Tarshish

Tarshish (Hebrew: תַּרְשִׁישׁ‎‎) occurs in the Hebrew Bible with several uncertain meanings, most frequently as a place (probably a large city or region) far across the sea from the Land of Israel and Phoenicia. Tarshish was said to have supplied vast quantities of important metals to Israel and Phoenicia. The same place-name occurs in the Akkadian inscriptions of Esarhaddon (the Assyrian king, d. 669 BC) and also on the Phoenician inscription on the Nora Stone, indicating that it was a real place; its precise location was never commonly known, and was eventually lost in antiquity. Legends grew up around it over time so that its identity has been the subject of scholarly research and commentary for more than two thousand years. Its importance stems in part from the fact that biblical passages tend to understand Tarshish as a source of King Solomon's great wealth in metals - especially silver, but also gold, tin and iron (Ezekiel 27). The metals were reportedly obtained in partnership with King Hiram of Phoenician Tyre (Isaiah 23), and the fleets of Tarshish-ships. However, Solomon's Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians, and there has been so little evidence identified for Solomon and his kingdom, that some modern scholars following Israel Finkelstein have suggested Solomon and his kingdom never existed (see the essays in Schmidt, ed. 2007). The existence of Tarshish in the western Mediterranean, along with any Phoenician presence in the western Mediterranean before circa 800 .B.C has also seemed unthinkable to some scholars in modern times, because there had been no recognized evidence; instead, the lack of evidence for wealth in Phoenicia and Israel during the reigns of Solomon and Hiram prompted scholars to understand the period in Mediterranean prehistory between 1200 and 800 BC as a 'Dark Age' (Muhly 1998).

The Septuagint, the Vulgate and the Targum of Jonathan render Tarshish as Carthage, but other biblical commentators as early as 1646 (Samuel Bochart) read it as Tartessos in ancient Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula), near Huelva and Sevilla today.^[1] The Jewish-Portuguese scholar, politician, statesman and financier Isaac Abravanel (A.D. 1437–1508) described Tarshish as “the city known in earlier rimes as Carthage and today called Tunis.^[2] One possible identification for many centuries preceding the French scholar Bochart (d. 1667), and following the Roman historian Flavius Josephus (d. 100 A.D.), had been with inland town of Tarsus in Cilicia (south-central Turkey).

American scholars William F. Albright (1891-1971) and Frank Moore Cross (1921-2012) suggested Tarshish was Sardinia because of the discovery of the Nora Stone, whose Phoenician inscription mentions Tarshish. Cross read the inscription to understand that it was referring to Tarshish as Sardinia. Recent research into hacksilber hoards has also suggested Sardinia.

Hebrew Bible

Tarshish also occurs 24 times in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible with various meanings:

• Genesis 10:4 lists the descendants of Japhet, the son of Noah, as "The sons of Javan: Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim." This is restated verbatim in 1 Chronicles 1:7.
• 1 Kings (1Kings 10:22) notes that King Solomon had "a fleet of ships of Tarshish" at sea with the fleet of his ally King Hiram of Tyre. And that "Once every three years the fleet of ships of Tarshish used to come bringing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks." (repeated with some notable changes in 2 Chronicles 2Chronicles 9:21), while 1 Kings 22:48 states that "Jehoshaphat made ships of Tarshish to go to Ophir for gold, but they did not go, for the ships were wrecked at Ezion-geber." This is repeated in 2 Chronicles 20:37 preceded by the information that the ships were actually built at Ezion-geber, and emphasizing the prophecy of the otherwise unknown Eliezer son of Dodavahu of Mareshah against Jehoshaphat that "Because you have joined with Ahaziah, the Lord will destroy what you have made." And the ships were wrecked and were not able to go to Tarshish. This may be referenced in Psalm 48:7 which records "By the east wind you shattered the ships of Tarshish." From these verses commentators consider that "Ships of Tarshish" was used to denote any large trading ships intended for long voyages whatever their destination,^[1] and some Bible translations, including the NIV, go as far as to translate the phrase ship(s) of Tarshish as "trading ship(s)."
• Psalm 72 (Psa 72:10), a Psalm often interpreted as Messianic in Jewish and Christian tradition, has "May the kings of Tarshish and of the coastlands render him tribute; may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts!" This verse is the source text of the liturgical antiphon Reges Tharsis in Christian Cathedral music. In this Psalm, the 'chain of scaled correlates' consisting of 'mountains and hills', 'rain and showers', 'seas and river' leads up to the phrase 'Tarshish and islands', indicating that Tarshish was a large island.^[3]
• Isaiah contains three prophecies mentioning Tarshish. First 2:16 "against all the ships of Tarshish, and against all the beautiful craft," then Tarshish is mentioned at length in Chapter 23 against Tyre. 23:1 and 14 repeat "Wail, O ships of Tarshish, for Tyre is laid waste, without house or harbor!" and 23:6 "Cross over to Tarshish; wail, O inhabitants of the coast!". 23:10 identifies Tyre as a "daughter of Tarshish" These prophecies are reversed in Isaiah 60:9 where "For the coastlands shall hope for me, the ships of Tarshish first, to bring your children from afar," and 66:19 " and I will set a sign among them. And from them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, who draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands far away, that have not heard my fame or seen my glory. And they shall declare my glory among the nations."
• Jeremiah only mentions Tarshish in passing as a source of silver; 10:9 "Beaten silver is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz."
• Ezekiel contains two prophecies describing Israel's trading relations with Tarshish. The first is retrospective in 27:12 "Tarshish did business with you because of your great wealth of every kind; silver, iron, tin, and lead they exchanged for your wares." and 27:25 "The ships of Tarshish traveled for you with your merchandise. So you were filled and heavily laden in the heart of the seas." The second in Ezekiel 38:13 is forward looking where "Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish and all its leaders will say to you, ‘Have you come to seize spoil? Have you assembled your hosts to carry off plunder, to carry away silver and gold, to take away livestock and goods, to seize great spoil?’"
• Jonah 1:3 (Jonah 1:3), 4:2 mentions Tarshish as a distant place: "But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish." Jonah's fleeing to Tarshish may need to be taken as "a place very far away" rather than a precise geographical term. It may however refer to Tarsus in Cilicia where Saul, later Paul hailed from.^[4] On the Mediterranean Sea, ships that used only sails were often left stranded without wind while ships with oars could continue their voyage.^[5] Therefore, trading ships most likely would have used oarsmen rather than sails. During Jonah's attempted escape to Tarshish, his rebellion against the Hebrew God YHWH led to his being tossed overboard by sailors, swallowed by a large fish (sometimes called the "whale"), and vomited out onto dry land by God's command. He then made his way to Nineveh, now known as Mosul, in Iraq.

Other ancient and classical era sources

• Esarhaddon, Aššur Babylon E (AsBbE) (=K18096 and EŞ6262 in the British Museum and Istanbul Archaeological Museum, respectively) preserves "All the kings from the lands surrounded by sea- from the country Iadanana (Cyprus) and Iaman, as far as Tarsisi (Tarshish), bowed to my feet." Here, Tarshish is certainly a large island, and cannot be confused with Tarsus (Thompson and Skaggs 2013).
• Flavius Josephus (Antiquitates Iudaicae i. 6, § 1) of the 1st century AD reads "Tarshush", identifying it as the city of Tarsus in southern Asia Minor, which some have later equated with the Tarsisi mentioned in Assyrian records from the reign of Esarhaddon. Phoenician inscriptions found at Karatepe in Cilicia.^[6] Bunsen and Sayce^[7] have seemed to agree with Josephus, but the Phoenicians were active in many regions where metals were available, and classical authors, some biblical authors and certainly the Nora Stone that mentions Tarshish generally place Phoenician expansion aimed at metals-acquisition in West of the Mediterranean.
• The Septuagint and the Vulgate in several passages translate it with Carthage, apparently following a Jewish tradition found in the Targum of Jonathan ("Afriki", i.e., Carthage).^[1]
• The Hebrew term also has a homonym, tarshish, occurring seven times and translated beryl in older English versions^[8] Some interpretations give that in the Torah (Exodus 28:20), it is also the name of a gem-stone associated with the Tribe of Asher that has been identified by the Septuagint and by Josephus as the "gold stone" χρυσόλιθος (whose identification remains in dispute, possibly topaz, probably not modern Chrysolite), and later as aquamarine. It is the first stone on the fourth row of the priestly breastplate.

Identifications and interpretations

• Rufus Festus Avienus the Latin writer of the 4th century AD, identified Tarshish as Cadiz.^[9]
• Bochart, the French Protestant pastor, suggested in his Phaleg (1646) that Tarshish was the city of Tartessos in Southern Spain. He was followed by others, including Hertz (1936). In the Oracle against Tyre, the prophet Ezekiel (27:12) mentions that silver, iron, lead and tin came to Tyre from Tarshish (Trsys). They were stored in Tyre and resold, probably to Mesopotamia. The editors of the New Oxford Annotated Bible suggest that Tarshish is either Tartessos or Sardinia.^[10]
• However, Bochart also suggested eastern localities for the ports of Ophir and Tarshish during King Solomon's reign, specifically the Tamilakkam continent (present day South India and Northern Ceylon) where the Dravidians were well known for their gold, pearls, ivory and peacock trade. He fixed on "Tarshish" being the site of Kudiramalai, a possible corruption of Thiruketheeswaram.^[11][12]
• Sir Peter le Page Renouf^[13] thought that "Tarshish" meant a coast, and, as the word occurs frequently in connection with Tyre, the Phoenician coast is to be understood. In Isaiah 23, however, the inhabitants of the Phoenician coast are exhorted to 'cross over' to Tarshish; it also identifies Tyre as a daughter of Tarshish (see 'Hebrew Bible' above).
• Cheyne^[14] thought that "Tarshish" of Gen 10:4 and "Tiras" of Gen 10:2, are really two names of one nation derived from two different sources, and might indicate the Tyrsenians or Etruscans.
• Jewish liturgy mentions "Tarshishim," which is commonly translated into English as "fiery angels."
• Around 1665, the followers of Shabbatai Zvi in İzmir interpreted the ships of Tarshish as Dutch ships that would transport them to the Holy Land.
• Irish politician and traveler James Emerson Tennent suggested that Galle, a southern city in Sri Lanka, was the ancient seaport of Tarshish from which King Solomon is said to have drawn ivory, peacocks and other valuables.
• Some nineteenth century commentators believed the Tarshish was Britain and possibly related to an Eastern Tarshish, namely India.^[15][16]
• Seventeenth century Spanish missionary Fr. Francisco Colín S.J. claimed that the Filipino people were descendants of Tarshish.
• In Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick, Father Mapple gives a sermon on the story of Jonah. Father Mapple identifies the Tarshish to which Jonah flees with the port of Cádiz in Spain, "as far by water, from Joppa, as Jonah could possibly have sailed in those ancient days, when the Atlantic was an almost unknown sea" (Chapter 9, "The Sermon").
• Augustus Henry Keane believed that Tarshish was Sofala, and that the Biblical land of Havilah was centered on the nearby Great Zimbabwe.^[17]
• Thompson and Skaggs^[3] argue that the Akkadian inscriptions of Esarhaddon (AsBbE) indicate that Tarshish was an island (not a coastland) far to the west of the Levant. In 2003, Christine Marie Thompson identified the Cisjordan Corpus, a concentration of hacksilber hoards in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (Cisjordan). This Corpus dates between 1200 and 586 BC, and the hoards in it are all silver-dominant. The largest hoard was found at Eshtemo'a and contained 26 kg of silver. Within it, and specifically in the geographical region that was part of Phoenicia, is a concentration of hoards dated between 1200 and 800 BC. There is no other known such concentration of silver hoards in contemporary Mediterranean, and its date-range overlaps with the reigns of King Solomon (990 - 931 BC) and Hiram of Tyre (980 - 947 BC). Hacksilber objects in these Phoenician hoards have lead isotope ratios that match ores in the silver-producing regions of Sardinia and Spain, only one of which is a large island rich in silver. Contrary to translations that have been rendering Assyrian tar-si-si as 'Tarsus' up to the present time, Thompson argues that the Assyrian tablets inscribed in Akkadian indicate tar-si-si (Tarshish) was a large island in the western Mediterranean, and that the poetic construction of Psalm 72.10 also shows that it was a large island to the very distant west of Phoenicia. The island of Sardinia was always known as a hub of the metals trade in antiquity. The same evidence from hacksilber is said to fit with what the ancient Greek and Roman authors recorded about the Phoenicians exploiting many sources of silver in the western Mediterranean to feed developing economies back in Israel and Phoenicia soon after the fall of Troy and other palace centers in the eastern Mediterranean around 1200 BC. Classical sources starting with Homer (8th century BC), and the Greek historians Herodotus (484-425 BC) and Diodorus Siculus (d. 30 BC) said the Phoenicians were exploiting the metals of the west for these purposes before they set up the permanent colonies in the metal-rich regions of the Mediterranean and Atlantic.^[2][3]

Other

• 1 Chronicles 7:10 forms part of a genealogy mentioning in passing a Jewish man named Tarshish as a son of a certain Bilhan.
• Esther 1:14 mentions in passing a Persian prince named Tarshish among the seven princes of Persia.
• Tarshish (Lebanon) is the name of a village in Lebanon. The village is located in the Baabda Kadaa at an elevation of 1400m and is 50 km away from Beirut.^[18]
• Tarshish is a family name found among Jews of Ashkenazic descent. A variation on the name, Tarshishi, is found among Arabs of Lebanese descent, and likely indicates a family connection to the Lebanese village Tarshish.
• Tarshish was also the name of a short-lived political party founded by would-be assassin of Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dwek.
• The Greek form of the name, Tharsis, was given by Giovanni Schiaparelli to a region on Mars.
• The classic short story "Ship of Tarshish" by John Buchan refers to the book of Jonah.

See also

• Sons of Noah
• Javan
• Elishah
• Kittim
• Dodanim

References

• Albright, W.F. 1941: 'New light on the early history of Phoenician colonization,' Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 83, 14-22.
• Cross, F.M. 1972: 'An interpretation of the Nora Stone,' Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 208, 13-19.

Further reading

• Aubet, M.E. 2001: The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies, Trade. 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Beitzl, B. 2010: 'Was there a joint nautical venture on the Mediterranean Sea by Tyrian Phoenicians and Early Israelites?', Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 360, 37-66.
• Elat, M. 1982: 'Tarshish and the problem of Phoenician colonization in the western Mediterranean', Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 13, 55-69.
• Gonzalez de Canales, F., Serrano, L. and Llompart, J. 2010: 'Tarshish and the United Monarchy of Israel', Ancient Near Eastern Studies 47, 137-64.
• Hertz J.H. 1936: 'The Pentateuch and Haftoras.' Deuteronomy. Oxford University Press, London.
• Jongbloed, D. 2009: 'Civilisations antédiluviennes.' ed Cap Aventures
• Koch, M. 1984: Tarschisch und Hispanien, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter and Co.
• Lipiński, E. 2002: Semitic Languages: Outline of a Comparative Grammar, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 80, Leuven. Peeters.
• Lipiński, E. 2004: Itineraria Phoenicia, Studia Phoenicia XVIII, Leuven: Peeters.
• Muhly, J.D. 1998: 'Copper, tin, silver and iron: the search for metallic ores as an incentive for foreign expansion.' In: Gitin et al. (eds.), Mediterranean Peoples in Transition: 13th to early 10th centuries BC. In Honor of Professor Trude Dothan. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 314-329.
• Schmidt, B. (ed.) 2007: The Quest for Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.
• Thompson, C. M. and Skaggs, S. 2013: 'King Solomon's silver?: southern Phoenician Hacksilber hoards and the location of Tarshish' Internet Archaeology, (35). doi:10.11141/ia.35.6
• Thompson, C.M. 2003: 'Sealed silver in Iron Age Cisjordan and the 'invention' of coinage,' Oxford Journal of Archaeology 22.1, 67-107.