Solomon's Gold - and any ancient gold by extension...

Factual Questions
1

What is the modern academic consensus about Solomon and his fabled wealth? My cursory Google searching reveals a billion Christian sites breathlessly extolling the fantastic wealth of Israel under Solomon, and another billion sites arguing about the location of the gold mines of Ophir. On the other hand, it seems that archaeological evidence for any of these things is scant to nonexistent. Do modern academics believe that Solomon and/or his wealth were late exaggerations, or made up entirely, or what? What about modern Jewish scholars?

As a secondary point, I can find estimates about the current world amounts of mined gold (~190,000 tonnes, 90% of which has been mined in the last 100 years), and estimates as to the total global gold reserve still in the ground (~50,000 tonnes on land), but I can’t find estimates as to total mined gold for historical periods. Like, how much total mined gold was there in the world in the 1600s, or in 500 BC? The Bible has Solomon giving ~3750 tons of gold for the construction of the Temple. What percentage of world gold would that have been at the time? 50%? 500%?

2

There is no consensus.

Some think he had trade links with the Sinai.

Or Ethiopia.

Or India.

Some don’t think he existed at all.

One theory I recently heard, is that (if he existed), the source of his wealth was not gold, but copper. And that he did not actually possess the copper mines. He just controlled the transportation route between the copper-mining countries to the south of Israel, and the food-producing countries to the north of Israel.

3

I should add that Biblical archaeology is maddeningly tantalizing. You dig up something that looks almost like something described in scripture, but you can never quite prove that it is the thing in the Bible. It’s always a hundred years too old, or a hundred years too young, or a hundred miles from where you want it to be.

4

All of which suggests that the Solomon story is mostly pious fiction, i.e., made up for religious purposes, or just for fireside entertainment.

Like urban legends, there may be a grain of truth behind it, but a very small and unverifiable grain.

We can revise this analysis if more data comes to light, but for now, the default position is to treat the story as fantasy. Trying to determine details, like how much gold, where was it kept, was it really copper, etc., is like having a serious discussion of how long a unicorn’s horn is, how many humps on the Loch Ness Monster, or the flow rate of Johnny Inkslinger’s pen.

5

I get this, but is there some other source or estimate of how much gold there was in the world at a particular point in history? Were we chipping out one tonne a year from 1000 BC to 1000 AD, or what? I don’t care so much about proving or disproving Solomon; just curious as to what the world gold denominator at the time would have been.

To put it another way, when reading about 100,000 talents of gold, it seemed like a ludicrous number to me, like saying you had a ton of U-235 in 1845. But what do I know about how much gold was in circulation at the time? ISTM it’s not easy to find that out.

6

The total weight of gold items in the tomb of Tutankhamen’s tomb was 1200 kilograms; just over a tonne. I’d guess that some of the other tombs had considerably more than that, since Tutankhamen was not one of the most powerful or famous pharoahs. On the other hand most tombs were robbed fairly soon after burial, so I suspect there was quite a quick turn round in recycled gold, making the total amount of gold in ancient times difficult to estimate.

The amount of gold brought back to Europe from the MesoAmerican empires was quite substantial; one figure suggests this amounts to 181 tonnes between 1500 AD and 1650 AD. Would Solomon’s gold have been much more than this? Seems doubtful.

7

As I understand it, nothing has conclusively linked to Solomon that has been discovered in the archaeological record.

But, from what we can tell from archaeology, during Saul’s reign, the tribes of Israel were still living a fairly pastoral life without kings - just shaman/prophets - and where each other valley was its own tribe. There were no palaces, shared temples, etc. it was probably all mostly houses and farmland.

Solomon is only two generations later. Saul unified the tribes under a military leadership, David continued that process, and by Solomon’s time - in my read - the kingdom was trying to achieve recognition from other nations so Solomon was pretty active in trying to make the place look respectable, send gifts to other nations, send diplomats to collect gifts from those nations, etc.

Given that, following Solomon’s death, half the kingdom split off and Egypt eventually came in and plundered the place, my suspicion would be that Solomon was pretty overbearing and really put the screws to his subjects, forcing them to build and mine for gold.

From the Egyptian invasion, we can presume that he gathered enough gold that it was worth stealing.

But we can probably also assume that there was a fair amount of exaggeration in the later descriptions of that treasure.

Given that we don’t live in a gold economy, I couldn’t say what quantity of gold would be a reasonable range to expect - a kilogram, 1000 kg, or what - but my feeling would be that it would probably be far less impressive than any read of the Bible would prepare us for. But it would need to be a healthy little chunk.

At the same time, as said, we’re only two generations off from everyone being sheep farmers. Whatever jewelry and structures they were creating were probably not terribly advanced. Solomon’s “palace” might have been something like a building with multiple whole rooms (ooh, fancy) the size of your average large motorhome more than it might have been anything like what we would envision a kingly palace to look like. On the other hand, in modern times dictators have forced their people to accomplish amazing things in terms of rapidly advancing their technology and the outside appearance of their central, governmental structures. It would really be hard to guess what to expect.

8

He may have been fabulously wealthy relative to what his subjects knew. A palace with 100kg of gold around the main hall is unimaginably rich if you live in a straw-and-mud hut. You don’t need Mogul-levels of wealth. Alsom primitive societies concentrated wealth in one or two places, most people were dirt por and only the alace or main temple had decorations.

Here in Perú you see that the Patron Saint’s church of the area has gold and silver decoration worth a lot of money, all coming from a lot of por people making small donations. It’s not that hard to get ancient-world rich in 10 years.

9

I’ve seen figures for peak Nubian gold production at 40t/a, and Akan (West African) production peaked in the 17th C at 1.2t/a. So pre-Modern production figures are highly variable. But either way, 3402t of gold for some backwater kingdom, only properly attested on 1 stele and otherwisebranded as semi-nomadic barbarians? It is to laugh.

Especially given the paucity of actual, you know, gold mines in the vicinity.