GOLD

Historical notes on gold

In Genesis 2: 10-12 it is written:

"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison, that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone."

There has been much speculation as to the location of the land of Havilah, the most probable from a geological viewpoint being that the river Pison is the modern Coruh, which drains into the Black Sea near Batumi and that Havilah is the Pontic goldfield in Turkey, near Trabzon. This field is also probably one of the sites where Jason and the Argonauts sought the Golden Fleece, since within historical times placer miners used sheep's fleeces in this and other fields to catch the gold in their crude sluices.

Strabo (63 B.C.-A.D. 19?), the Greek geographer, recorded method of winning gold:

"The mountain torrents are said to bring down gold, and these barbarians catch it in troughs perforated with holes and in fleecy skins."

Strabo's reference is probably to the river Phasis (the present Rioni in Georgia, Russia, draining from the Caucasus), which drained the Colchis region, supposedly the goal of the Argonauts in the legend of Jason. Whether or not this river produced gold in ancient times is uncertain. If it did, it is another of the possible sites where the legendary Golden Fleece was sought.

Ophir, the fabulously rich land of gold from which King Solomon's Phoenician (Tharshish) navy brought large amounts of the metal (some 34 metric tons) to his kingdom, has led to much speculation as to its location. In Genesis X it is associated with Havilah, which as noted above was probably the Pontic goldfield on the Black Sea. This may account for the long period of time, some three years, to make the voyage from Ezion-geber at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba to Ophir and back (I Kings 10:22). The cargos mentioned, almug (sandalwood) trees, precious stones, ivory, apes and peacocks suggest circumnavigation of Africa. Tharshish or Tarshish (a region centred on Cadiz) suggests that the gold may have come from Spain, and specifically from the oxidized deposits of the Huelva region where the modern mining town of Tharsis often equated with Tarshish is located. Other possibilities are East Africa, principally Rhodesia, and specifically the Zimbabwe region, where some think King Solomon's mines and metallurgical plants were located. This may also have been the site of Punt, exploited by the Egyptians, and from whence in Queen Hatshepsut's time (1600 B.C.) and later great store of gold was brought by the Egyptian navy. Still other possibilities suggested for the site of King Solomon's mines are southern Turkey (Bolkar Mountains), northwest Saudi Arabia (the land of the ancient Midians and possibly the Eldorado of the Hebrews), Sudan (Ancient Nubia; Nub means 'gold' in ancient Egyptian), Altai, Ethiopia, India, Cuba, Peru, the Far East, particularly Japan, Arctic Canada and a hundred other places. The most ancient map known, the famous "Carte des mines d'or" at Turin, is a Rameside papyrus and fragments depicting a gold mining region in Egypt. On it, are located roads, miner's houses, gold mines, quarries, auriferous mountains and so on. The papyrus is said to date back to about 1320 B.C. The exact site represented by the map is in some doubt. Some have suggested the mines represented are those of the Wadi Kareim or the Wadi Hammamat, on the QenaQoseir road. Some say that the area represented on the map is the Wadi Fawakhir in which the El Sid Gold Mine is situated.

Gold has a widespread occurrence in practically every country in the world. In Europe, Asia and Africa ancient gold mines are known in Spain, Great Britain, Greece, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, India, China, Japan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Armenia and numerous other countries. Placers have yielded gold from the rivers Tagus, Guadalquiver, Tiber, Po, Rhone, Rhine, Hebrus (Maritsa), Nile, Zambezi, Niger, Senegal, Pactolus (Sarabat), Oxus (Amu Darya which flows through the golden land of Samarkand), Ganges, Lena, Aldan, Yangtze and hundreds of others too numerous to mention. The Egyptians mined gold extensively in Sinai, eastern Egypt and Sudan (Nubia) as far back as 4000 years ago. It was from them that the Persians, Greeks and Romans learned the techniques of gold prospecting, mining and metallurgy. The Greeks and Romans mined gold ores extensively in the metalliferous regions of their empires. Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) in his "Historia naturalis" Book XXXIII, written in the early years of our era, repeatedly mentions the mining and metallurgy of gold. Agricola in his "De re metallica", and many others before him, refer to the element often in some detail.

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Rafal Swiecki, geological engineer email contact
February, 2006

This document is in the public domain.