King Solomon’s fabled mines are a ‘complete myth’, a Chester historian has concluded.

After more than 20 years’ painstaking research, expert Ralph Ellis is now certain that the legendary source of Solomon’s incredible wealth never in fact existed.

Finding Solomon’s ‘lost’ mines, he says, is “about as likely as taking a dip in the Fountain of Youth” – the mythical spring that supposedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks from its waters.

The idea that Solomon derived his wealth from mines, which many still believe contain vast quantities of gold and precious stones, is based on a “gross misinterpretation” of historical texts.

A solid silver sarcophogus, part of the treasure trove found at Tanis

Even the beloved story of Solomon himself in the Old Testament books of Kings and Chronicles has been heavily altered to “cover up an unpalatable truth”, it has been claimed.

Mr Ellis, however, says there is still a “grain of historical truth” to the biblical story of Solomon and his spectacular wealth — although not in the way most people would expect.

His comprehensive study, which began in 1997, “strongly indicates” that Solomon was not a rich king of Israel at all, but rather a feared and powerful Egyptian Pharaoh.

He believes that neighbouring rulers plundered royal tombs located in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, in Thebes, of their riches and presented them to Solomon as ‘tribute’, to prevent invasion.

Valley of the Kings

But tales of looting and bloodthirsty pharaohs were considered “unpalatable and unacceptable” by later biblical authors, who altered their history to suit their own religious agenda and to create a “purely Israelite” hero.

His findings are revealed in his book Solomon, Pharaoh of Egypt, a revised and updated version of which is now on sale.

If his theory is correct then the treasures of King Solomon are easy enough to find today – they are in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, where scores of artefacts from that region and era can be seen.

Treasures of Tanis

Mr Ellis, 54, said: “According to the Bible, King Solomon was staggeringly wealthy. Yet successive generations of theologians and archaeologists have scoured the Holy Land looking for his capital city, palace, temple and wealth without any success.

“There comes a point when we either have to accept that the biblical account is entirely fictional, or that we may be looking in the wrong location and for the wrong things.

“My research suggests that there is a factual basis for the story of Solomon and his riches, but that it was heavily amended and obscured by biblical scribes. A wealthy and powerful Israelite dynasty did exist, just as the Bible claims, but they were not simply Israelite kings and their capital city was not at Jerusalem.

He added: “This is not the kind of revelation which many Israeli archaeologists will want to hear, for political and cultural reasons, but unlike classical interpretations of the biblical story it does make sense of the confusing biblical accounts.

“Once we accept that these ‘Israelite’ kings were actually pharaohs of Lower Egypt, then all the inconsistencies in the biblical accounts are easily explainable.”

Shoshenq

He added: “I’m certainly not the first historian to suggest the founding fathers of Israel were, in fact, Egyptian. The Jewish historian Josephus Flavius claimed the very same thing nearly two thousand years ago, as did the Greek historian Strabo and the Egyptian historian Manetho.”