The Navy of King Solomon Traveled the World?

http://invisibleingredient.blogspot.com/2011/11/navy-of-king-solomon-traveled-world.htmlThe Navy of King Solomon

Cyrus Gordon believes the king mentioned in the script can be identified as Hiram III who reigned 553-533 B.C. The inscription seems to verify an unusual statement found in the Old Testament. An ancient Biblical chronicler wrote:

"And king Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red sea, in the land of Edom. And Hiram sent in the navy his servants, shipmen that had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon. And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to king Solomon" (I Kings 9:26-28).

In the days of Solomon there was an alliance between Hiram, the king of Tyre and the Israelites under Solomon. They were not only allies, but very friendly toward one another (II Chronicles 2:2-12). Israelites and Phoenicians even worked together to build the Temple of YEHOVAH God in Jerusalem (vs.13-18). This alliance included shipping together, although the Phoenicians were known to jealously guard the secrets of oceanic navigation from other nations. We read in II Chronicles 8, beginning verse 8:

"Then went Solomon to Ezion-geber, and to Eloth, at the sea side in the land of Edom. And Huram sent him by the hands of his servants ships, and servants that had knowledge of the sea; and they went with the servants of Solomon to Ophir, and took thence four hundred and fifty talents of gold, and brought them to king Solomon" (v. 17-18).

In the heyday of Solomon silver was "not any thing accounted of" (11 Chron. 9:20). We read, "And the king made silver in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar trees made he as the sycomore trees that are in the low plains in abundance" (v. 27). Solomon had his own personal fleets and dominated world trade. "And king Solomon passed all the kings of the earth in riches and wisdom" (v. 22).

There is archaeological evidence, in fact, that the fleets of Solomon and Hiram of Tyre circumnavigated the globe, sailing from Ezion-geber, a port at tne terminus of the Red Sea, near modern Aqaba or Eliat! Hebrew customs, discovered by the early English settlers in the Americas, were found among some of the Indian tribes, including the wearing of phylacteries! Minoan and Phoenician coins have been found, and inscriptions of ancient Phoenician and Minoan scripts, in Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and the Star of David was even found in an ancient ruin of the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico! In the middle of the second millennium, B.C., and down to the time of Solomon, circa 1000 B.C., oceanic travel by maritime powers in the Middle East seems to have been fairly common.