Does the Bible Exaggerate King Solomon’s Golden Wealth?

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Those who read the Biblical text and make a subjective judgment as to its reliability often conclude—and understandably so—that the descriptions of Solomon’s gold are gross exaggerations. The quantity of gold the Bible claims for King Solomon is simply unbelievable, even unimaginable!

Take, for example, the Jerusalem Temple that Solomon built for Israel’s God, Yahweh. Walk inside, and all you would see was gold! The walls, the ceiling, even the floors were all covered with gold.

The description in 1 Kings tells us that the interior stone-core walls were covered with cedar boards (1 Kings 6:15). The floor was covered with planks of pine (1 Kings 6:15). “No stone was to be seen” (1 Kings 6:18). The wood was then completely plated with gold:

“He overlaid the [inner sanctuary] with pure gold … Solomon covered the inside of the Temple with pure gold … He overlaid the whole interior with gold … He also covered the floors of both the inner and outer rooms of the Temple with gold” (1 Kings 6:20, 21, 22, 30; see also the parallel passage in 2 Chronicles 3:4–7).

Modern Western minds can’t envisage such a thing. J. A. Montgomery, in his standard commentary on Kings in the International Critical Commentary series, labeled the Biblical account a product “of exuberant imagination!” Montgomery allowed that perhaps the altar was plated with gold. But the whole thing? Incredible. Other writers have suggested that in reality only some of the carving on the wooden panels was picked out in gold leaf.¹ One commentator² opined that perhaps it was only gold paint that was sprayed on the walls—as if aerosol or power sprays existed 3,000 years ago! In this way, the Bible was supposed to be made believable. In any event, the description of the gold in Solomon’s Temple, these exegetes contend, obviously grew in the telling. As we read on in Kings, matters continue in this vein:

“King Solomon made 200 large shields of hammered gold; 600 bekas of gold went into each shield. He also made 300 small shields of hammered gold, with three minas of gold in each shield … Then the king made a great throne inlaid with ivory and overlaid with fine gold … All King Solomon’s goblets were gold, and all the household articles in the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon were pure gold” (1 Kings 10:16, 17, 18, 21).

We may perhaps forgive modern writers who, relying only on their subjective judgment, dismiss such Biblical claims as fantastic.

Yet the question needs to be asked: Can we properly dismiss the claims of an ancient text simply because readers more than 2,000 years later find them incredible? No serious historian would admit to treating a source this way. Nevertheless, that does seem to be the attitude of many Biblical scholars.

To evaluate the Hebrew narrative properly, shouldn’t we at least investigate the possibility that the Biblical description is accurate? While admittedly we do not plate our churches and synagogues with gold today, our customs and our tastes are not necessarily those of the rest of the world even today, let alone of the world in antiquity. It is worth pointing out that the Golden Temple of Amritsar in India gleams with its coating of gold,³ and pilgrims to the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, a Buddhist shrine in Rangoon, press sheets of gold leaf onto the walls.⁴ True, these are modern instances. So let us look at the situation in ancient times. What can we learn about the use of gold in the Biblical world? What will this tell us about Israel in the tenth century B.C. when Solomon ruled (c. 971–931 B.C. or c. 961–922 B.C.)?

Let us begin with some easy cases. For example, take the statement from Kings that “all King Solomon’s goblets were gold” (1 Kings 10:21). This is the least exceptionable of the claims about Solomon’s splendor. After all, golden tableware is not unknown even nowadays. From the ancient Near East and Egypt a number of examples of golden tableware have survived. In the third millennium B.C., golden cups and dishes adorned the palace of the kings of Ur and some were buried with them; Sir Leonard Woolley, the excavator of Ur, recovered elegant specimens during his excavation of the Royal Cemetery in 1927–1931.⁵ Almost 1,500 years after this tableware was buried, Egyptian pharaohs ate and drank from vessels of gold; in 1906, railway builders near Bubastis accidentally found an ancient cache that included a small golden cup with the name of Queen Tewosret on it (c. 1279–1213 B.C.).⁶ Two famous gold plates from Ugarit (on the Mediterranean coast of modern Syria) come from about the same time. One is embossed with a picture of a charioteer hunting wild bulls. A number of gold plates from this period can be found in various museum collections. These are mostly decorated with geometric 022patterns. From later periods (sixth to fourth centuries B.C.), we have magnificent examples of the goldsmith’s craft in the Persian empire. The gold dishes and jugs that can now be seen in London, New York, Tehran and elsewhere are but a small part of what once existed, though still enough to give an impression of the wealth of the empire Alexander conquered. At least with regard to golden tableware, there would seem to be no intrinsic reason to doubt the claim in 1 Kings.

The situation is not far different with respect to golden furniture. Kings and queens who ate and drank from golden tableware often sat in state on golden thrones. Tutankhamun’s tomb revealed a particularly splendid specimen. A carved wooden chair was plated almost entirely with gold. A second chair from Tutankhamun’s tomb has most of the back and parts of the legs plated with gold.

Tutankhamun was buried about 1331 B.C. Over a thousand years earlier, gold-plated furniture was buried with Queen Hetepheres, mother of Cheops, builder of the Great Pyramid (c. 2600 B.C.). Her bed, carrying-chair and canopy were all of gold-covered woodwork. These Egyptian examples are now in the Cairo Museum.

Golden furniture was also made and used in Babylonia, although none has survived. Several Babylonian kings of the earlier part of the second millennium B.C. record gifts of golden chairs and stools they made to their gods and goddesses. Other cuneiform documents report similar gifts from one king to another.

Perhaps the most extensive listing of gold objects is to be found on lists in the el-Amarna letters (cuneiform letters from the 14th century B.C. found at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt), which detail gifts exchanged between royalty and the trousseaux of princesses married to foreign kings.⁷ There we find references not only to great quantities of gold jewelry, numerous gold bowls and toilet articles, but also to pieces of furniture and chariots plated with gold.

King Solomon’s throne, however, was not simply a wooden chair covered with gold sheeting; it was even more extravagant; between the wood and the gold was a layer of ivory: “King Solomon made a great throne of ivory [the Hebrew text does not say ‘inlaid with’] and overlaid it with gold” (1 Kings 10:18; cf. 2 Chronicles 9:17–19). Modern tastes might prefer the creamy elegance of an ivory throne, but ancient royalty showed their wealth by concealing the ivory beneath gold. The core of the throne was made of wood—in effect, a wooden frame; it was paneled and covered with ivory plaques, and then plated with gold. In a tomb at Salamis in Cyprus an ivory throne and bedstead were found smashed but complete.⁸ They have now been completely restored, with their decorative carvings. Fragments of ivory-work have also been found at Samaria and in Syria and Assyria. The restored throne and bedstead from Salamis show how the fragments from Samaria, Syria and Assyria were once assembled. Although the Salamis specimens and the majority of other examples are from the ninth and eighth centuries B.C., Late Bronze Age (13th century B.C.) ivories from Megiddo prove that this same type of decoration was in vogue long before Solomon’s time.^a

The greatest collections of ivory carvings have been 024found in the Assyrian palaces at Nimrud (ancient Kalah). Thousands upon thousands of ivory fragments were uncovered there from 1949 to 1963. They are still being catalogued, drawn and illustrated. A number of these ivory fragments have small pieces of gold foil sticking to them; even more are stained with the bituminous glue that was used to hold the gold in position. When Babylonian and Median soldiers sacked the Assyrian city, they ripped the gold from the ivory, smashing the furniture as they did so.⁹ A single piece of furniture still retains its gold overlay to illustrate the way in which much of the ivory surface was concealed.

These discoveries illustrate the kind of throne the Hebrew historian was describing in Kings (and in Chronicles). They make it equally clear that a rich king like Solomon could easily have possessed an ivory throne covered with gold.

Golden tableware and golden furniture are one thing, but 500 shields of hammered gold, which Solomon is said to have hung in his palace (1 Kings 10:17; 2 Chronicles 9:16), are quite another. Shields of gold could serve no useful purpose; a blow from an axe or sword would cut them in two; a spear or arrow would pass through them. Obviously they could only serve as decorations, as signs of prestige and wealth. Although such a display may seem unnecessarily ostentatious today, it is nevertheless entirely consistent with the evidence that has survived from the ancient Near East.

In the Royal Cemetery at Ur, Sir Leonard Woolley uncovered a golden helmet, beautifully beaten and 026engraved to look like a wig. Surely it never had a protective function! Woolley also discovered daggers with gold blades and a gold axe-head. Another gold axe-head came out of a tomb at Byblos dating from about 1800 B.C. Again, these golden weapons were not made to be used; they were signs of rank and wealth.

Now gold weapons and a gold helmet are admittedly not quite the same as shields of gold, and so far, no gold shield has been found in the ancient Near East. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that they existed. Both a written text and an illustration of it assure us of that fact.

In 714 B.C. King Sargon II of Assyria mounted a military campaign into the mountains northeast of Assyria. He conquered part of Urartu (Biblical Ararat), and on his way home marched against the city of Musasir. Musasir was the center of worship for a major Urartian god, and Sargon’s soldiers looted his temple as well as the palace of the local king. Sargon’s accounts of his victories were written in cuneiform on clay prisms and then buried in the foundations of buildings to preserve them so that future generations could read them and tell of Sargon’s triumphs. Several of those prisms have now been recovered. Other reports were carved into the stone slabs of the walls and floors in Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad, north of Nineveh. In addition, a very long description of this campaign exists in another text, a letter from Sargon to his national god Ashur. This letter, written on a large tablet now in the Louvre, devotes a major section to the capture of Musasir, giving a list of the booty taken.¹⁰ The spoil enumerated in these sources is truly enormous. Ordinary weaponry in vast amounts included 25,212 large and small bronze shields, 1,514 large and small lances, and 305,412 heavy and light bronze daggers. The list also includes numerous vessels of bronze of all sizes and shapes, as well as a profusion of treasure: gold and silver bullion, silver vessels, ivory furniture and jewel-encrusted robes. Unusual objects were made of, or perhaps in some cases covered with, gold: a bolt of gold to fasten the door—with a winged dragon on it; two keys of gold shaped like goddesses. A great golden dagger from the temple weighed 26 1/12 minas (about 27 lbs).^b

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Near the top of the list of spoil from the god’s temple is a unique item: “six shields of gold that hung to the right and left in his house (i.e., his temple).” They shone brightly and had heads of snarling dogs projecting from their centers. The weight of the shields, presumably all six together, was about 700 pounds of shining red gold (5 talents, 12 minas).

Sargon also had pictures of his campaign carved on stone slabs that lined the walls of his new palace, at Sargonstown (Dur-Sharruken). The pioneer French excavator Paul-Emile Botta uncovered these pictures in 1843 and 1844 in the first Assyrian palace ever excavated in modern times. Botta’s artist, Eugène N. Flandin, made careful drawings of these reliefs, many of which were too fragile to remove. One of Flandin’s drawings, published in Botta’s monumental report, Monument de Ninive,¹¹ presents a slab on which the Assyrian sculptor portrayed the soldiers despoiling the temple of Musasir. On the walls of the building the shields are clearly carved, some in front view, some in profile. The latter have the dogs’ heads in the center. Assyrian soldiers carrying other shields seem to be climbing over the roof, while an officer dictates an account, perhaps of the booty, to two scribes. This sculpture perfectly illustrates the cuneiform text.

Although no other references to ornamental shields like these have been found in ancient Near Eastern texts, this case is sufficient to establish the possibility that golden shields also graced Solomon’s palace.

If golden shields once existed, although no actual specimens have been found, what about a gold-plated temple? Once more, inscriptions give the fullest information, but there is also some physical evidence.

Assyrian and Babylonian kings boasted of their devotion to their gods by building temples for them. Esarhaddon of Assyria (680–669 B.C.) restored the shrine of Ashur, plated its doors with gold and “coated the walls with gold as if with plaster.”¹² In the next century, Nabonidus of Babylon (555–539 B.C.) recorded his enrichment of the temple of Sin at Harran: “I clad its walls with gold and silver, and made them shine like the sun.”¹³

Similar evidence comes from Egypt. Pharaohs of the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1150 B.C.) were particularly lavish. Amenophis III (c. 1386–1349 B.C.) honored the great god Amun with a temple at Thebes that was “plated with gold throughout, its floor adorned with silver, [and] all its portals with electrum.¹⁴ (Electrum is a natural alloy of gold and silver.) Later, Ramesses III (c. 1185–1154 B.C.) built a shrine at Medinet Habu with a pavement of silver and doorposts of fine gold.¹⁵ He also used gold in another ostentatious way: He made a sacred barge to carry a divine statue along the Nile. The timbers of the boat were made of cedar, but the boat was overlaid with gold to the waterline. The boat was 130 cubits (over 220 feet) long.¹⁶

Can such claims about gold-plated temples and even boats be believed? After all, we do not have the evidence itself. And ancient kings often made claims that were not wholly realistic.

For those who will be satisfied only with actual examples, we cannot provide the proof. For those, however, willing to credit the royal boasts with some factual foundation, we can point to material remains that strengthen the ancient kings’ verbal claims.

After years of intensive study of ancient Egyptian monuments, a French scholar named Pierre Lacau noticed that the pillars set up by Tuthmosis III (c. 1479–1425 B.C.) in front of the Temple of the Sacred Boat at Karnak (Thebes) had unusual slits cut in them. Each pillar was carved to resemble bundles of papyrus reed set on a flat, round base. Running horizontally round the edge of the base, at the top and bottom, are two narrow slits with vertical slits joining the horizontal slits at fixed intervals. In the columns themselves, the divisions between the papyrus stems extend much deeper than usual into the stones, creating 028narrow slits. These slits were hardly necessary to the design or beauty of the columns. Nor could they serve for drainage or for clamps to hold the column drums together. The same kind of slits are present in the clustered stems at the top of the columns. Relating these slits to the inscription of Tuthmosis speaking about this temple, Lacau argues that the whole of the stonework of these pillars had been plated with gold.¹⁷ The slits were cut into the stones to hold the edges of the gold sheets wrapped around them. From textual descriptions, Lacau shows that not only the 12 pillars, each about 11.5 feet high, were gold-plated in this way, but that an additional 14 pillars in another hall, each some 53 feet from base to capital were also carved to 029hold gold plates. Elsewhere in the temple, Lacau found that the stones of doorways, shrines and obelisks all have slits or rows of small nail holes to secure gold sheeting.

Naturally, the gold from these buildings disappeared long ago. The closest surviving examples of this kind of gold plating are the great golden shrines that guarded the body of Tutankhamun. These four shrines now stand in the Cairo Museum. The largest is 16.7 feet long, 10.8 feet wide and 9.1 feet high.

One of the first things a conqueror or a king of a new faith would do would be to strip off this readily available gold. According to 1 Kings 14:25, 26 (cf. 2 Chronicles 12:9), that is what Pharaoh Shishak did when he marched through Israel on a military campaign a few years after King Solomon’s death.

No trace of Solomon’s Temple has ever been found. Only the Biblical account has survived. The testimony of the Biblical world, however, lends credibility to that 031account. It is impossible to prove that Solomon did build a temple overlaid with gold as described in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles. But the evidence assembled here shows it would be foolish to deny the possibility.

What about the quantities of gold described in the Biblical account? Are they in any way realistic? Without knowing the thickness of the gold plating, no estimate can be made of the amount of gold needed to cover the inside of Solomon’s Temple.

However, the weight of some of Solomon’s golden possessions is given in the text. Solomon’s golden shields weighed about 4,000 pounds, more than two tons^c (1 Kings 10:16, 17). The Queen of Sheba presented Solomon with a gift of an even larger amount: 120 talents or about 9,000 lbs, four and a half tons of gold (1 Kings 10:10). King Hiram of Tyre gave Solomon a like amount (1 Kings 9:14). It is easy to dismiss such a huge sum as exaggerated, if not legendary. However, these sums are comparable to the tribute the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III received when he subjugated Tyre in 730 B.C. (150 talents of gold).¹⁸ Sargon II of Assyria gave as large a gift (154 talents of gold) to the gods of Babylon, partly taken from the booty he captured in his Babylonian campaign.¹⁹ From Egypt we are told of an even larger gift: Tuthmosis III presented to the temple of Amun at Karnak 152,107 deben^d of gold in lumps and rings, which is about 13.5 tons—and that was only part of his gift! Carved on the walls of the temple at Karnak is an illustrated catalogue of the objects he donated.²⁰ Five rows depict things made of gold or ornamented with it. Hieroglyphs specify whether there was one example of each object or several. In addition to the golden bowls, dishes and ritual equipment, there were large amounts of silver, lapis lazuli and other materials.

These records are astounding, and the reader may question their accuracy. Admittedly, they cannot be checked today. On the other hand, we can point to the fact that Babylonian accountancy tablets reveal the extreme care taken to trace even small amounts of gold, and of everything else, coming into official royal depots or storehouses, and going out from them. The precision of the figures in Tuthmosis’s donation to the Amun temple summarized above, as well as the precision of figures in similar documents, does give an appearance of accuracy. The Amun temple inscription could be spurious, the work of clever propagandists, but the inscription was visible to all those who were permitted to enter the temple, so it might easily be checked. Moreover, other evidence for hoards of treasure accumulated in ancient temples is provided by usually careful Greek historians, such as Herodotus and Pausanias, and this too tends to weigh in favor of the reliability of these figures.

The only ancient text that reports the annual income of a powerful king in Old Testament times is the Hebrew Bible. In 1 Kings 10:14 the figure of 666 talents 034of gold (almost 25 U.S. tons) is given for Solomon. This may refer to a particular year, just as the 420 talents (15.75 U.S. tons) from Ophir refers to a particular source (1 Kings 10:11). Only two figures in ancient records approach the amount of 666 talents: the total of Pharaoh Osorkon’s gift to the gods and the amounts of treasure Alexander the Great found in Persia. Greek sources tell of about 1,180 tons of gold Alexander found in Susa (compared to about 25 tons mentioned in connection with Solomon’s income), and almost 7,000 tons in the whole of Persia.

Sometimes the ancient writers qualify gold as “pure” gold or “red” gold or “alloyed” gold; other times they refer simply to “gold.” Consequently the modern student cannot be certain what kind of gold is meant. Also, the weights of golden objects may include the core of wood, ivory or base metal, although it is worth noting that the ancient scribes could distinguish types of goldwork if they needed to, as in the case of Solomon’s tableware of “pure gold” (1 Kings 10:21).

The amounts of gold attributed to King Solomon are indeed large, but there is no doubt that large quantities of gold were held by kings in Biblical times. Where did Solomon’s gold come from? Ancient Israel had no natural sources of gold, nor was gold to be found in neighboring Transjordan and Syria. Western Turkey produced some gold, panned from the river gravels of Lydia, the source of the wealth of the famous Croesus. Egyptians mined gold in the south, in Nubia; some gold has been extracted there even in recent times. Gold from those sources may have reached Solomon through trade and the tribute his subjects paid. The Queen of Sheba’s gift of gold was probably drawn from gold mines in western Arabia. Remains of extensive mine works dating back at least to Roman times have been explored there recently, and there are reports that considerable quantities of gold still await the miner’s pick.^e

Solomon and Hiram’s joint trading venture also brought “gold of Ophir” (1 Kings 10:11), a place of mysterious locale. The site has been sought in western Arabia, but more commonly a distant location is envisaged, perhaps past the Horn of Africa or in India. Until new texts give more precise information, the problem cannot be resolved. The expression “gold of Ophir” occurs not only in the Bible, but also on an eighth-century B.C. ostracon^f found at Tell Qasile in Israel. That ostracon, while showing that the name was current to designate the origin or type of gold, throws no light on Ophir’s location.

It’s probable that King Solomon’s men took advantage, or even control, of any newly opened goldfield in areas under Solomon’s hegemony, perhaps even in Ophir. The history of “gold rushes” during the 19th century in places like California shows that a new field may yield a great deal of gold in the years immediately following its discovery; then the flow settles to a small, regular production, or becomes exhausted. The same conditions may have prevailed in ancient times.

We have not proved that the details in the Bible regarding Solomon’s gold are accurate. But, by setting the Biblical texts beside other ancient texts and archaeological discoveries we have shown that the Biblical narrative is wholly in keeping with the practices of the ancient world, so far as we can ascertain them, not only in the use of gold but also in its records of quantities. While this does not demonstrate that the account in the Bible is accurate, it does show that it is feasible. Commentators may still argue for an exilic date for the composition of the account in Kings; they may even contend that it is imaginary, that Solomon never sat on a throne of ivory and gold, or that he never worshipped at a golden Temple in Jerusalem. But they can no longer dismiss the account, or even elements in it, on the ground that it, or they, are incredible.

Those who read the Biblical text and make a subjective judgment as to its reliability often conclude—and understandably so—that the descriptions of Solomon’s gold are gross exaggerations. The quantity of gold the Bible claims for King Solomon is simply unbelievable, even unimaginable! Take, for example, the Jerusalem Temple that Solomon built for Israel’s God, Yahweh. Walk inside, and all you would see was gold! The walls, the ceiling, even the floors were all covered with gold. The description in 1 Kings tells us that the interior stone-core walls were covered with cedar boards (1 Kings 6:15). The floor […]