In Search of King Solomon's Mines is a travel book by Anglo-Afghan author, Tahir Shah.
Shah's search began with a map in Jerusalem. The map showed a trail leading to the fabled mines of King Solomon, who built the first temple of Israel out of gold, mined from the land of Ophir. Solomon’s Mines have enthralled and tormented all those who have searched for them and superstition whispers of terrible curses that will befall anyone that finds them. Bewitched by the legends, Tahir Shah decided to take up the quest.
Chasing clues gathered from passed traveler’s tales, and local folklore to the Septuagint, the copper scroll, and the Kebra Negast, Shah was led to Ethiopia, whose empress traces decent from the son born to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and where gold has been mined for millennia.
In Harar, he fed wild hyenas that are said the guard Solomon’s treasure. With Samson, a miner-turner-taxi driver, he visited an illegal gold mine near Shakiso, where hundreds of men, women and children toiled in "a biblical Hell".
In the Emperor Haile Selassie's jeep, he explored the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, where the gold of Sheba is kept and ventures on to Afar, possibly ancient Ophir. Shah’s desire was to reach the cursed mountain of Tulu Wallel, where decades before an English adventurer called Frank Hayter claimed to have discovered the gold mines of King Solomon.
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Famous quotes containing the words search, king, solomon and/or mines:
“You have riches and freedom here but I feel no sense of faith or direction. You have so many computers, why don’t you use them in the search for love?”
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“So doth the greater glory dim the less:
A substitute shines brightly as a king
Until a king be by.”
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“Flowers ... that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their colouring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children—honoured as the jewellery of God only by them—when suddenly the voice of Christianity, counter-signing the voice of infancy, raised them to a grandeur transcending the Hebrew throne, although founded by God himself, and pronounced Solomon in all his glory not to be arrayed like one of these.”
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“The humblest observer who goes to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of the character of a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same thing with the wages of honest toil. But, practically, he forgets what he has seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle, and goes into trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly proves another lottery, where the fact is not so obvious.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)