Ophir

In nine long seasons (1957-1965), Gene Savoy established himself in Peru with honor. He had followed the Great Walls of Peru, from the northern Pacific coast through the western deserts, until they disappeared in the Andes. He had studied scattered ruins and giant fortresses, remnants of the desert kingdoms built before the Incas. He had seen great highways of old that linked the valleys of the coast, and he had located the one ancient Gateway that led to them from the jungle highlands. In the southern jungles, on an enchanted plain, he had revealed the lost city of the Incas, the fortress citadel where the Incas held off their Spanish conquerors for years before they fled towards the north to seek refuge in the Chachapoyas Kingdom. He had already found that Inca trail, and now he followed it, into the North, east of the Andes, in search of the Seven Cities of that fabled kingdom.

    In the winter of 1966, the American explorer found in Amazonas, Peru, a series of figures inscribed on the wall of an ancient tomb. High up in the Andes, in the region of the legendary Chachapoyas, one of the glyphs, the largest and most imposing, resembled a figure he knew to be of Middle Eastern origin. He translated the glyph to say "Ophir," the biblical name of a secret land, where Hiram's Phoenician sailors loaded their ships with gold and precious stones from King Solomon's mines to adorn, in Jerusalem, the walls of Solomon's Temple.

    After Savoy had discovered that enigmatic glyph in the Andes, another inscription appeared, this one in Israel, at Tel Qasile, an ancient site near Tel Aviv that dates from King Solomon's time. The inscription, on a potsherd unearthed by archaeologists, bears this message in Phoenician-Hebrew: Gold of Ophir, the possession of Beth-Horon, thirty shekels. The inscription once marked a pot of gold stored in the hold of an ancient Phoenician merchant ship. At its center was the symbol Savoy had found cut into the cliff face of a mountain on ancient Chachapoyan lands.

    The glyph, in all its varied forms, recurs more often than any other in the epigraphic samples which Savoy and his team can attribute to the ancient Chachapoyas. For years, the expedition team had called the glyph a "ship figure" because it resembled the shape of an ancient vessel at sea. Now, Savoy and his team refer to it plainly as the "Ophir symbol. "

    The inscription on the potsherd in Israel verifies two important facts:

(1) Voyages to Ophir actually took place.
(2) Phoenician ships acquired gold there during the time of Solomon.

     This glyph --a symbol called "Ni-ther" by ancient Egyptians-- holds a special significance for most scholars. Many biblical archaeologists believe that this symbol marked all the ships that travelled to Ophir in Solomon's navy.

    In 1989, as Savoy and his team of explorers prepared to leave the ancient city of Gran Vilaya, they came upon three dolmen tablets at the mouth of a cave on the outskirts of the city. Within the inscription on one of those tablets was the same glyph Savoy had seen in 1966, the same symbol that marked the Ophir ships of Solomon. Since then, the expedition team has uncovered innumerable inscriptions and similar designs, on stone, on walls, on pottery, and on textiles in the region.

    The walls of Solomon's Temple were lined with gold. This much is known. There was not enough gold in all of ancient Israel to accomplish that task. This too is known. For centuries, historians, scholars, and archaeologists have tried in vain to find the source of King Solomon's gold.... To determine the true Ophir of the Bible and to document links between high civilizations in ancient times-- these are the goals of the voyage the Ocean Sailing Club will undertake for seven years across the seven seas.