as-reliefs at Deir el-Bahari. On their return, after a three years'
absence, they reported that they had sailed to a country named Ophir,
and produced in support of their statement a freight well calculated to
convince the most sceptical, consisting as it did of four hundred and
twenty talents of gold. The success of this first venture encouraged
Solomon to persevere in such expeditions: he sent his fleet on several
voyages to Ophir, and procured from thence a rich harvest of gold and
silver, wood and ivory, apes and peacocks.*

* 1 Kings ix. 26-28, x. 11, 12; cf. 2 Citron, viii. 17, 18, ix. 10, 11,
21. A whole library might be stocked with the various treatises which
have appeared on the situation of the country of Ophir: Arabia, Persia,
India, Java, and America have all been suggested. The mention of almug
wood and of peacocks, which may be of Indian origin, for a long time
inclined the scale in favour of India, but the discoveries of Mauch and
Bent on the Zimbabaye have drawn attention to the basin of the Zambesi
and the ruins found there. Dr. Peters, one of the best-known German
explorers, is inclined to agree with Mauch and Bent, in their theory
as to the position of the Ophir of the Bible. I am rather inclined to
identify it with the Egyptian Puanit, on the Somali or Yemen seaboard.

Was the profit from these distant cruises so very considerable after
all? After they had ceased, memory may have thrown a fanciful glamour
over them, and magnified the treasures they had yielded to fabulous
proportions: we are told that Solomon would have no drinking vessels or
other utensils save those of pure gold, and that in his days "silver was
as stone," so common had it become.*

* 1 Kings x. 21, 27. In Chronicles the statement in the
_Book of Kings_ is repeated in a still more emphatic manner,
since it is there stated that gold itself was "in Jerusalem
as stones" (2 Chron. i. 15).

[Illustration: 370.jpg MAP OF TYRE SUBSEQUENT TO HIRAM]

Doubtless Hiram took good care to obtain his fall share of the gains.
The Phoenician king began to find Tyre too restricted for him, the
various islets over which it was scattered affording too small a space
to support the multitudes which flocked thither. He therefore filled up
the channels which separated them; by means of embankments and fortified
quays he managed to reclaim from the sea a certain amount of land on the
south; after which he constructed two harbours