Tarshish: Hacksilber Hoards Pinpoint Solomon’s Silver Source

Hacksilber isotope analysis associates Biblical Tarshish with Sardinia

Noah Wiener for Mosaic Magazine

“Once every three years the fleet of ships of Tarshish used to come bringing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks … the king [Solomon] made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones.” – 1 Kings 10:22-27

“Tarshish did business with you out of the abundance of your great wealth; silver, iron, tin, and lead they exchanged for your wares.” – Ezekial 27:12 (Lamentation over Tyre)

In the Bible, King Hiram of Tyre supplies King Solomon with timber, craftsmen and gold for the construction of the Jerusalem Temple, and the alliance with the Phoenician ruler undoubtedly helped Solomon amass his extraordinary wealth. Biblical and other ancient texts suggest that the seafaring Phoenicians brought silver and other precious metals from the western Mediterranean in the 10th century B.C.E., the time of Hiram and Solomon, and archaeology has revealed numerous Phoenician mercantile colonies across the Mediterranean dating to the first millennium B.C.E.

Did the Phoenicians trade in the western Mediterranean before establishing these colonies? Where is Tarshish, the Biblical source of the Phoenician silver trade? A recent Hacksilber Project study published by Christine M. Thompson and Sheldon Skaggs in Internet Archaeology points to Spain and Sardinia as the Biblical world’s source of silver in the 10th century B.C.E., lending scientific credence to textual associations between Biblical Tarshish and modern Sardinia.

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