Original subtitles

[narrator] In a remote desert of southern Israel,

lies a labyrinth of ancient tunnels.

Unlikely discoveries

have unearthed evidence that they may have belonged to the richest man

who ever lived.

Solomon's wealth was absolutely out of this world.

He had gold, silver, precious jewels, monkeys, peacocks.

This was an incredibly wealthy man.

[narrator] According to legend,

mining made the biblical King Solomon unimaginably wealthy.

A single season of mining brings in around $800 million.

[narrator] Today, archeologists are scouring the region for these mines.

This is where I think we found evidence for King Solomon's mine.

[narrator] What is the truth?

How did King Solomon get his incredible wealth?

And could these tunnels really be the answer?

It's one of the greatest treasure hunts of all time,

the hunt for King Solomon's mines.

[woman vocalizing]

[narrator] Timna National Park,

southern Israel.

Home to a labyrinth of sandstone tunnels,

which could be the historical remains of King Solomon's mines.

If this is correct, in the 10th century BC

they would've been a hive of activity,

mining precious metals that made Solomon

one of the wealthiest men who ever lived.

If we compare King Solomon's wealth to today,

then he would probably be the richest man in the world, by far.

We're talking, like, a trillionaire.

[narrator] King Solomon, and his great wealth,

has been the subject of many books and blockbuster films.

Yet the truth of how the king became so rich is a mystery.

One of the great intriguing questions

has to be "What happened to the source of Solomon's wealth?"

[narrator] As archeologists aim to uncover the truth, they're faced with a problem.

Jerusalem, which was the heart of Solomon's empire,

has been reconstructed many times over the centuries.

As an archeologist, it is plausible that

treasures associated with King Solomon are still out there.

[narrator] For many, they key to finding the source of Solomon's wealth

is understanding the truth behind the man himself.

Biblical texts tell us he was the son of King David,

who had united the tribes of Israel under one religion.

Yet according to the Bible,

it was Solomon who built the first temple on Earth to the Old Testament God.

King Solomon's temple is very important in Judaism, and Christianity and Islam.

King Solomon is right at the start of the life of Israel as a nation.

[narrator] But why was Solomon chosen to build the first temple

instead of his all-conquering father, David?

Getting to the roots of the legend, Bena Mantel is in Jerusalem.

So the Bible is very clear to us

in telling us why is it Solomon who gets to build the temple

and not David.

And the Bible says that David is unworthy of building a house for God.

because of the blood that's on his hands.

King Solomon, however, the son of King David,

already inherited this full-blown kingdom

and never had to shed blood over it.

And therefore he could be the one to build a house for God.

[narrator] If the story is to be believed,

Solomon made his temple one of the most lavish buildings ever constructed,

with two bronze pillars welcoming worshipers

inside the gold-laden building.

[Newman] Solomon's temple would've been very impressive,

and would've been constructed using the finest masons at the time.

And so no doubt it would've been an architectural wonder.

To some who were going into this temple it would've been, literally,

like entering paradise.

I mean, we're talking about something with huge columns,

and gold and jewels, and everything painted richly and ornately.

[narrator] While the stories of grandeur make for a wonderful tale,

today the archeological evidence for this great temple is nonexistent.

Solomon temple in Jerusalem is a big riddle.

We know very little about it.

We don't have any archeological remains.

Of course, it's not possible to dig in the place where the temple was built.

Today it's a very, uh, important and holy place for Islam.

[narrator] With a lack of hard evidence,

the Holy Scriptures offer the best clues

to how Solomon became so wealthy.

They say that during a dream the king was visited by God.

So we have a wonderful story

about Solomon praying to God.

And then God essentially appearing before Solomon

and asking him what does he want.

Typically, in these kinds of stories,

uh, kings ask for power, money, domination, this kind of thing.

But what Solomon asked for was wisdom.

[narrator] The Bible claims God grants the young king his desire.

And in the 3,000 years since his reign,

Solomon has become synonymous with wisdom.

[Tony McMahon] And there's a classic story,

and it's two women who come to the king with a baby

and both are claiming ownership of this baby.

[Dr. Boakye] The way Solomon chose to resolve the issue

was to say he was going to cut the child in half and they can have half each.

[McMahon] Now, one of the women says,

"Yeah, all right, I'll take my half."

The other one says, "No! Keep the baby whole, give it to her."

And Solomon realizes that must be the mother,

because what mother would want to see

such a terrible thing happen to her child?

[narrator] But according to legend,

wisdom wasn't the only thing God gave Solomon.

[Mantel] God is so pleased

that he tells him, "Not only I will give you wisdom,

but I will give you the wealth and all the other things to go along with it."

[narrator] If the Bible is to be believed, it was from this point

that Solomon became one of the richest men who ever lived.

Solomon's wealth, it's been estimated,

is the equivalent today of something like $2 trillion.

He had everything a man could possibly want.

[narrator] Despite the Bible claiming Solomon's wealth was a gift from God,

today scholars are hunting for a more tangible source.

There wasn't much being written

about where his wealth really came from.

It's opened up this possibility of mines,

but where are these mines?

[narrator] In the time of Solomon, a thousand years before Christ,

kings became powerful by controlling natural resources.

Many believe that precious metals dug from ancient mines

were the source of Solomon's wealth.

Yet if this is the case,

it's a mystery why they are not mentioned in the Bible.

When you go to the Bible we don't...

We don't hear about King Solomon's mines.

There are actually no mines in the text.

[narrator] Strangely, the idea of these mines didn't enter public consciousness

until the late 19th century.

There is no mention in any ancient source of King Solomon's mines.

In fact, they were only invented in the Victorian period

by an English author, H. Rider Haggard,

who wrote a rip-roaring Victorian adventure story

and called it King Solomon's Mines.

[narrator] While Haggard's bestselling book was fiction,

some scholars argue that the tale it tells could be based in reality.

Well, I think like a lot of Victorian colonial authors,

he was probably a man who'd gone and done service in the empire.

He heard local myths, local folklore.

He will have heard something that excited his interest,

and that he turned into a bestselling novel.

[narrator] Ever since the release of the book,

treasure hunters and archeologists alike have been dreaming

of finding King Solomon's mines.

With many believing, if you find the mines,

you may find the source of Solomon's treasures within.

So if we are wondering to ourself,

"Where are Solomon's mines?"

Well, I would have to look to the nearest most likely place.

And the nearest place would be the desert.

[narrator] The Timna Valley, southern Israel.

Many 20th century scholars have dismissed any connection

between this place and King Solomon.

But one archeologist, Professor Erez Ben-Yosef, believes they're wrong.

He spent over a decade trying to unearth its secrets.

This is the Timna Valley.

This is where I think King Solomon's mines were.

We have evidence, uh, that dates the site

to the period of King Solomon, 10th century BC.

[narrator] Could this desert hold the answers

to King Solomon's mysterious wealth?

Wow, this is amazing.

[narrator] The quest for King Solomon's mines

is one of the greatest biblical treasure hunts.

There are few historical accounts of where his wealth came from.

But Professor Erez Ben-Yosef believes the Timna Valley,

150 miles from Jerusalem in southern Israel,

could hold the answers to this mystery.

Well, this is the Timna Valley.

This is where I think we found evidence

for King Solomon's mines.

[narrator] Legend has it that the Old Testament king had a number of gold mines,

which were the source of his great riches.

[Ben-Yosef] Here we have an entrance

to a very cool mine.

We can go to the mountain.

These are the ancient mines of Timna.

We are inside one of the mines.

And you can see that it's like, uh, Swiss cheese.

The entire sandstone is full of tunnels and shafts.

[narrator] After nearly a decade of research,

Erez is convinced that around the year 1,000 BC,

these were the source of King Solomon's wealth.

We can see also chisel marks.

There are thousands of mines like that all over the Timna Valley.

You can see the work here was extremely challenging.

It's barely one person that can go inside.

In some places, we believe, it was only children.

It's fair to say that life for a miner

in the Timna mines would've been horrendous,

utilizing very simple tools

to extract these ores.

[Dr. Karen Bellinger] We know they had to dig down as much as 60 feet.

And then they're crawling around in these underground tunnels,

zero ventilation, very little water.

It would've been absolutely horrible.

[narrator] Stretching over 27 square miles,

for Erez, these mines are on a scale large enough

to have generated King Solomon's fabled riches.

It's incredibly exciting to think that the mines at Timna

could have been owned by King Solomon.

This is something that wouldn't have been glamorous,

but it certainly would have been impressive.

It would've been industry on a scale

that we don't think of existing in the ancient world.

[narrator] Incredibly, there is still evidence of what Solomon's miners

could've been digging for.

[Ben-Yosef] This green stuff, this green vein.

This is what they were looking after.

This is copper mineral.

So these were copper mines.

[narrator] Copper would have been incredibly important in the time of Solomon,

since his reign was during the Bronze Age.

Given the centrality of copper

to the ability to produce wealth in the Bronze Age,

it's absolutely possible that King Solomon's wealth,

properly, should be measured in copper.

[narrator] During the time of Solomon,

most tools and weapons were made of bronze,

which is a metal alloy made using copper.

These mines must have been incredibly lucrative.

Copper was essential to making bronze,

and you need bronze for weapons.

So this could very well be King Solomon's mines.

Don't fixate on gold, fixate on copper instead.

You cannot exaggerate the importance of copper at the time of King Solomon.

Whoever had control

over this metal, had the... the source of power.

[narrator] But if these mines were the source of King Solomon's wealth,

an industrial-sized process of turning ore into metal would have been required.

Investigating the smelting process, historic metalworker Fergus Milton

has spent the last 20 years researching ancient metallurgy.

For copper smelting,

you would start with raw materials,

rocks, that we call ores,

that are dug from the ground.

This particular ore is called malachite.

This is an oxidized ore that would normally be found closer to the surface.

And at Timna, they would've exploited these,

but then they would have had to follow the copper underground.

[narrator] Fergus is processing the copper ore

using the same techniques that were employed in the Bronze Age.

[Milton] For the smelting process to work

we need a lot of heat.

By pushing air into the burning charcoal,

we can get it above 1,600 Fahrenheit,

which is the temperature we need

to start changing the copper ore into copper metal.

The flames are a weak purple,

and that tells me there's carbon monoxide gas being produced.

The carbon monoxide just helps to break down the chemical bonds in the rock,

so that we can separate out the components

and be left with the metal that we're actually after.

[narrator] After 20 minutes of purple flames,

all of the green ore should have turned into copper,

with the other chemicals burning off as gas.

[Milton] So this is some of the copper we've produced.

We can cast it to make axes, knives, arrowheads, anything we want.

Or we can combine it with other metals like tin

to make bronze.

[narrator] Were these mines to have been the source of Solomon's wealth,

industrial-scale smelting would have happened here.

And Erez might have found the remains of just that.

This is Slaves' Hill.

This is the largest smelting site in Timna.

This is the center of copper production.

Look at that.

This is a pile of slag.

This means that furnaces were here in this location.

[narrator] Slag is the byproduct of smelting.

And there's an abundance of this ancient remnant at this site.

Erez believes that during the time of Solomon,

this hill would have had dozens of smelting furnaces,

operated by over a hundred people.

Yet, despite the name Slaves' Hill,

he believes these people were anything but slaves.

We excavate the slag mounds,

and find fantastic stuff that tells us

the metal workers were, you know,

part of the elite of the society, maybe even priests.

[narrator] During Solomon's reign,

the process of smelting copper would have been seen as divine magic

to the common worker.

Therefore, because of their connection to God,

priests would have led the copper production,

making it a ritualistic process.

And making King Solomon one of the wealthiest men to ever live.

But the Timna mines have long been controversial.

One mainstream archeological dig,

carried out at the site in the 20th century,

dated these mines much earlier than the era of King Solomon.

What's kind of interesting about the Timna mines, specifically,

is that there's a great deal of evidence that the Egyptians were implicated

in this mining.

[narrator] Over the past 50 years,

many archeologists have claimed these mines

were under the control of the ancient Egyptians

during the 19th and 20th dynasties,

hundreds of years before the time of Solomon.

Like the biblical king, copper would have been crucial to the Egyptian pharaohs.

But Erez is sticking to his new theory.

[Ben-Yosef] This is the entrance to the Timna Park.

And for years

people believed that these were Egyptian mines.

And this is why we have Egyptian statues here.

And I believe that the park now should change these figures to King Solomon.

[narrator] Could 50 years of archeological research be wrong?

And could these really be the legendary King Solomon's mines?

Professor Erez Ben-Yosef is in the Timna Valley of southern Israel.

He's found evidence that he believes is proof

that these caves were the source of King Solomon's wealth.

Although Erez is sure that these mines belong to the Old Testament king,

half a century of archeological research says otherwise.

The Timna copper mines are in an area of the ancient Middle East

that was actually associated with the Egyptian empire, with the pharaohs.

[narrator] Ancient Egyptian records show

that the pharaohs ruled the region 300 years before the time of Solomon.

And archeological evidence found in 1969 supports this theory.

This is the famous Egyptian temple of Timna.

It was found by Beno Rothenberg.

And this was a major discovery,

because he didn't know what they excavated.

And then they started digging and artifacts came from the ground

telling the story of Egypt.

The Egyptian temple is dedicated to the goddess Hathor,

the goddess of the sky, women and love.

And the date of this temple was around about 1,300 BC,

so that's about 300 years older than King Solomon.

[narrator] For the archeologist who found this temple,

Beno Rothenberg, it's discovery was only the tip of the iceberg

that proved that the Timna mines

were a part of the ancient Egyptian empire.

Beno Rothenberg found almost 10,000 artifacts.

It was beautiful stuff with inscriptions telling the story

of the Egyptian expeditions to... to Timna

from the, uh... From Seti I all the way to Ramses V.

About 150 years of Egyptian activity in the mines.

[narrator] For many archeologists, this evidence was overwhelming.

The mines of Timna predated Solomon by centuries.

But Erez made a bizarre discovery

that he thinks proves these mines could still have been the source

of King Solomon's wealth.

The secret lies in something that is found all over the site...

Donkey droppings.

[Ben-Yosef] So, first we thought maybe

some Bedouins were here 50 years ago,

but this is dated by radiocarbon to the times of King Solomon.

For sure, this is donkey dung from the time of King Solomon.

You can see the larva of flies, like yesterday.

You see all these brown

pieces here? These are all related to the flies in the stable.

It was here that you should imagine, like, dozens of donkeys.

When they came up to here,

they had to park on both sides of the gatehouse.

[narrator] This three-millennia old dung is safe to handle.

And proves that centuries after the Egyptian pharaohs,

during King Solomon's reign,

these mines were active.

It is historically extraordinary

that that donkey excrement has survived to present day.

But the sand and atmospheric conditions at Timna

are so unique, that they preserved it.

[narrator] Erez has found so much ancient dung dating to the time of Solomon,

that he is sure the mines' heyday was during the biblical king's reign.

The archaeological evidence suggests

that 300 years after the Egyptians mined the site,

during the time of Solomon, it was expanded into an industrial powerhouse.

[Dr. Brunache] So, what's become obvious through excavation and analysis,

is that, when the Egyptian temple was built,

the Timna mines were functioning at a very small scale.

But within just a couple hundred years,

it grew into this vast operation, an industrial operation,

during King Solomon's era.

[narrator] But geographically, the mines fall on the outskirts of Solomon's empire,

150 miles from his capital, Jerusalem.

That has many questioning if they actually belong to the king.

Yet intriguingly,

Erez believes he's found something inside the donkey droppings

that connects them directly to Solomon.

And within this dung, we find...

interesting material, I can try to show you.

Here's a grain of something that was in their food.

This piece here, you can see clearly.

This is a grape pip.

It's a grape seed, you see?

It's just, almost like fresh.

So we have hundreds of grape seeds within this dung.

And we didn't understand this at first, what it was doing here.

[narrator] Although grape seeds may seem like a trivial find,

they reveal something unexpected.

Grapes are not grown in this area.

The nearest grape growing region is on the Mediterranean coast, near Jerusalem,

the heart of Solomon's kingdom.

Fundamentally, the donkey excrement is a link,

a link between the mines of Timna and King Solomon.

Because, what it shows is that foodstuffs

were being brought from the heart of King Solomon's kingdom, on the Mediterranean,

all the way into the desert to the mines of Timna.

[narrator] If Erez is correct, this donkey dung is a surprising link

to King Solomon's mines,

and therefore, his fabled wealth.

But, while skeptics question if this is enough to conclusively say

that these mines belong to the biblical king,

Erez has made another discovery, which could prove the connection.

So, in this location,

this is where we found the purple fabric.

This were three tiny fragments,

and we took them from here to the lab.

[narrator] In the Old Testament era,

purple was the color of gods and royalty.

Therefore, the discovery of purple fabric at the Timna mines

suggests that a great king once visited.

Could these fragments have been left at the site by King Solomon?

[narrator] Professor Erez Ben-Yosef

suspects the copper mines in the Timna Valley,

were the source of King Solomon's wealth.

He's found donkey droppings on the site

which date to the time of Solomon.

But he believes another find could be the crucial link to the biblical monarch.

Fragments of purple fabric, which were carbon-dated to 3,000 years ago,

the time of Solomon.

So, this is the smoking gun that connects the mines in Timna

to King Solomon, to Jerusalem.

You can see the true purple here, on the screen,

which is beautiful.

[Selwood] These three small scraps of material,

they matter because they're dyed purple,

which was the most expensive dye in the ancient world.

Only used by the wealthiest people.

The color, it was the most expensive dye in antiquity.

It's made out of sea snails that are endemic to the Mediterranean.

These sea snails are hard to harvest.

And the dyeing technology was very sophisticated.

[narrator] Only produced in the ancient city of Tyre,

which today is located in Lebanon,

this purple color

was made from the dehydrated mucus glands of murex sea snails,

which can grow up to nearly four inches long.

It would take tens of thousands of snails to produce enough dye

to make a small strip of purple fabric.

Which is why it was only accessible to the very rich.

The Bible says Israel and Tyre had a close trading relationship.

So this dye would've been within reach of Solomon.

The purple cloth that was found at Timna

is an extremely fascinating discovery.

And this is because it tells us

that somebody of elite prestige

would have visited Timna.

This matches the description that we have of King Solomon as the wealthiest man.

It is highly likely that Solomon wore purple clothes.

The Bible even says that he bought purple dyed material.

It's very much possible that King Solomon himself wore a purple garment like that,

exactly like that.

[narrator] Could Solomon have come to Timna to inspect the mines

that provided him with his wealth and power?

These fragments of cloth are as close as archaeologists will ever get

to confirming that the Timna mines belong to the king.

However, could the copper mines at Timna

really have been Solomon's only source of wealth?

While today, many scholars do believe that copper from Timna

would've heavily contributed to the king's treasury,

the Bible claims that at least a portion of it came from gold.

The Bible seems to be quite clear that Solomon's wealth came from gold.

There is a mention of this place Ophir.

[McMahon] Ophir is a mysterious place

that, allegedly, sent a tribute of gold, silver,

pearls and ivory to Solomon every three years.

But where it is remains something of a mystery.

[narrator] Among all the treasures said to have come from Ophir,

it is most famous for its gold.

According to the Bible,

Solomon received a cargo of the precious metal from the biblical land

every three years.

While to some, the frequency of the shipments may seem low,

the volume of gold received demonstrates the significance of Ophir

as a source of wealth for the king.

Solomon comes back with about 14 tons of gold

from a single trip to Ophir.

If you wanna do the math, in today's terms,

uh, a kilo of gold,

currently, is somewhere in the neighborhood of $56,500.

Multiply that,

and now you're already making somewhere in the neighborhood of about $800 million.

[narrator] To have generated such quantities of gold,

some scholars believe Ophir must've held gold mines.

So, the Bible tells us that Solomon went to Ophir.

Now, why would Solomon, himself, go to Ophir

if it was just another trading center?

I think that Ophir must have been a mining land.

So, in my opinion, Ophir is definitely a gold mine.

I don't know exactly the nature of mining that was conducted there,

that they physically had to go into the ground itself or was water involved.

But, without a doubt at all,

Ophir is a name of a place where gold is being mined.

[narrator] Yet, modern-day scholars are at a loss

to identify where Ophir was located.

One of the biggest mysteries is the location of Ophir,

which we know was a real place and clearly a place of significance.

Yet, we really have no clue where it was.

[narrator] Is Ophir the key to King Solomon's wealth?

And if it is, where could this golden land be?

[narrator] One of the greatest mysteries of the Bible

is the source of King Solomon's wealth.

The holy book describes the king was receiving gold in huge quantities

from a place called Ophir.

Today, all records of its location are lost.

Traditionally, Ophir was key to all of Solomon's operations

where his treasure was concerned.

The problem is, where is it today?

[Dr. Brunache] In biblical references,

there are many theories as to where Ophir is located.

Some believe it lies along the Red Sea.

East Africa, Southern Africa, even as far as Spain.

In the late 19th century, one of the theories as to where Ophir was located

was Great Zimbabwe, in Zimbabwe.

What's interesting about this part of Africa is that all over the area,

there's hundreds of ancient mines where they were mining gold.

Great Zimbabwe is an absolutely fantastic ruin in Southern Africa,

which provides evidence for an incredible civilization that existed once.

And it's flummoxed people, what civilization this was.

And it's not surprising that some people have thought

maybe King Solomon had forged links all the way down

to Southern Africa, to the kingdom of Great Zimbabwe.

[narrator] First investigated by Europeans in the 19th century,

Great Zimbabwe is a stone city, spanning nearly three square miles.

Thinking it was too complex to have been built by the indigenous people,

white explorers assumed the site was ancient.

Which led some to suspect it was Ophir.

Yet, modern archaeology has proved this is not the case.

[Newman] So, Great Zimbabwe does tick many boxes,

regarding it being the location of Ophir.

However, in recent times, with carbon dating,

it's only been dated to, like, a few hundred years old.

So it's well out of the time range of King Solomon.

[narrator] Even though Great Zimbabwe has been proven not to be Ophir,

nor the source of Solomon's gold,

many other possibilities still exist.

Like the gold mines of South Africa,

which inspired Rider Haggard to write his book King Solomon's Mines.

Dr. Ellena Lyell spent nearly a decade researching the Old Testament,

trying to unlock its secrets.

So, one of the key clues as to the location of Ophir

is the fact that Solomon, himself, traveled there.

The Bible says that he went there to get gold.

It had to be easily accessible.

[narrator] In the time of Solomon,

journeys by sea were long and arduous.

Therefore, Ellena believes it's likely that Solomon traveled over land

by camel caravan.

So the location of Ophir must have been closer to Jerusalem.

So I think Ophir is located along the Arabian Peninsula,

which is modern-day Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

And this is because of Ophir's appearance in Genesis 10.

[narrator] The tenth chapter of Genesis contains a list of the descendants of Noah,

and describes three brothers with kingdoms named after them

in the time of Solomon.

Ophir in Genesis 10 is the son of Joktan.

And he has brothers, Sheba and Havilah.

[narrator] By the time of Solomon, both Sheba and Havilah

are also the names of kingdoms on the Arabian Peninsula.

Most scholars tend to think that Havilah and Sheba

are located along the Arabian Peninsula.

I think the land of Ophir

has to be around Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

[narrator] Ellena believes these kingdoms were connected in some way,

with perhaps Ophir being a region of Sheba.

The Bible tells of Solomon receiving a wealthy visitor from one of these lands,

which could suggest a trade connection.

The Queen of Sheba, in 1 Kings 10, comes to test Solomon.

She hears of his infamous wisdom,

and she wants to experience it for herself.

So she comes to test him.

She asks him riddles and really hard questions

and he answers them correctly.

She then gifts him gold.

Now, if we are to assume that the land of Ophir is part of the land of Sheba,

it makes sense for their ruler, the Queen of Sheba,

to go herself to visit King Solomon.

[narrator] For some,

Ellena's theory that Ophir was connected to Sheba on the Arabian Peninsula

supports the idea of it being Solomon's gold mine.

[McMahon] If Ophir was in southwest Arabia, where we think Sheba was,

there are also mines down there, gold mines

that apparently had nuggets the size of walnuts, according to the ancients.

So this could be, not just Ophir,

but King Solomon's mines.

[narrator] One of the most likely countries on the Arabian Peninsula

to be the location of Ophir is Yemen,

which today is stricken by civil war,

making archaeology almost impossible.

Yet, until someone finds solid evidence,

Ophir's whereabouts will remain a mystery.

But where is Solomon's wealth hidden today?

Is there any trace of it left?

Some believe that the Copper Scroll could be a map

to the location of King Solomon's fabled wealth.

[narrator] King Solomon is said to have possessed wealth unimaginable

by today's standards.

Many believe parts of it still lie hidden.

But it's whereabouts remain a mystery.

Some scholars hope that an archaeological discovery,

made in the 20th century,

might shed some light on this biblical treasure hunt.

One of the most important discoveries made in recent times

is the Dead Sea Scrolls in the area of Qumran.

[narrator] The Dead Sea Scrolls are a set of ancient religious manuscripts,

dating from around the time of Christ.

While this is about a thousand years after King Solomon's reign,

some believe one may hold the key to finding his treasure.

What was found was called the "Copper Scroll."

Now, this is really interesting,

'cause it's completely different to the other scrolls.

[narrator] Unlike the other scrolls, which are made of animal skin or papyrus,

this scroll is made of copper.

And it contains a detailed list of someone's treasure.

The Copper Scroll is enormously detailed.

Great lists of all sorts of treasure.

Weights of gold.

Weights of silver.

[narrator] In the year since its discovery in 1952,

no one has successfully identified the owner of the treasure

described in the Copper Scroll.

Some believe it might've belonged to the man

said to be the richest in the ancient world,

King Solomon.

So, one of the interesting things I find about the Copper Scroll

is the fact that it may

indicate where King Solomon's treasure is, because no one knows

exactly who wrote the Copper Scrolls, when it was written,

and when it was buried and hidden.

It's entirely understandable that people sought to associate the Copper Scroll

and the treasures of King Solomon.

And that's because the treasures

that the Copper Scroll enumerates, are astonishing.

[narrator] It is estimated that the wealth described in the Copper Scroll

would today be worth over $1 billion.

Many believe these riches were hidden

when the second temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD.

The Copper Scroll, it's a list of treasures.

Treasures from the temple of Jerusalem,

which was about to be destroyed by the Romans.

And many of those treasures would've been the treasures

that King Solomon put in the temple

all those centuries before.

[narrator] Where do all those riches lie now?

So, nothing's actually been found using the Copper Scroll as a treasure map.

Nothing has actually been discovered.

[Picknett] It never says anywhere on the Copper Scroll

"We are talking about Solomon's treasure."

But there's a lot of "could haves" in this story.

There's no solid answers.

[narrator] According to the Bible,

3,000 years ago, King Solomon walked among us.

Some believe that the source of his fortune

was in these copper mines in southern Israel.

Well, now we have evidence that shows

this might have been the source of King Solomon's wealth.

Copper was the most important material at that time.

It was used for agriculture and weapons and the temple in Jerusalem.

And this might be the reason why King Solomon became

the richest man alive at the time.

[narrator] Yet others believe this is not the full story,

and Solomon's riches came from many sources.

So, while many theories

suggest numerous locations for Ophir,

numerous ideas as to where Solomon's wealth came from,

the sad truth is we will never know,

unless some kind of archaeological dig happens.

[narrator] Whatever the truth, the hunt for these treasures is still on.

Have we found mines from antiquity?

Absolutely, yes.

Have we found mines that date back to the times of Solomon

that are containing treasures of Solomon?

Unfortunately, no.

[Newman] King Solomon's mines and the treasure,

none of it's been discovered,

none of it has been found by anybody, so where could it be?

The jury's out. We really don't know where it is.

But considering the value of $2 trillion

does suggest there's much to be discovered.

[Dr. Bellinger] I don't think it's at all unreasonable to say,

"Hey, if King Solomon had this great treasure,

and if it's out there, that it still remains to be found."

It's by no means assumed that we would've found it already.

We don't actually have a map leading to it.

If the treasure of King Solomon really was on the scale

that the Bible suggests,

then we could be looking at a future discovery

that would be on a scale of several Tutankhamun tombs,

with huge amounts of gold, silver and jewels

that will be yielded at some point from the earth.