King Solomon's Navy

I always wondered about King Solomon's navy. The Bible says that he and
Hiram had a navy that brought gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks. (1
Kings 10:22 and 2 Chronicles 8: 17,18.) Hiram supplied the ships and sailors
to Ezion-geber and Elath. The ships returned once every three years with
their cargo.

This raises some questions:

1. Ezion-geber and Elath are on the Red Sea, in a desert region. There is no
lumber for building ships there. How did Hiram get the ships there? They
could have hauled the lumber there from Lebanon and built a shipyard and
ships. They could have built the ships at Tyre and sailed around Africa, but
there is no evidence of the Phoenicians doing this at this early date. The
Egyptians had a canal of sorts, but it operated erratically and was likely
too shallow for ocean going ships. In a book called "The Ancient Engineers"
by L. Sprague De Camp, I think I see how it was done. (De Camp was not a
Christian and bashed the Scriptures every chance he got, but his history of
technology is interesting and adds some light to how things were done in
Bible times).

In about 690 BC, the Assyrian king Sennacherib (see 2 Chronicles 32) put
down a Babylonian rebellion. The Babylonians fled into the Chaldean marshes
in southern Iraq, out of reach of Sennacherib's troops. He ordered up some
ships from the Phoenicians, which were built in sections, probably at Tyre,
and hauled overland to the Euphrates, where they were assembled and
launched. This was about 300 years after Solomon's time, but I would guess
the same method was used to get ships to Ezion-geber. Hiram probably had
them built in sections at Tyre and then they were hauled to their
destination. It would have been a shorter haul than to the Euphrates.

2. Where did the ships sail to? Most commentators seem to think Ophir had to
be India and this is quite possible, considering the cargo they returned
with. They could also have sailed down the African coast. It is doubtful
that Solomon "discovered" India, so there must have been seagoing trade
already going on, possible from Egypt or Yemen.

3. What was the outgoing cargo? Considering the value of the returning
cargo, it is a puzzle what Israel had to trade that India didn't already
have and that was of sufficient value to return the kind of profit Solomon
and Hiram were obviously making.

As an aside, it is also interesting that what is today Iraq was always three distinct areas, even in Bible times - the Assyrians in the north, the Babylonians in the center, and the Chaldeans in the south. Today there are the Kurds in the north, the Sunnis in the center, and the Shiites in the south. In both cases, it was never a single "country" except when a ruthless king or dictator united it by force, and there were constant rebellions which eventually split it up again. Not a good sign for our policy of creating a "democratic Iraq"!!!