Follow that trail on Tarshish, The Island Tarshish and Onffroy de Thoron's Amazon Ophir.
Onffroy de Thoron (1869): the Tarshish and Ophir voyages traced to the Amazon.
In 1869 the French explorer Onffroy de Thoron argued, in the journal of the Geneva geographical society, that the ships of Solomon and Hiram sailed across the Atlantic and up the Amazon, and he placed Ophir, Tarshish and Parvaim in its upper basin.
I find that striking next to the Ofir harbor city on the Great River in The Chronicle of Akakor, which was told a century later.
Alongside the historical facts handed down to us by the ancient authors, which we will summarize in this Memoir, we will show how useful philology is to history and geography, since with the help of this precious auxiliary we have succeeded in discovering the traces of the navigation of the Phoenicians and the Hebrews in the time of Solomon, and in fixing the geographical positions of Parvaïm, Ophir and Tarschisch.
We can now understand why Solomon asked Hiram for sailors to send his ships to Ophir and Tarschisch; and we will show that these famous places of the Bible, as well as Parvaïm, lay in the interior of the river of the Amazons.
When David died, he left Solomon, for the building of the Temple, 7,000 talents of silver and 3,000 talents of gold of Ophir.
The old king had no ships sailing the outer seas; he therefore received the gold of Ophir through the trade of the Phoenicians, who, according to the Bible, knew every sea.
Fear of arousing the jealous touchiness of the seafaring peoples of the Mediterranean was no doubt the reason that led Solomon to have the ships he intended for the voyages to Ophir built at Ezion-Geber, on the Red Sea.
Hiram sent him experienced sailors, and, as will be seen further on, the Ophir fleet never returned to the Red Sea; it rounded the African cape to join, in the Atlantic Ocean, the fleet of Hiram, which came out of the Mediterranean.
Neither the conjectures nor the more or less specious reasoning of certain scholars have, to this day, been able to tear away the veil covering the unknown route taken by the fleets of these kings, and none of them has been able to say precisely where Ophir, Parvaïm and Tarschisch lay.
Since their research in every part of the Old World produced no plausible solution, we followed the opposite course, and it is in America itself, and in its least known part, that we discovered the famous places Ophir, Parvaïm and Tarschisch; at these very spots there are still various localities that have kept Hebrew names, while the names of the goods that the ships of Solomon and of his ally the king of Tyre brought back belong precisely to the language of the natives of the region those ships frequented: and these names, as the greatest philologists admit, belonged to a language other than Hebrew.
In the second book of Chronicles [Paralipomenon], chapter III, verse 6, it is said that "Solomon adorned his house with fine precious stones, and that the gold was gold of Parvaïm." This king therefore obtained gold from other places than Ophir and Tarschisch alone.
Montesinos, one of the Spanish chroniclers, supposed because of the abundance of gold taken out of Peru that Peru might be the Ophir of the Bible.
But we would point out, first, that the name Ophir has nothing in common with Paruim or Parvaïm; and second, that Ophir, as can be seen on our map, is not in the territory of Peru but in the Brazilian and Colombian possessions.
Let us pass on to Ophir, a place so praised for its riches.
We should recall that some philologists have thought they could establish the name Abiria as the Ophir of the Bible.
Thus the hypothesis that Sabéiria was the Ophir of the Bible falls of itself.
Étienne Quatremère, in his Memoir on the Land of Ophir,[^16] says that the name of Ophir remained unknown to the Greek and Latin writers; he refutes the hypotheses of the various scholars and geographers who have treated this question; he does not accept that Ophir was located on the Arabian Gulf, in Arabia Felix, or in any part of India; he does not even accept that it could have been in Ceylon, Sumatra, Borneo or any other point of the Far East, for the very simple reason, he says, that the ships of Solomon and Hiram took three years on each voyage.
Quatremère himself falls into the error of those he opposes, since he places Ophir at Sofala on the east coast of Africa.
Quatremère's argument is therefore weak, and his unfounded hypotheses give no likelihood to the existence of Ophir in the region of Sofala.
To understand what Ophir was, one must look for the meaning of the name; but first of all it is necessary to make sure how it is written in Hebrew characters.
This latter name is made up of Y, which means "water," and Apura, which is the name Apira or Apir: "water or river of Apir, or of Ophir." This famous place is therefore found and clearly identified, and, despite a distance of 2,880 years, the name has suffered only the alteration of one vowel, Yapura instead of Yapira, and this among savage tribes who today do not speak the Kichua of the Antis.[^17] In his Voyage au Brésil et aux Amazones [Journey in Brazil and to the Amazons], M.
We said above that in chapter X of the first book of Kings, Ophir in Hebrew is Apir.
Here, then, is the origin of the Hebrew Apir, or of the Ophir of the Latin text.
To pin down the district of Ophir itself more precisely, let us return to the river Yapura and look at it on the map.
Now, in Hebrew Uacarit ואכרית or Acarit אכרית means "raised, lifted up." Here, then, is a series of Hebrew words and names that strengthen our proofs regarding the region of Ophir, and it is indeed the one crossed by the Rio Yapura.
Several other highly significant names confirm our opinion further: thus one finds there the river Catuaiari, from the Kichua catu, "market," and the Hebrew aiari, "river": "the river of the market"; the place name Macapiri, from the Kichua words maca, "plate," and apiri, "of the miners";[^21] one also finds there the names of the tribes Apanos, "the carriers," Marukéuinis, "the breakers or crushers of earth," and the Apapuris, "the carriers of travelers." As we have already said, the natives of the Yapura who have passed down these names know neither Kichua nor Hebrew; this is one more proof that in antiquity, on the banks of the Yapura, the Antis peoples met the Hebrews and the Phoenicians.[^22] In the face of so many significant coincidences, of these Hebrew names, among which are Apiri or Ophir and the name Y-Apura, "the river of Ophir," and of the prodigious wealth in gold observed by M.
de La Condamine near the river of Solomon and the empire of Inin, or of the Believer, we can fix the limits of the region of Ophir: it lies in Colombian and Brazilian territory, in a triangle formed on one side by the Colombian mountains of Popayán and Cundinamarca as far as the lake of Yumaguari, whose waters feed one of the tributaries of the Orinoco;[^23] on another by the Rio Ikiari as far as the gold-bearing mountain from which that river descends; and by the Rio Yapura.
The various triennial voyages, except one, do not relate to Ophir, for all of them were made to Tarschisch.
David received the gold of Ophir through the Phoenicians, and the fleet built under Solomon for the same destination left the Red Sea, but never returned to it; it joined up in the Atlantic with Hiram's fleet, which came out of the Mediterranean, and after the single voyage they made together to Ophir, they took the name of fleet of Tarschisch according to the Hebrew text, and the name of fleet of Africa according to the Chaldean text.
Various causes seem to have led to the abandonment of Ophir.
Third, exploring the river of the Amazons further west, the Hebrews and Phoenicians found fine gold there in very great abundance and easier to work than at Ophir.
The abandonment of Ophir, the nearness of Parvaïm, which also had to be abandoned since it lay so far inland, the facilities offered by the new discoveries, and the etymology of Tarschisch are a combination of circumstances that fix the region where Tarschisch lay.
We would point out that the voyage to Ophir under Solomon brought him only 420 talents of gold, according to chapter IX of the first book of Kings, and that Chronicles, book II, chapter IX, verse 10, completes this account by saying: "The servants of Hiram and of Solomon, who brought the gold of Ophir, brought algum and precious stones." The woods called algum must necessarily have been unloaded at Joppa, which is very close to Jerusalem.
Chapter X, verse 11, of the first book of Kings says: "And also the fleet of Hiram, which brought the gold of Ophir, brought in a great quantity of almug trees and precious stones." We would observe that on this voyage the allied fleets brought back from Ophir two kinds of wood, the algum and the almug, but that there is no further mention of wood on the voyages to Tarschisch, for which gold and silver were the chief motive.
The whole body of facts relating to Tarschisch, as much as its very name, places it near the Antis, west of Ophir, in the richest part of the Amazon basin.
In the first book of Kings, chapter X, verse 11, it is said that Hiram's ships brought gold from Ophir and a great quantity of almug trees, a name whose plural is almughim אלמגים.
In the book of Chronicles, chapter IX, verse 10, we read: "The servants of Hiram and of Solomon, who brought the gold of Ophir, brought algum and precious stones," from which it follows that this second kind of wood was brought by both fleets.
Comparing this Sanskrit term with the true and expressive etymologies of almug and algum, drawn from the Kichua al'mucki and al-kumu, Max Müller's valguka is not admissible and did not undergo the two transformations he supposes; besides, for all his Sanskrit learning, he will never be able to find Ophir, or the gold of Ophir, in Malabar, the part of India he points to; our demonstration has already proved this.
The empire of Inin, or of the Believer, the positions we have given for Parvaïm, Ophir and Tarschisch, and the names and particular features attached to several localities and rivers form such a series and such a body of facts, grouped in a single region, that the evidence for our discovery is palpable and incontestable.
We should also point out that in Hebrew the letters P and PH are represented by the same character, so that Ayphira or Aypira, Aphir or Apir are the same thing, and that the true pronunciation is not Ophir but Apir.
And this ere Ophir gave her secret to the hands of one poor slave!
Ophir, Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, Sabteca: Tribes associated with distant lands, involved in trade with Israel, especially during the time of Solomon.
Significance: Ophir is mentioned as a region famous for its wealth, particularly gold.
The location of Ophir is not definitively known, but it was renowned for its gold, which was brought to King Solomon.
Source: The Bible, 1 Kings 9:28: "And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to King Solomon."
Source: The Bible, Job 28:16: "It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire."
Metaphorical references to cities or nations, such as "Ophir," noted for their gold (1 Kings 9:28, 1 Chronicles 29:4).
and assign your nuggets to the dust, your gold of Ophir to the rocks in the ravines,
To strengthen the link between the two nations, he commanded the construction of Ofir, a powerful harbor city at the mouth of the Great River, in the year 7425 (3056 B.C.).
Soon Ofir had become one of the wealthiest cities of the empire and a target for the savage tribes in the East.
When the empire disintegrated a thousand years after Lhasa’s departure, they succeeded in conquering Ofir in a mighty campaign.
But since the destruction of the city of Ofir in the seventh millennium, the connection had been severed.
Ophir (/ˈoʊfər/;Hebrew: אוֹפִיר, Modern:ʼŌfīr, Tiberian:ʼŌp̄īr) is a port or region mentioned in the Bible, famous for its wealth.
Its existence is attested to by an inscribed pottery shard found at Tell Qasile (in modern-day Tel Aviv) in 1946, dating to the eighth century BC, which reads "gold of Ophir to/for Beth-Horon [..30 shekels" The location of Ophir is unknown, though the find confirms it as a real place from which gold was imported.
To strengthen the link between the two nations, he commanded the construction of Ofir, a powerful harbor city at the mouth of the Great River, in the year 7425 (3056 B.C.).
Soon Ofir had become one of the wealthiest cities of the empire and a target for the savage tribes in the East.
When the empire disintegrated a thousand years after Lhasa’s departure, they succeeded in conquering Ofir in a mighty campaign.
[1] Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.[2] The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.[3] And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah.[4] And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim.[5] By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.[6] And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan.[7] And the sons of Cush; Seba, and Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabtecha: and the sons of Raamah; Sheba, and Dedan.[8] And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.[9] He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD.[10] And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.[11] Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah,[12] And Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city.[13] And Mizraim begat Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Naphtuhim,[14] And Pathrusim, and Casluhim, (out of whom came Philistim,) and Caphtorim.[15] And Canaan begat Sidon his firstborn, and Heth,[16] And the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgasite,[17] And the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite,[18] And the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite: and afterward were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad.[19] And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar, unto Gaza; as thou goest, unto Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Admah, and Zeboim, even unto Lasha.[20] These are the sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their countries, and in their nations.[21] Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were children born.[22] The children of Shem; Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram.[23] And the children of Aram; Uz, and Hul, and Gether, and Mash.[24] And Arphaxad begat Salah; and Salah begat Eber.[25] And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan.[26] And Joktan begat Almodad, and Sheleph, and Hazar-maveth, and Jerah,[27] And Hadoram, and Uzal, and Diklah,[28] And Obal, and Abimael, and Sheba,[29] And Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab: all these were the sons of Joktan.[30] And their dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar a mount of the east.[31] These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations.[32] These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.