The Legendary Wealth of Solomon--Part II

by Timothy S. Wilkinson

www.timothywilkinson.net

My earlier post described the extent of King Solomon’s wealth in modern terms, and raised the question of whether or not the Bible’s descriptions of such wealth were believable. Golden dishes, golden furniture, golden shields and a temple plated with gold—are these fanciful exaggerations of later chroniclers intent on inflating Solomon’s reputation?

                Archaeology says they are not. Let’s address each of those specific examples in turn.

“All King Solomon’s goblets were gold…” (1 Kings 10:21)

                Obviously many kings throughout the centuries have used golden tableware—it is used today in some royal houses. The same was true in ancient times. When Sir Leonard Wooley excavated the Royal Cemetary in Ur from the 3^rd millennium B.C., he found many golden cups and dishes there. Railway workers building near Bubastis once discovered a cache of Egyptian treasure from c.1279-1213 B.C., and included was a cup of solid gold. At the famous excavations at Ugarit a number of beautifully embossed golden plates were found, and gold jugs and dishes from Persian sites can be seen in museums all around the world.

Furniture of Gold

                The Pharaohs of Egypt plated their furniture with gold. Buried with Tutankhamen in 1331 were two carved wooden chairs plated with gold. A thousand years earlier Queen Hetepheres, the mother of Cheops (the builder of the Great Pyramid) was buried with a bed, a chair, and a canopy all plated with gold. The El-Amarna letters from the 14^th century B.C. list gifts exchanged between the royalty of Egypt and their relatives in Canaan: golden bowls, toiletries and furniture and chariots plated with gold.

                Solomon’s throne is described as being plated in ivory, then in gold. Gold-plated ivory artifacts have been uncovered in the Assyrian palaces at Nimrud.

Shields of Gold

                The gold shields and bucklers that hung in Solomon’s palace were clearly ceremonial armaments meant as a sign of wealth. Their existence is supported by other similarly symbolic gold armaments from nearby empires. Sir Wooley found a gold helmet (engraved to look like a wig) in Ur’s Royal Cemetery, along with gold daggers and battle axes. A gold axe head was also uncovered at Byblos from c. 1800 B.C. King Sargon II of Assyria wrote a letter detailing the booty taken in his campaign of 714 B.C: the list included six shields of gold weighing a total of 700 pounds.

Temples of Gold

                It is one thing to have objects of gold—after all, everyone is familiar with the gold splendors of King Tut’s tombs and it is possible to purchase gold plated objects today in every shape and size. But a temple plated with gold?

                Sometime between 680 and 669 B.C. King Esarhaddon of Assyria plated the doors and walls of the shrine of Ashur with gold “as if with plaster” (Rykle Borger, Die Inschriften Asarhaddons (Graz, Austria: E. W. Weidner, 1956), p. 87.) Nabonidus of Babylon (555-539 BC) wrote of renovating the temple of Sin at Harran, saying that he clad the walls with gold. Amenophis III (c. 1386-1349 BC) built a temple to Amun at Thebes entirely plated with gold, silver, and electrum. The shrine of Ramesses III (1185-1154 BC) at Medinet Habu was paved with silver, and the walls and pillars were all gold-plated. In a remarkable display of extravagance, Ramesses built a cedar barge 200 ft long overlaid with gold to the waterline.

                We cannot discount the realism of the Bible’s description of Solomon’s wealth when we have so many similar contemporary examples. Truly, Solomon was one of the wealthiest rulers of all time—certainly the wealthiest of any king in Asia in the early Iron Age. In addition to supporting the accuracy of Biblical history, this record gives us a picture of the incredible opulence of Israel at its greatest heights.

For more information about life in Bible times, check out my website at www.timothywilkinson.net.

The Highways of the King

The Highways of the King

By Timothy S. Wilkinson

www.timothywilkinson.net

Ancient Hebrew has two primary words for transportation routes: messilah, meaning “highway,” and derekh meaning “road.” From earliest times trade routes linked cities and kingdoms throughout the Middle East. The most important and well-traveled routes were the Via Maris (Way of the Sea) that followed the coast almost from Egypt all the way to Lebanon, and the King’s Road, running up central Palestine, paralleling the Jordan. Maintaining these roads was important for religious, as well as economic, reasons. Since all Israelites worshipped at a central location, travel was constant and required by the Torah. The maintenance of the roads to the Cities of Refuge was even more crucial.

It is very difficult to get a clear picture of where roads and highways were once located, but a great deal of effort has been put into doing so. The Bible provides us with very little information regarding either their locations or description, but does contain a few allusions to their construction and maintenance. Isaiah talks about hills being leveled; Josephus wrote of Solomon paving the roads to Jerusalem with black stone. Archival texts, itineraries and military annals collected from the Biblical period throughout the Middle and Near East allow us to make a reasonably accurate estimate of how far one could travel in a day: about 17 to 23 miles, whether by land or by sea.

                To the modern reader, references to “highways” conjures up a very different picture than the Iron Age reality. Late in the 13^th century B.C.E. (during the time of the Judges), an Egyptian official was sent on a trip through Palestine. Fortunately for us, he kept a detailed record of his journey—and he spared no details when describing the condition of the roads:

“…the sky is darkened by day [because the road] is overgrown with cypresses and oaks and cedars which reach the heavens. Lions are more numerous than leopards or bears [and it is] surrounded by Bedouin on [every] side of it…Behold, ambushers wait in a ravine 2000 cubits deep, filled with boulders and pebbles…the narrow valley is dangerous with Bedouin hidden under the bushes. Some of them are four or five cubits from their noses to the heel, and fierce of face. Their hearts are not mild, and they do not listen to wheedling. You are alone; there is no messenger with you, no army host behind you. You find no scout, that he might make you a way of crossing. You come to a decision to go forward, although you do not know the road. Shuddering seizes you, [the hair of] your head stands up, and your soul lies in your hand. Your path is filled with boulders and pebbles, without a toe hold for passing by, overgrown with reeds, thorns, brambles and ‘wolf’s-paws’. The ravine is on one side of you, and the mountain rises on the other. You go on jolting, with your chariot on its side, afraid to press your horse too hard.”

                When Pharoah Thutmosis III traveled the “highway” sometime between 1490 and 1436 B.C.E. (the time of the Israelite conquest of Canaan or shortly thereafter), he reported that parts of it were so narrow that his horses had to walk single file—a singularly dangerous formation for an army. The passage of three and a half centuries didn’t see much improvement: in around 1100 B.C.E. (about the time of the birth of David), Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser I wrote that he had to send engineers ahead of his army with copper pickaxes to make the road passable for his chariots. There were portions of the road that proved too rough—charioteers and cavalry were forced to dismount and pick their way through on foot.

                When we imagine the travels of people in the time of David, then, we should include in that mental picture a sense of just how difficult travel was. Wealthier people may have ridden on donkeys or used them to carry their burdens. Many sojourners likely took a siesta to avoid traveling in the oppressive heat of the Mediterranean day; night travel also served as an additional way to avoid detection by highwaymen. They crossed the miles on narrow, winding paths, choked with mud after winter rains, heavily rutted throughout the summer. They tried to avoid the deep canyons cut by rivers that raged during rainstorms, as well as the disease-infested swamps, barren deserts and broad badlands of sharp, hardened volcanic stone. Mountain roads took them up steep slops broken by twisting gorges; the ranges could be crossed only at well-traveled passes. They sought safety in numbers, traveling whenever possible in caravans.

                While writing The Eternal Throne Chronicles, one of the challenges is that I continually discover new details about the biblical world as the project continues. I gratefully incorporate them into future novels but—alas—there is nothing I can do about those already published. The state of roads in Israel is one of those details. I look forward, though, to traveling those roads with fresh eyes in the near future as I write the first chapters of Hero of Israel.

                For more information about life in Bible times, check out my novels Prophet of Israel and Judge of Israel, available from www.timothywilkinson.net.

Photos of Display on Daily Life in Ancient Israel

For more information about life in Bible times, check out my novels Prophet of Israel and Judge of Israel, available from www.timothywilkinson.net.

By Timothy S. Wilkinson
www.timothywilkinson.net


On the 31 July I hosted a party for the release of my new book, Judge of Israel. For the party I set up a miniature museum-type display dealing with everyday life in Ancient Israel. For all of you who weren't able to come, I thought I would share some of the highlights of that display. I do plan to re-do the presentation later this year in a couple of more public venues.
I hope you enjoy it!

Stephanie White loaned me this ancient Bible to display 1 Samuel 7, on which "Judge of Israel" is based

This is a replica of a limestone plaque discovered by R. A. S. Macalister in 1908 in the excavations of the city of Gezer. It is believed to be a schoolboy’s writing exercise (not unlike our “Thirty days hath September”)—the penmanship is of poor quality. The calendar dates to the second half of the 10^th century B.C.E., and summarizes the yearly activities of the ancient Israelite farmer:

His two months are olive harvest

His two months are planting grain

His two months are late planting

His month is hoeing up of flax

His month is harvest of barley

His month is harvest and feasting

His two months are vine-tending

His month is summer fruit

This single tiny artifact answered a number of questions about the ancient agricultural year, and provided historians with a glimpse into the worlds of a farmer and a schoolboy in the days of King David.

The Lachish Letters are a group of letters written in carbon ink in Archaic Hebrew on clay ostraca. (Ostraca are pieces of broken pottery used as writing surfaces in ancient times—papyrus, vellum, and other alternatives were simply too expensive for everyday correspondence). The individual ostracon probably come from the same broken clay pot. They were written to Joash, likely the military commander at Lachish, from Hoshaiah, a military officer stationed nearby.

The letters were probably written shortly before Lachish fell to the Babylonian army in 588-586 B.C.E. during the last years of Jeremiah’s life and during the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah.

They were discovered by J.L. Starkey in January and February of 1935 and are currently the property of the British Museum in London.

From ancient times, the sling has been a weapon of shepherds and warriors. One end is tied to the hand or looped around a finger (as in this example), and the other end was held in the hand to be freed when the sling was swung. This sling is an accurate replica of one found in the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen (d. 1343 B.C.E.). The cord is made of braided flaxe and the pouch is of leather. The stones displayed were the size commonly used in battle.

A sling this size can hurl a stone at nearly 200 miles per hour, capable not only of killing an armored man but of completely removing a limb. Shepherds who spent all day, every day with their sheep in the fields used slings to pick crows and other birds from off of the backs of their flock (crows will eat the eyes out of a living sheep if given the chance). They became incredibly skilled with the weapon. At Judges 20:16, Samuel describes a team of 700 ambidextrous Benaminites who were “slingers of stones to a hairbreadth and would not miss.”

By far the most common type of sword from Egypt to Lebanon, and from the early Bronze Age to mid-way through the Iron Age was the khopesh, or sickle-sword. This is an exact duplicate of a blade found in the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, but countless thousands of the same design were made throughout the centuries. It is vertically-cast bronze, in every way identical to the swords that most Israelites would have carried in the 10^th century B.C.E. The sword is small to our eyes for several reasons: people at the time were smaller (probably 69 inches was the average height for a grown man), bronze was expensive, and the leverage provided by a longer blade made the sword more likely to break in battle.

Seeing this sword gives new meaning to the famous words in Isaiah 2:4 “And they will have to beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning shears.” The khopesh began as a sickle. Kings could not afford to provide weapons for all of their people who only became soldiers in times of war. Each man would simply bring his farm implement into battle, adjusting its shape slightly and perhaps sharpening the outer edge. When peace was restored, swords would be ‘beaten into’ farm tools once again.

Archaeologists differentiate between daggers and swords by their length. Somewhat arbitrarily, any blade 16 inches or shorter was a dagger; anything longer was a sword. That makes this piece, at a little over 17 inches, a sword. It is vertically cast solid bronze with silver inlay. The so-called “Type F” was a simple, straight-bladed, double-edged sword suitable for close combat. This design was used primarily by warlike cultures, since the amount of bronze required made it unusually expensive to produce, and the design was not easily adapted to other purposes. 

The sword type classified “Naue II” is a basic design found across Europe and the Middle East throughout the Bronze Age. This piece is vertically hollow-cast bronze with silver filigree and represented the pinnacle of technology for the people of the day. The shape of the blade and hilt are fairly typical of a type of sword the Mycenaean Greeks, like the Philistines, might have carried. 

Axes, single and double-headed, have been used as weapons since the earliest days of history. They were popular weapons in Palestine in the 10^th century B.C.E. among the Canaanite peoples. They owed this popularity in part to the fact that they were common and could be carried into battle by common men who could not afford to own a sword. They were also effective against even heavy armor and defensive weapons. This example is medieval in style, but the designs of axes changed so little through the centuries that it is quite similar to those made two millennia earlier.

The dagger on the right is a replica of the meteorite steel dagger that was found on the body of King Tutankhamen. It was forged for me by my younger brother, Leif.

This lamp design (called a "pinched" lamp) is found all over Palestine. The receptacle is filled with olive oil and a twisted flaxen cord is laid in it as a wick. It burns with a remarkably bright and clean flame.

The bow (Hebrew qesheth) is one of the most ancient of weapons and was used by every Bronze and Iron Age culture of the Middle East. 2 Samuel 22:35 refers to a “bow of copper,” probably referring to the practice of reinforcing the wooden limbs of the bow with thin sheets of copper, bone, horn, or sinew. Arrows (Hebrew chistsim) were made of reed shafts or light wood. Arrowheads were made of flint, bone, or metal. Metal arrowheads did not become common until late into the Bronze Age because of the considerable expense of making enough of them to equip an army, knowing that, unlike spear and javelin heads, most would not be recovered after the battle.

This bow is oak (common in Palestine in David’s day) and the arrow shafts are cedar. The arrow head is copper.

Goliath was a hero of the Philistine army during David’s boyhood. The Bible account says that he was “six cubits and a span” (9 ft 5.75 in) tall. Two hundred years earlier, the Hittites had forged a dagger from a meteorite that had ended up in the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen. It is not unreasonable that the Philistines, having learned iron-working from the Hittites, would have used the same precious material to forge the sword of their champion.

This blade is a standard Mycenaean Greek, one-handed design scaled up to be suitable for Goliath. Interestingly, David took this sword as his own after defeating Goliath, and wielded it for the rest of his life.

Iron Javelin

Iron Spear