All language subtitles for S38E06 - Quest for Solomon’s Mines

King Solomon, son of David, ruler of the
first great Israelite kingdom,

builder of the first temple in
Jerusalem.

The Bible tells us Solomon was not only
the wisest, but the richest of all

kings.

But where did his wealth come from?

Legends tell of fabulous mines of gold
and copper. But where were they?

Archaeologists have searched for
evidence of Solomon and found nothing.

So far, there is absolutely no evidence
for Solomon outside the Bible.

Now, in the deserts of Jordan, mine
shaft carved from bedrock a hundred feet

deep and the remains of ancient
smelting.

We have industrial scale metal
production, layer after layer.

Are these King Solomon's mine?

Are these the bones of his miners?

At last, new finds from Solomon's era,
ancient cities, and the first evidence

early Hebrew writing, clues to the real
world of the great biblical king.

The quest for King Solomon's mine, right
now, on this Nova National Geographic

special.

Major funding for NOVA is provided by
the following.

ExxonMobil, taking on the world's
toughest energy challenges.

And by David H. Koch.

And... Discovering new knowledge.

HHMI.

And by the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting. And by contributions to

station from viewers like you. Thank
you.

Solomon, in the Bible, the wise ruler of
a magnificent Israelite kingdom.

a star on the stage of the ancient Near
East.

All the world came to pay homage to
Solomon and to listen to the

wisdom which God had put into his heart.

The kingdom created by his father, the
warrior King David, under Solomon

new heights of power and prosperity.

King Solomon surpassed all the kings of
the earth in wealth and wisdom.

They brought him tribute, silver and
gold objects, robes, weapons, and

In addition to his vast wealth, the
Bible tells us Solomon was a great

In Jerusalem, He built the famous Temple
of Solomon to house the Ark of the

Covenant, spiritual focus of the newly
unified Israelite kingdom.

Three thousand years later, he is still
revered by all three of the Holy Land's

great faith.

The Jewish people love Solomon.

Because he built the first temple.

To Christians, he is the wisest of Old
Testament kings.

Muslims, too, claim him as one of their
own. The great prophet, Suleiman.

But no conclusive archaeological proof
of Solomon or his great kingdom has ever

been found.

Few traces of his palaces.

Temple, or the sources of his vast
wealth.

His century, the 10th century BC,
remains a mystery.

In the 10th century BC, there are things
which we know, but it's like a puzzle.

Much of the puzzle is dark, and here and
there you have light in the puzzle.

Many scholars have questioned whether
Solomon was a great king at all.

Archaeologists and biblical scholars
have been arguing about whether or not

David and Solomon were magnificent kings
or simple chiefs.

If they were great kings, where did they
get their wealth?

Now, for the first time, a provocative
find may help answer this question.

Ancient minds.

Their shafts disappearing deep beneath
the sands of Jordan.

And bodies.

Were these the miners?

And who was their master?

King Solomon's mines were never
mentioned in the Bible.

But over the centuries became the stuff
of legend.

Popularized by a 19th century adventure
story.

and no less than three Hollywood movies.

Are these the real King Solomon's mines?

Were they the source of the wealth the
Bible chronicles?

New finds are reshaping our image of the
ancient world, giving credence to some

of the Bible's historical accounts, but
also casting an entirely new light on

Solomon's era.

Our quest for Solomon's world begins not
in Israel, but far to the east.

Petra, an ancient trade center built
over 2 ,000

years ago in the highlands of Jordan.

In the mountains around Petra lie the
ruins of an ancient kingdom called Edom.

For over a decade, archaeologist Tom
Levy has been researching the evolution

of that Edomite kingdom.

According to Genesis, the Edomites,
descendants of Jacob's brother Esau,

a kingdom even before ancient Israel.

The remains of Edomite settlement cling
to the mountaintops and plateaus high

above Petra.

Tom wants to know about the sources of
wealth behind the Edomite kingdom.

His search has led him down from the
highland into the baking desert cauldron

the Dead Sea Rift Valley.

It was here in the no -man's land
between ancient Israel and Edom, that he

discovered the clues he was looking for.

In an area called Wadi Feinan was an
entire valley covered with a mysterious

black rock.

This was solidified slag, the waste
product of metal smelting, and on a

massive scale.

Nearby, multiple shafts dug through
rock. And far underground, tunnels

stretching deep inside the hills.

And everywhere, a striking blue -green
rock.

The unmistakable evidence of natural
copper.

The slag, the mines, the copper. It all
added up. This was an ancient

copper mining and smelting complex.

Perhaps the source of wealth behind the
Edomite kingdom.

Most scholars had assumed that it was
trade routes that stimulated the rise of

the Edomite kingdom. But I thought that
metal production and mining might be a

key factor.

The local people called it Kirbit and
Nahas.

Kirbit and Nahas.

In Arabic, it means the ruins of copper.
As you can see around us, the site is

just covered with heaps of black
industrial slag.

Tom has been excavating this site for
almost 10 years.

He has shown how ancient smelters
separated pure copper from the ore in

it's found, then spewed out slag, the
molten waste product of the process.

The layers of slag reveal an astonishing
record of hundreds of years of ancient

copper production.

I'm really excited about this.

Look, right before us, we have
industrial -scale metal production,

layer, almost like a book, that page by
page would reveal the history of metal

production at this site.

Tom believes that metal production
played a key role in the evolution of

only Edom, but of ancient Israel too.

For ritual and prestige, weapons and
tools, metals helped turn simple

agrarian societies into kingdoms.

Ancient people discovered that from blue
rocks like these, a mysterious new

substance could be created.

When heated, it was soft and malleable.
When mixed with tin, cooled and

polished, it had a magical luster.

The Stone Age was over. The Age of
Metals had begun.

has been trying to find out how those
first copper producing techniques

it's really as you see a pit in the

ground and we have the copper ore here
we need to crush it and then we need to

sort out the copper rich fragments you
will see it's not easy

Ancient metal workers needed a way to
raise the temperature of their charcoal

fires to over 1 ,200 degrees Celsius,
the point at which copper separates from

ore.

They did that with blowpipe.

We need three people constantly blowing.

It takes Perez and his friends two hours
of constant blowing before they see the

first sign of smelting.

Can you see the blue flame?

This is a good indicator that a smelting
process is actually taking place.

When they finally take the crucible out
of the fire, they hope to find tiny

droplets of copper in the bottom.

All right, yes.

That's how it looks like.

Look, it looks like very few.

There's another one here.

Yeah, tiny, tiny, but it's metal.

Copper color.

That's an awful lot of work for very
little metal.

But for thousands of years, this is how
people smelted copper.

The difficulty of producing it may have
been why it was largely used for ritual

objects and ornaments.

But that small -scale village production
is not what Tom has discovered.

at Kirbit Ennahan.

Over years of excavation, his team from
the University of California at San

Diego has revealed the remains of a
massive operation.

A copper producing factory.

The site is so large, they send up
cameras attached to helium balloons to

better sense of its scale.

The aerial photos clearly reveal the
structures of the ancient factory.

A fortress and gatehouse.

An administrative building.

A tower.

A temple.

The site was enormous Its massive walls
buildings

and slag covered an area of 25 acres

Up to a thousand men worked here day and

night feeding the furnace where the
copper was not

Erez Ben Yosef is excavating one of
those smelters.

It's like a treasure for us to try and
actually reconstruct the technology step

by step.

At the moment, Erez is unearthing the
business end of the smelter, the

called tuyeres, where the air from the
bellows blasted into the smelter.

This is the nozzle of the bellow pipe.

It's just one of the best.

preserved tree area we have seen in this
area.

The nozzle of a bellow pipe may not
sound like a great find, but to Erez,

crucial evidence for the technological
innovations that made large -scale

smelting possible.

We will try to take it out.

We can help him from this side.

Try not to break them.

All right.

Okay, that's a nice one.

You can see the nozzle, but it's all
covered with slag.

This was the hottest place in the
furnace.

You can see even some copper pills in
the slag, some actual copper metal.

Beneath the slag, the nozzle has been
carefully made from layers of fired

This was necessary for it to withstand
the 1200 degree temperatures of the

furnace This

new shaft furnace was powered by foot
bellows providing a steady stream of air

into the smelter

During the second millennium BCE, we
have the introduction of this amazing

furnace that made this all copper
production process much more efficient.

With men working day and night, copper
could be produced on an industrial

And it was.

Environmental scientist John Gratton is
discovering ancient pollution, a measure

of just how intensive this copper
production was.

I'm using this instrument, which
measures metals in the environment, to

map where the pollution actually is. It
says there's nearly 7 ,000 parts per

million copper just in the small sample
I've taken.

That's really nearly 7 ,000 times more
than is safe to be in the soil.

If copper wasn't bad enough, looking
down here, I can see extremely high

dangerously high levels of lead, zinc,
arsenic, and this is just on this one

tiny spot.

Using a state -of -the -art X -ray
fluorescence device, John Gratton has

powerful confirmation of the scale of
ancient copper smelting at Kirbet and

Nahar.

Copper was no longer an ornament. It was
a commodity, vital for tools, weapons,

and buildings.

Demand for the precious metal exploded,
turning the

Dead Sea Rift Valley into an industrial
powerhouse.

We've got here the evidence of the
earliest industrial revolution.

and what I see as the birth of the
modern world.

But how did they get the tons of copper
ore they needed to power this

revolution?

Over 15 mines have been found, cut into
the copper -rich hills surrounding

Kirbit and Nahar.

Project co -director, Jordanian
archaeologist Mohamed Najjar is

them. During our work here, we find out
that the shafts

are from 3 ,000 years ago.

Many of the mines were over 100 feet
deep to reach the copper seams far below

ground.

Even with modern climbing gear, the
descent is perilous.

It's not easy to go down or up. We know
that probably ancient miners were inside

the galleries, inside the mines for many
months.

Mohammed and Tom both believe the miners
were slaves.

This was not the kind of work that
anyone would want to do, even for pay.

In order to mine on this industrial
scale, some sort of forced labor system

must have been in existence.

Imprisoned in claustrophobic tunnels far
underground, the miners hacked out the

copper -bearing rock that fed the
smelters of Kirbit and Nahas.

Above ground, camel trains waited to
transport the copper ore to the smelting

site.

Okay, guys, so we're going to take our
ore.

To understand the copper ore supply
system, Tom Levy is recreating

one of those camel trains.

We want to try and experiment what it
would be like to actually take ore that

would have been mined in one of these
mines.

We've got one right behind me here.

And by having these camels and our
Bedouin friends helping us, we'll be

reconstruct that process.

They've discovered that a single camel
can carry about 300 pounds of ore. But

usually that ore is only 10 % copper and
90 % useless rock.

So for every 30 pounds of pure copper,
they needed at least a camel load of

That means that 3 ,000 years ago,
ancient camel supply trains like this

probably made their way through these
same desert wadis every day.

All heading for the largest copper
-smelting site of the Dead Sea Rift

Kirbit and Nahaz.

The size of the slag heath indicates
that over its lifetime, the site

,000 tons of copper, enough to supply
copper.

to the entire region.

Isotope analysis of copper objects from
sites all over ancient Israel has proved

that they came from the Wadi Feinan
area.

Right now in Israel, a metallurgical
study of copper objects that were found

context of 11th century, late 12th and
11th century BC, were proven to

from Feinan.

Perhaps this copper even reached
Jerusalem, where Solomon built his

The Bible tells us that the temple would
require precious metals, including tons

of copper.

And the closest source of copper for
Jerusalem, it's about a three -day ride

from here, is this area of Fanon.

Then the word of the Lord came to
Solomon, saying, Concerning this house

which you are building, if you keep all
my commandments, I will dwell among the

children of Israel and will not forsake
my people.

So Solomon built the temple.

In the outer room, he placed elaborately
carved figures and massive pillars.

And according to the Bible, all were
cast in gleaming copper.

The inner sanctuary he prepared, setting
there the Ark of the Covenant of the

Lord. And he overlaid it with pure gold.

If Solomon's temple and his palaces
existed, they would have needed a lot of

copper.

So who controlled the burgeoning copper
industry of the Dead Sea Valley?

One thing is for sure.

It had to be an advanced society.

Copper production involves many
different activities.

Mining. then smelting, distributing.

You need management to do that. And that
can be done only by a complex society.

It had to have been controlled by
something as complex as an ancient

The question arises, what kingdom?

Kirbit and Nahas, within the no -man's
land between three ancient kingdoms.

Any one of them could have had a hand in
copper production.

To the west was ancient Israel.

To the east, Edom.

Far to the southwest, the great power of
the region, Egypt.

While I was sitting over there, my
colleague, Dr.

Najjar, was waving his arms furiously,
said, we just found something.

It's an Egyptian scarab.

The scarab suggests that at one time,
Egypt was an important player here.

Based on this and other evidence, like
an Egyptian shrine at a nearby site,

clear that in the centuries preceding
Solomon, Egyptians controlled the copper

industry of the Dead Sea Valley.

Undoubtedly, we had Egyptians here
running the mines. They had the control.

during the 13th century.

But then, in the 12th century B .C.,
unexplained events shook the ancient

East. All of its great civilizations
fell.

Around 1200 B .C., the entire political
structure of the Bronze Age collapsed.

First, the Hittites on the north, the
Mycenaeans on the west, and finally the

Egyptian Empire.

collapsed and left a great void.

In this political void, new powers
emerged.

We basically have a vacuum.

This collapse took down the big empires
and opened the way for something new.

In the area of Kirbit and Nahar, that
something new was the rise of ancient

Israel and Edom.

Tom believes these are the only two
candidates.

for control of the copper mine.

The more likely is nearby Edom.

And now, a new find near the smelting
complex may confirm that.

It's an ancient cemetery.

These were circular graves with a cyst
burial in the middle, which is like a

stone -lined box.

and capstones on top of it.

We're hoping that by the end of the day,
we'll be ready to lift those capstones.

The moment of truth has arrived.

Yeah.

This is windblown sediment here.

All right, this tomb looks like it's...

It's going to be filled with sediment.

It seems they're in for a
disappointment.

They're not the first to open this
grave.

It looks like it's been disturbed in
antiquity.

We had hoped that we would pop these
stones and find a beautiful, pristine

grave. But let's wait.

Archaeology is about patience.

Okay, so this is five.

That's good. Maybe on this side.

But before long, good news.

They catch their first glimpse of bone.

It looks like we've got a skull.

There's a lot of pieces missing.

It's possible that we're going to have
an articulated skeleton extending here.

So that's exciting.

Carefully, Tom's team starts the process
of extracting the skeleton from the

sand which has encased it for 3 ,000
years.

Finally, the entire skeleton is
revealed.

This is a fully articulated skeleton in
a crouched position, almost a

fetal position.

So did this man have any connection with
the mines?

If he did, his teeth and bones would
contain copper and lead.

the telltale traces of copper smelting.

Samples are crushed and dissolved, then
analyzed in a mass spectrometer to

reveal their chemical composition.

The results are compared to skeletons
from before the copper revolution.

Well, the remains from the cemetery have
four times as much copper and lead

content as the prehistoric remains.

That may mean that we've identified some
individuals that were actually involved

in the smelting activity.

Even though this man was probably one of
the copper workers, There was nothing

in the grave to suggest his ethnicity.

But artifacts from the cemetery and
pottery found nearby provide the answer.

The people buried here were from this
region.

We are talking about ceramics and
different finds here.

What we have here is Edomite.

The discovery that the workers at Kirbit
and Nahas were probably Edomite seemed

to confirm assumptions about the dating
of the mining complex.

I assume, like the scholarly consensus
of the time, that it must date to around

the 7th century BCE.

That 7th century BCE dating was crucial
to Tom's first understanding of what

went on here.

He knew that Egypt had collapsed in the
12th century BCE.

along with all the other great empires
of the region.

Based on the timeline of kings laid out
in the Bible, Solomon's Israel

flourished in the 10th century BC.

The rise of the Edomite kingdom has
traditionally been dated to the 7th

BC.

So with the evidence from Kirbit and
Nahath pointing to Edom, it made sense

smelting complex would be from the 7th
century too.

To confirm that dating, Tom has brought
radiocarbon specialist Tom Hyam from the

University of Oxford to help him.

At the guardhouse and the slag heap,
they look for samples of organic

that can be dated.

Twigs, pieces of charcoal, date seeds
spat out by the miners.

Well, in order to get really precise
dates, we have to have a sequence of

samples. So you're saying we need
samples from all these sedimentary

A sequence of samples allows them to
create a chronology.

All the dates need to be consistent, or
the whole sequence is called into

question.

Tom Haim takes the samples back to the
lab at Oxford.

Radiocarbon dating.

combined with modern statistical
analysis, will allow him to calculate

to an accuracy of plus or minus 30
years.

The result is really a surprise.

We've got the preliminary results here
that you can see on the screen, and what

is immediately apparent is that the
samples are all fitting in the 10th and

century.

This means the mines were operating not
in the 7th century BC, but three to four

centuries before that.

We're able to say with a great deal of
confidence now that these sites were

operating in the 10th and 11th centuries
BC. There's absolutely no question

about it.

The dating has thrown the team a
curveball.

According to the well -accepted
archaeological chronology, there was no

kingdom in the 11th or 10th century BC
that could have controlled these mines.

Is this evidence of an earlier Edomite
kingdom?

If so, it might lend credence to the
Bible's account of David's campaign

the Edomites.

The Bible tells us that David conquered
Edom and established strongholds over

the area, like the fortress at Shebet
HaNahat.

He stationed garrisons throughout Edom,
and all the Edomites

became vassals of David.

The fortress that we found at Shebet
HaNahat It's similar to other fortresses

found in ancient Israel.

Could it be that David invaded Edom to
get hold of its copper?

If so, his son Solomon would have
inherited these mines.

But was the kingdom of David and Solomon
advanced enough to control the copper

industry of the Dead Sea Rift Valley?

The biblical account of Solomon's
kingdom makes it sound so huge and

that controlling the Dead Sea Rift
Valley would have been no problem.

And Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms
from the Euphrates to the land of the

Philistines and to the border of Egypt.

But in the last 20 years, archaeologists
have cast doubt on that story.

For decades, they've searched for
evidence of the great 10th century BC

of David and Solomon and found almost
nothing.

There are a few clues.

A carved inscription from the 9th
century BC records the victory of an

king. over what it called the House of
David.

Good evidence for David, but not
necessarily for a great kingdom.

Ruins in Jerusalem, claimed to be the
city of David, have still not been

conclusively dated.

Some archaeologists believe they're from
a later period.

The same uncertainties surround the
kingdom of Solomon described in the

Few doubt that David and Solomon
existed.

There is just no proof they were great
kings, capable of commanding a copper

industry like Kirbit and Nahar.

Some believe they were more like tribal
chieftains.

If that is true, how did the Bible come
to describe Solomon as ruler of a

magnificent kingdom?

Perhaps because the stories of Solomon
were passed down by word of mouth for

generations.

In the process, they were embroidered.

King Solomon married many foreign women
in addition to Pharaoh's daughter.

He had 700 royal wives and 300
concubines.

When we read the biblical tradition
concerning Solomon, there is no doubt

the text is exaggerating to a huge
extent.

The mansions of the kingdom, the
prosperity, all those gold troves in

etc.

The fact that Solomon had 1 ,000 wives,
there were almost 1 ,000 people living

in Jerusalem at that time, so to have 1
,000 wives, it would be quite difficult.

So, David and Solomon, great kings or
tribal chieftains?

The debate has raged for 40 years.

Finally, discoveries at an extraordinary
new site may help resolve it.

Kirbit Kiatha, on the border of ancient
Israel and the land of the Philistines,

in exactly the place where the Bible
says the young King David slew the

Philistine giant, Goliath.

Here, archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel has
been excavating a fortified ancient

settlement.

Its massive walls are testament to a
highly organized workforce.

We have here the city wall of Rivet
Kayafa, and we calculated that about 200

,000 tons of stones were needed to build
the fortification of this city.

This is no tribal encampment.

These massive fortifications seem to be
the sign of a political structure far

more developed than a highland chiefdom.

Other tantalizing clues include the
handles of some pottery jugs, which bear

thumb imprints.

often used as an official state seal.

You see here a very nice impression.
This is thumb impression made by the

before the jar went into the kiln to be
fired.

They were marked so we know that they
are not private jars, but jars belong to

the kingdom.

Further evidence suggests it was an
early Israelite city.

Among animal bones found in the rubbish
heaps of the settlement, Yossi and his

team have noticed an intriguing absence.

So these are animal bones, and you can
see these are teeth and part of a

mandible. And this is sheep or goat.

In our site, we have only sheep, goat,
and kettles. We don't have pig bones.

Philistine settlements are full of pig
bones.

So could this be a sign that at Kieffa,
the Israelite taboo on pork was already

being observed?

When Yossi and his team had organic
remains from the site dated, their

excitement grew.

According to radio carbon dating, this
is from the late 11th, early 10th

BC. So this is really from the time of
King David.

If Jaffa was an Israelite city, it would
be the earliest ever found.

Another discovery suggests an Israelite
site in an even more dramatic way.

It was made by a teenager working here
on a summer break.

When I found it, I thought it was just
another piece of pottery.

Me and my friend Sanyo were digging up
pieces of pottery, lots of them.

But among them was this one piece with
writing on it, the ostracon.

The ostracon is a piece of pottery with
writing painted on it.

It was a nice geometric shape.

It was quite strange because usually
pottery sheds are much smaller and they

don't have a geometric shape.

Only in the afternoon when it was washed
in water, suddenly we saw that it had

inscription on it.

And then the question is, what is the
language?

The ostracon is faded and almost
illegible.

Before Yossi can decipher it, he has to
be able to read it clearly.

That means sending it to Greg Bierman in
Santa Barbara, California, who uses a

unique imaging technology.

The reason you're unable to see things
on pottery or papyrus or any kind of

thing like this at the eye is the
substrate has somehow gotten faded. It's

And so you're looking at a dark
background with dark text. It's very

the human eye to see. It's, you know,
looking for the black cat at midnight

situation.

The photospectroscopy system takes
hundreds of pictures of the octagon at

different wavelengths to find out where
the contrast between writing and

background is highest.

Here's an example taken with 365
nanometers. It's blank.

It may as well not even be anything on
there. So this shows that in this

wavelength, the powder and the ink
basically reflect the same amount of

and you don't see anything.

As you go up in wavelength, we're
stepping into the blue, and we're now

about 500 nanometers. And you see text
is starting to show up.

By combining and processing photos taken
at many different wavelengths, Greg

finally arrived at a clear image of the
text.

A replica of the ostracon was sent to
Bill Schneiderwind at UCLA.

This is really the most important early
alphabetic text that we have.

You know, frequently when we talk about
text from this time period, there are

three letters, four letters, five
letters.

Here you have five lines.

The letters are Canaanite, the first
alphabetic writing system that would

rise to many others, including Hebrew
and our own.

But deciphering what the script says is
a challenge.

To the ancient writing experts working
with Yossi in Jerusalem, they seem to be

written in a haphazard way, sometimes
upside down, sometimes standing up,

sometimes on their side.

The A, the Aleph, which is the same as
the A,

Stand here three times. One on the legs,
the other time on the head, which is

the original one, and then on the side.

Struggling to piece together the words
which the letters form, the expert can

hardly contain their excitement.

This is definitely a Hebrew word.

Altas, don't do. It started with don't
do.

They can make out other Hebrew words
too.

Evis, worship.

Shaphat, judge.

Nakam, revenge.

And Melech, king. The writing is
Canaanite, but the words are

Hebrew. So it's not quite Hebrew script
yet, but eventually this script will

develop into Hebrew.

It makes the ostracon an historic find,
a remarkable testament to the birth of

Hebrew writing.

in the process of being systematized.

I only can say that I hold in my hand
the most ancient Hebrew text.

But what everybody really wants to know
is what does it

say?

That question is not easy

to answer.

This is a very difficult inscription.

Hebrew was written without vowels.

So imagine a poorly preserved vowel
-less text.

There's a lot of different ways to read
a word. It could be a noun, it could be

a verb.

It's much more problematic than I think
most people realize.

Haggai Mizgav is cautious.

We can say very carefully that it's a...

a text and not just a list of names.
There is sentences there, and there may

sentences with a judicial or moral
meaning, and that's all.

The exact meaning of the kiafa astrakhan
may never be deciphered, but its

significance is undeniable.

It shows that in Solomon's century, in
fortified cities, Texts were being

copied in a very early version of
written Hebrew.

The finds at Keatha suggest a solution
to the long -running debate about

Solomon.

Like Hebrew writing, Solomon's Israelite
kingdom was in the early stages of its

formation. A small kingdom struggling to
become a bigger one.

This may make sense of one of the few
facts about 10th century BC Israel we

be sure of.

The Bible notes that five years after
Solomon died, an Egyptian army invaded

Solomon's kingdom was crushed.

In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, King
Shishak of Egypt marched against

Jerusalem with 1 ,200 chariots.

60 ,000 horsemen, and innumerable troops
who came with him from Egypt.

Many scholars claim the biblical account
of Shishak's invasion of Israel is

backed up by a giant relief in the
ancient Egyptian city of Thebes.

Figures containing images of bound
captives and city walls represent the

Shishak ransacked.

We can see that this raid is intended to
cross the central hill country, just

north of Jerusalem.

No pharaoh before him did this. They
always just moved along the coast.

That means he in particular wanted to
reach the area of Jerusalem.

Perhaps the Solomonic kingdom threatened
some Egyptian interests in this region.

If that is the case, Shishak's raid is
one last piece of compelling evidence

the rising power of Solomon's kingdom.

If ancient Israel was a land of tribal
chiefdoms, why would Shishak bother to

invade?

Perhaps this was a Sherman's march
through the ancient Near East to flatten

upstart kingdom.

there may be evidence that one of
Shishak's targets was copper production

Dead Sea Rift Valley.

In a cross -section of a slag heap, Tom
Levy sees layers of slag laid down

regularly year after year.

But then, there is a break.

What you see is this disruption in the
metal production activities at the end

the 10th century.

The thin layers suggest a stoppage of
work at the smelters. Levy believes this

corresponds to the time of Shishak's
invasion.

While scholars debate the details of
Shishak's campaign, they all agree on

one thing.

You know, to put a hand on the copper
supply at that time was really critical.

Whoever controlled or tried to
monopolize this was in power.

So were these King Solomon's mines?

I hope that in our excavations at Shebet
HaNahas we'll ultimately find

inscriptions that can tell us about
biblical characters, whether they were

Edomites or the early Israelite kings
like David and Solomon.

But that's a hope.

Perhaps control of the mines changed
hands as different kingdoms came into

power.

Whoever controlled the mines, we know
copper from Wadi Feinan was traded

throughout the region and probably
reached Jerusalem.

I believe that if one day we shall find
the copper object of the temple in

Jerusalem, it will prove to come from
this area.

One thing is certain. The find that
Kirbit and Nahas and Kiyafa have

our image of the mysterious 10th century
B .C., Solomon's century.

It was a time of walled cities and
scribes, of rising kingdoms.

that could command a flourishing copper
industry.

At last, King Solomon's Israel and the
mysterious kingdom of Edom are

emerging from the shadows.

And along with them, the long -forgotten
metal revolution which transformed

their era.

Major funding for NOVA is provided by
the following.

ExxonMobil, taking on the world's
toughest energy challenges.

And by David H. Koch.

And... Discovering new knowledge.

HHMI.

And by the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting.

and by contributions to your PBS station
from viewers like you. Thank you.