The search for King Solomon's gold
A maverick Canadian geologist just may
have tracked down a biblical motherlode
DAWN WALTON
Saturday, November 11, 2000
CALGARY -- If Charles Fipke weren't already Canada's most famous prospector for discovering the country's first diamond mine, tracking down King Solomon's fabled gold mines in Yemen would certainly secure him the title.
A report in this month's issue of the scientific journal Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy suggests the ancient mines Mr. Fipke stumbled upon during his quest for diamonds in Yemen's northern deserts date back 3,000 years.
The ancient mines could have been operating in an era when Israel's biblical king was believed to have amassed great wealth, the researchers suggest. The discovery also gives some weight to a biblical account of a meeting between the legendary Queen of Sheba, who travelled north from her kingdom -- believed to be present-day Yemen -- to Jerusalem, where she showered Solomon with spices, precious stones and 120 talents (about 144,000 ounces) of gold.
"It would have been the major area where Sheba would have got her gold. It would have came from there. There just is no other place in Yemen that we know of that . . . has such extensive gold works," Mr. Fipke said.
How much gold did the ancient mines, which are located north of the ancient city of Marib, thought to be the capital of Sheba's kingdom, produce?
"From the tailings and that, quite a bit. It actually fits with what's said in the Bible that Sheba gave Solomon [about] five tons of gold," Mr. Fipke said.
Of course, there's no concrete link to King Solomon or the Queen of Sheba and the mines. In fact, historians have no real evidence that Sheba, who is said to have ruled an ancient civilization in southern Arabia 3,000 years ago, ever existed outside of legend.
Bill Glanzman, an archaeology professor at the University of Calgary, said "it's very enticing and tempting" to tie the mining sites to these historical figures.
"But there would be no way whatsoever to connect these mining efforts with the Queen of Sheba," he added, unless there was some pottery or inscriptions that name people or pinpoint dates.
Prof. Glanzman is on his own hunt for the Queen of Sheba. He's the field director of a team of international researchers excavating a 3,000-year-old temple in Yemen.
Arguably, if anybody's going to find proof of Solomon's mines or Sheba's life, it's probably Chuck Fipke. In 1991, he discovered the Ekati diamond mine in the Northwest Territories. In 1995, he trekked to Yemen hoping to find more. Instead, he found more than 200 ancient gold-mining sites.
Mr. Fipke said he found nothing to make diamond prospecting worthwhile. But after taking about 5,500 samples, he said he located significant gold, copper, nickel, cobalt and platinum deposits. But the company he founded, Dia Met Minerals Ltd., which owns part of the Ekati mine, wasn't interested.
That's when the so-called "maverick geologist" -- he's had numerous adventures around the world and survived an attack by cannibals and malaria -- launched a new company, Cantex Mine Development Corp., to prospect on 52,000 square kilometres in Yemen.
Mr. Fipke has hit historical paydirt, reckons a husband-wife team that ventured to Yemen in 1998 to investigate the ancient mines.
"I can't say it's the first evidence of ancient gold mining in the Arabian Peninsula, but certainly the first evidence in Yemen," said report co-author Leanne Mallory-Greenough, a Canadian archaeologist who visited five sites ranging in size from 150 square metres to a 10,000-square-metre mine.
Located on the floor of an ancient, but eroded volcano, Dr. Mallory-Greenough and her geologist husband, John Greenough, a professor at Okanagan University College in Kelowna, found remnants of buildings, old mine shafts, and ore-processing equipment.
"These people were on the ball," Dr. Mallory-Greenough said. "The technology that they were using was the same as in Egypt and Sudan at the same time. So there was communication within the whole region about how to do things."
In the meantime, Mr. Fipke is preparing to head back to Yemen. But he's not planning to pull gold from the ancient mining sites. Digging beyond what the ancient prospectors have already scoured and left for modern-day treasure hunters could be a long shot. He said he would rather see the area preserved as a historic site.
And just maybe, a little of King Solomon's wisdom was left in the region and rubbed off on Mr. Fipke. The last time someone claimed to be mining King Solomon's mines, the tale erupted in scandal.
Calgary's Timbuktu Gold Corp. enjoyed a run-up in its stock price after the company suggested it zeroed in on the king's mines in Mali, a small West African country. In 1996, samples of the "find" were tampered with and Timbuktu's stock plummeted.
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