Tarshish

Tarshish (Phoenician: 𐤕𐤓𐤔𐤔‎ TRŠŠ; Hebrew: תַּרְשִׁישׁ Taršīš; Greek: Θαρσεῖς, Tharseis) 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 Phoenicia (modern Lebanon) and the Land of Israel. Tarshish was said to have exported vast quantities of important metals to Phoenicia and Israel. The same place name occurs in the Akkadian inscriptions of Assyrian king Esarhaddon (died 669 BC) and also on the Phoenician inscription of the Nora Stone (around 800 BC) in Sardinia; 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.

Quotes

• And all the drinking vessels of king Solomon were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold: none were of silver; it was not any thing accounted of in the days of Solomon. For the king’s ships went to Tarshish with the servants of Huram: every three years once came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.
  • 2 Chronicles 9:20–21 (KJV)

• Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind.
  • Psalms 48:7 (KJV)

• The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts.
  • Psalms 72:10 (KJV)

• Pass through thy land as a river, O daughter of Tarshish: there is no more strength.
  • Isaiah 23:10 (KJV)

    Cross over your land like the Nile, O daughter of Tarshish; there is no restraint anymore. (ESV)

    Till your land as they do along the Nile, Daughter Tarshish, for you no longer have a harbor. (NIV)

• Howl, ye ships of Tarshish: for your strength is laid waste.
  • Isaiah 23:14 (KJV)

• Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the LORD thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because he hath glorified thee.
  • Isaiah 60:9 (KJV)

• Silver spread into plates is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz, the work of the workman, and of the hands of the founder.
  • Jeremiah 10:9 (KJV)

• Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs.
  • Ezekiel 27:12 (KJV)

• The ships of Tarshish did sing of thee in thy market: and thou wast replenished, and made very glorious in the midst of the seas.
  • Ezekiel 27:25 (KJV)

• Sheba, and Dedan, and the merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof, shall say unto thee, Art thou come to take a spoil? hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil?
  • Ezekiel 38:13 (KJV)

• But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.
  • Jonah 1:3 (KJV)

Tartessos

Tartessos or Tartessus (Spanish: Tartesos) is, as defined by archaeologists, a historical civilisation settled in the southern Iberian Peninsula characterised by its mixture of local paleo-Hispanic and Phoenician traits. In the Graeco-Roman historical records, Tartessos (Greek: Ταρτησσός) appears as a semi-mythical or legendary harbour city and the surrounding culture on the south coast of the Iberian Peninsula (in modern Andalusia, Spain), at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. Some scholars have identified Tartessos with the biblical Tarshish.

• No Amalthéa's horn for me!
    Riches I disdain;
  Nor in Tarshish would I be,
  To king it for a century
    And half as long again.
  • Anacreon, fragment quoted by Strabo, Geography [on the wealth of the Iberians]; see Scholiast on Dionysus Periegetes 332 (Tr. T. F. Higham, OBGVT (1938), p. 221
  • Herodotus (I, 163) adds the name of the king in question, Arganthonius