In Search of King Solomon's Mines. (Reviews).

By Tahir Shah 

[pounds sterling]17.99 John Murray

ISBN 0-7195-6324-0

King Solomon, the Bible's wisest king, also possessed extraordinary wealth. He built a temple at Jerusalem that was said to be more fabulous than any other in the ancient world, heavily adorned with gold from Ophir.

But where was the land of Ophir? The precise location of this legendary land has been one of history's great-unsolved mysteries. Long before Rider Haggard's classic adventure novel King Solomon's Mines produced a fresh outbreak of gold fever, explorers, scientists and theologians had scoured the world for the source of the King's astonishing wealth. In this book, Tahir Shah takes up the quest, using as his leads a mixture of texts including The Septuagint (the earliest form of the Bible) as well as geological, geographical and folkloric sources. Time and again the evidence points to Ethiopia, the ancient kingdom in the Horn of Africa whose imperial family claims descent from Menelik, the son born to Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

Shah's trail takes him to a remote cliffface monastery where monks pull visitors up to the summit on a leather rope, to the ruined churches of Gondar, and to the churches of Lalibela hewn from solid rock. In the south of the country he discovers an enormous illegal gold mine, itself like something out of the Old Testament, where thousands of men, women and children dig with their hands. But the hardest leg of the journey is to the accursed Tullu Wallel, a mountain where legend says lies an ancient shaft, once the entrance to King Solomon s mines.

Found an ancient map

Shah is initially inspired to search for the ancient kingdom of Ophir after finding an ancient map in a tourist shop in the back streets of Jerusalem. Even as he purchases the map, he is aware that he is in all probability being duped by the shopkeeper. As he puts it: "All over the world unscrupulous shopkeepers have palmed me off with the most suspect merchandise." But even this realisation cannot extinguish his new found enthusiasm to seek out the clues that might lead him to this legendary land.

In the company of Samson, his Ethiopian guide and a former miner in one of southern Ethiopia's illegal gold mines -- until he realised he was wasting his life and had turned to God and driving a taxi for salvation - Shah explores Ethiopia. The mission itself is all consuming, but the book tells much more about the hardships and hazards of travel in Ethiopia than the fabulous wealth they are seeking.

Whether it is travelling on the country's sole railway line in the company of drunken Somali hooligans, on country buses that are constantly prone to breaking down en route, or in the khat chewing driver Bharu's battered Land-cruiser, danger - man-made as well as natural - seems to have been ever-present.

From bed-lice to bandits, money-hungry priests to predatory prostitutes, torrential rain to tormenting mosquitoes, Ethiopia is observed and described in fine detail. The legendary treasure may have remained illusive, but the author compensates for this with an equally rich seam of narrative.