KING SOLOMON'S RICHES

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 131, 19 June 1937, Page 15

KING SOLOMON'S RICHES

Built From Copper Exports,

Treces of intensive occupation, flatmg bacK as far as 2000 B.C., of ti { irid Wadi Araba, which extends from ;he Dead Sea to the Gulf of Akaba, svere described recently by Professor Nelson Glueck, director of the Ameri3an* School of Oriental Besearch in Jerusalem. Very little has ever grown in Arabia, said Professor Gueck. But on the other hand, investigations' carried jut by the American school in conjunction with the Transjordan , Department of Antiquities point to the fact that ire still many signs, stated the archaeand copper ore Irom the north-east to the south-west corner of the area. This area was intensively mined between the twelfth and eighth centuries B.C. and especially in the tenth and ninth centuries and during the reign of King Solomon. Professor Gueck described his expedition into Araba carried out three years ago and the aerial survey which he made recently. The flight revealed

i 1 " on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, an ancient Roman highway which wa§ marked by many Roman posts. This, and all other hTgbways of whieh there ologist, were occupied through all ologist, were occupied through all all periods since the Bronze Age. In Araba many ruins of the minere' huts and piles of slag and remains of smslting furnaces were found. Fragments of pottery were also discovered. The identification of pottery in Palestine has been developed into so exact a science, that these fragments wore sufficient to date most of the miwjng activity as having been concentrated in the "heyday of the Judaean kingtu" Much of King Solomon 's wcalth, Dr. Glueck believes, was derived from the export of copper and iron ore. Ore which was 90 per cent pure haematite has been found at a site behind Petra, that "rose-red" Nabatean stronghold hewn into the. mountains and ap-' proached only through a long, narrow gorge hundreds of feet deep.