Archaeologists believe a desert site in Jordan may contain the ruins of Shlomo HaMelech’s mines. Researchers using carbon dating techniques at Khirbat en-Nahas in southern Jordan discovered that copper production took place there around the time Shlomo HaMelech is said to have been king.
The research findings were reported in this week’s issue of the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which came out Monday.
The fabled mines entered popular culture in 1885 with the publication in Great Britain of the bestselling “King Solomon’s Mines” by Sir H. Rider Haggard. In the book, adventurers in search of the mines find gold, diamonds and ivory. Since then, the mines have been the subject of much curiosity. Yet their possible location — and whether they exist at all — remains cloaked in mystery.
Thomas Levy of the University of California San Diego, who led the research, said carbon dating placed copper production at Khirbat en-Nahas (Arabic for ‘Ruins of copper”) in the 10th century — in line with historical dating of Shlomo HaMelech’s rule. “…This research represents a confluence between the archaeological and scientific data and the Bible,” Levy said in a university statement.
Khirbat en-Nahas is an arid region south of the Dead Sea, in Jordan’s Faynan district. Tanach identifies the area with the kingdom of Edom.
As early as the 1930s, archaeologists linked the site to the Edomite kingdom, but some of those claims were dismissed in subsequent years.
(Source: CNN)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
3 Responses
Shlomo Hamelech lived During the first temple era, and therefore before the 1st century, the century count is based on the Death of Yushka
I hope this doesn’t encourage some radical zionists to invade Jordan.
#1, how is the point you are making related to the article? The article mentions the 10th century, which is obviously BCE.