great British novelist H rer. hagard to write his famous book King Solomon's Minds King Solomon and went on to tell me how he had found in the far interior a ruined city that he believed to be the hear of the Bible when suddenly he said to me: boy, have you ever heard of the Sullon mountains in the northwest of the country of Kumi ? he had never had it oh well he said he said that's where Solomon really had his Minds overnight the title of the book The Minds of King Solomon a phrase that no one had used before entered Popular Legend and that novel was read widely by people in Europe and sparked their curiosity and motivated other would-be explorers to travel to Africa and seek the gold and wealth they believed they could find in Ryder Haggard became one of the richest and most successful novelists of all time thanks to M's Discovery, the only person who got very little out of it.

However, when Mar returned to Germany, M himself expected to be rewarded with a position in a natural

history

museum, but I think that his lack of a university degree, and perhaps even his personality, were aspects that made things difficult for him. he, impoverished and sick. Mal was forced to work in a cement factory. He suffered terribly from depression. He had liver disease as a result of his travels to Africa. His body was continually tormented by pain and, as his neighbor said, he was often drunk because his medicine did not help. He no longer worked, so he drank alcohol.

He spent his last days in a hotel above a train station near Stuttgart sleeping on the third floor and slept in an armchair next to an open window and one night he fell out of the window and his neighbor found him. Early in the morning he was taken to the hospital in Stuttgart, he broke his spine and had both legs paralyzed. Carl Ma, aged 37, died in hospital a few days later on April 4, 1875, it is not known if his death was accidental or self-inflicted with his death, thus died his reputation, his writings were largely ignored by the academic world.

M's discoveries went virtually unnoticed at the time when they were published in just 52 pages in the AUST Peterman journals and, if you couldn't read German. You would never have noticed them and it was not until 1960 that his diaries were published in their complete form, but at least thanks to Mal the Minds of King Solomon seem to have been discovered and for many years people believed that the ruins in southern Africa were The site, but at the beginning of the 20th century even this legacy was challenged now a new generation of explorers emerged and they were very different.

Gone are the days of romance and biblical literalism. This was a moment for archeology and science. Biblical archeology really began in the middle. 1800s, when we had mostly theologians, religious figures who went out and tried to confirm people, places and events in the Bible as time went on, these early geographers and theologians are replaced by professional archaeologists. One of these new professionals was the more famous British David Randall. for his scientific approach to archeology in 1905, 3,000 years after the reign of King Solomon, Randall Mver made seven carefully detailed examinations of Carl M. of fear, the first thing he did was date the buildings by examining the pottery unearthed in the excavation and was able say when they were made and Randall MAA quickly learned something that reveals that they are unquestionably African in every detail and belong to a period determined by foreign imports as generally medieval;

In other words, one of the key foundations of fear theory was wrong. David R. Miva was the first person to identify a medieval date and the dating was really important because the whole Foreign Origins thesis went back to Carl Mar and his kind of biblical interpretation depended on Great Zimbabwe being much older than which was thousands of years old. The ruins of Great Zimbabwe were not built by an ancient and defunct white civilization as is currently believed, but were of purely African origin and dated to approximately the 14th century. A second of his key findings would also be questioned.

Mal was convinced that the structures had been built by Phoenicians with wood and stone brought from Lebanon. Randall Macka evaluated and dismissed his interpretations as incredulous and found no evidence. David Gran Maca said look, everything I found here is identical to the remains of materials. local Africans and so on and he just said well that clearly means it must be African there is no underlying style in the buildings it cannot be proven that it owes anything to foreign influences all the features of oriental and European architecture are completely absent Following in the footsteps of Randall Maa, the formidable British archaeologist Gertrude kton Thompson led the first all-female excavation of the ruins in 1929 and made the next assault on M's theory on AIA g k Thompson was sent by the British Association to provide a final answer Kon Thompson dug deeper into scale than anyone before her.

She made six trenches in the ground around the main buildings and excavated in areas undisturbed by previous visitors. When he finished dating the site, he declared that the examination of all the existing evidence gathered in each neighborhood still cannot produce a single element that does not agree with the assertion of a medieval date if by indigenous we mean an origin born of the country in which they are located, then in my opinion the ruins are indigenous in the full sense of the term in the early days of archaeology, the claims of amateurs and explorers could represent decades before anyone actually came and try what they had said and prove it or disprove it, so it was a matter of 30 or 40 years before the archaeologist came in and really started digging and said yes, this is connected to the minds of King Solomon or not.

It's not, and in the case of that city the answer was no, it's not. Your statement is incorrect, so everything Mal had said about the ruins was wrong, even down to the piece of wood he had taken from one of the beams. support that I didn't have. It comes from the cedar trees of Lebanon, but was actually a local African sandalwood. Mal's scientific techniques were much more primitive than those used today, so, for example, she did not rely on identifying the wood she used in the structures she found in Great Zimbabwe. Instead, through elaborate chemical analysis, she simply looked at the wood and compared it to the wood she was using in her own pencil, and of course there was another factor.

Mal was a product of the Victorian era who had very different views on black Africa. He was convinced that Great Zimbabwe must have been built by white builders and did not entertain the idea that it could have been built by an African people, which goes hand in hand with European thinking at the time that the indigenous population African was a naturalistic population. uncivilized people without history and without civilized culture, so believing that Great Zimbabwe could have been built by an African people would have meant a contradiction with this firmly established vision. Does all this mean that Carl Ma's Quest turned out to be useless in some weird way?

In a way not, because although M's conclusions were ridiculed, his discovery of the ancient city in 1871 turned out to be one of the most important archaeological finds in all of Africa, known today as the Great Zimbabwe or the great of stones,These ancient ruins have become one of Africa's most prized national monuments and a UNESCO World Heritage Site Great Zimbabwe is representative of African achievement Brilliant African achievement in the medieval period Archaeological evidence suggests that Great Zimbabwe was built between the 12th and 15th centuries by the ancestors of the Shona people who had settled in the region almost a thousand years earlier and who still inhabit Zimbabwe today from a peasant village, it grew to become a very prosperous political and commercial kingdom. from 1150 to 1450 with a population of more than 10,000 inhabitants.

Its development and growth was focused on agriculture, mainly livestock, and its enormous trade in gold and ivory reached Arabia and China, there they found Ming pottery, there they found Arab pottery, Indian beads, etc., so clearly that it was part of a much broader trading system and to evoke that kind of trading position, being able to build such a large and sophisticated site, it must have been controlling all kinds of agricultural resources. No one is sure why Great Zimbabwe fell into decline and was abandoned in the 15th century, but many suspect it was due to collapse. of trade political instability and famine now the whole world can recognize that Great Zimbabwe is a fantastic place, an amazing achievement, you know, structurally it is an amazing place, beautiful, beautifully built, etc., but it is also representative of an African culture very sophisticated that is taking place in its The importance you probably already know in its summary is summarized in the fact that the country's name derives from it, there are not many countries that derive their name from an archaeological site and it would be well deserved if Carl Mal would have realized this at that moment.

From its discovery in 1871, it really could have changed the way the world viewed African civilizations, but of course there is another question: does all this mean that the story of the minds of King Solomon is simply a legend without any basis? real historical? The Bible doesn't actually mention the Minds of King Solomon, it mentions Solomon's wealth along with wisdom and women. The three W's, but it doesn't say where his wealth actually came from, so it's all made up by the writer H. Haggard in the mind of his group of Solomon novels and, as archaeologists, we cannot get carried away with a novel written in the last 100 years. uh, to dictate what we're looking for in the hundred years after M's death, nothing was found to substantiate the belief that King Solomon or his great wealth ever existed, but recently, little by little, scientific archaeologists modern scientists are finding some evidence and one of the most interesting discoveries of recent times was the evidence for the existence of Solomon's father, King David, in the early 1990s. 9394 an inscription was found at a site in northern Israel.

T Don, was from an ancient inscription dating to approximately the mid-9th century BC. The inscribed stone contained the letters bit David and are identical to the early Hebrew and Aramaic words for the House of David and many archaeologists believe that these words are an authentic reference to the Bible, it said that a king of the House of David had made so and so b David, the House of David and that is the first mention of David or the House of David that has ever been found. If we were talking, say, even in the late 1980s, I would have said that there is no evidence of David and Solomon outside the Bible, when the ton inscription was found that ended the debate, it became clear that David did exist and I truly believe it is only a matter of time before there is anything to prove Solomon's reign at that time.

Not far away in an arid region in modern-day Jordan, south of the Dead Sea, archaeologists believe they may have found mines created around the time of King Solomon in 1000 BC. C. we found hundreds of ancient mines, we found metal production sites and decided Based on only the surface remains, we would begin to do an intensive excavation at one of these sites, which in Arabic means copper ruins, assuming that King Solomon did have mines, one of the things we have to ask is what type of mines are they. Are they gold mines? Are they copper mines? Actually, I'd say they're more likely to be copper mines than making money buying and selling copper.

Copper may not be gold, but during the Bronze Age it was an essential element in tool and weapon making, so it was incredibly valuable. What we discovered was that there were two important centuries of copper production on an industrial scale and that was in the 10th century BC. C. and the 9th century BC. C., which is the time of Solomon, so some have been wondering if we have the minds of King Solomon here, we have not found the minds of Solomon, but I think our results bring the issue of minds to the table of Solomon or, say, the Solomonic kingdom and its extent until now, the ancient Greeks, Renaissance adventurers and Victorian explorers have all tried unsuccessfully to find the minds of King Solomon.

Now the search continues into the 21st century and perhaps archaeologists in Jordan will discover the source of Solomon's great wealth, only time will tell, but of course, even if they do, so far. Nothing to suggest that his wealth has anything to do with someone called the Queen of Sheba, evidence for her remains completely elusive.