Ophir

Not to be confused with Orphir.
This article is about the region mentioned in the Bible. For other uses, see Ophir (disambiguation).

Ophir (/ˈoʊfər/;[1] Hebrew: אוֹפִיר, Modern: ʼŌfīr, Tiberian: ʼŌp̄īr) is a port or region mentioned in the Bible, famous for its wealth. Its existence is attested to by an inscribed pottery shard found at Tell Qasile (in modern-day Tel Aviv) in 1946, dating to the eighth century BC,[2][3] which reads "gold of Ophir to/for Beth-Horon [...] 30 shekels".[a][4] The location of Ophir is unknown, though the find confirms it as a real place from which gold was imported.[5]

  1. ^ "Ophir". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
  2. ^ Maisler, B., Two Hebrew Ostraca from Tell Qasîle, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Oct., 1951), p. 265 [1]
  3. ^ Boardman, John, The Prehistory of the Balkans: The Middle East and the Aegean World, Tenth to Eighth Centuries B.C., Part 1, Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 480 [2]
  4. ^ Kitchen, Kenneth A.; Handy, Lowell K. (ed.), The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium, BRILL 1997, p. 144 [3]
  5. ^ Lipiński 2004, p. 144.


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