The World's Oldest Picture of Gold-Seekers.
The three ships of Queen Hatshepsut sent to the Land of Punt (possibly Somaliland) in 1503-1481, B.C.
From a wall-painting in the Temple of Deir-el-Bahri, near Thebes.
Nor was the Argo the only ship to set sail to unknown lands for gold. As early as the fabled voyage of the Argonauts, or even earlier, Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt—a mighty woman monarch of whom all too little is known—sent an expedition to Punt (possibly Somaliland) for incense and for gold. On the walls of the great temples built during her reign are found paintings telling the story of this expedition, picturing, among other things, the bags of gold that the three-masted, thirty-oared ship brought home.
Hiram, King of Tyre, who was engaged by King Solomon to bring treasures for the Temple at Jerusalem, made a long journey to some distant land (about B. C. 1000) and, after having been three years away, brought back gold and silver, as well as ivory, apes, and peacocks. He certainly went to India and may have visited Peru.[3]
[3] For the theory of this early voyage to America, see the author's "The Quest of the Western World."
The Phrygians were known not only as miners of gold but also as workers in the precious metal. The "golden sands of Pactolus" were washed a thousand years before the Christian era. The proverbial wealth of Crœsus and the legend of the "golden touch of Midas" remain as historic memories of the gold mines of Asia Minor and Arabia, worked by the Lydian kings.
When Persia became the mistress of the world, most of this gold was taken to the courts of Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius. Some of it, but not all, came back in the victorious train of Alexander the Great, when ten thousand teams of mules and five hundred camels were required to carry the treasure to the new world capital at Susa.
Spain, in addition to Egypt and Arabia, became one of the principal gold-bearing sources of the ancient world. The Carthaginians, colonists from Phœnicia, conquered the Iberians, who then populated Spain, and forced them to work in gold mines. They captured negroes and shipped them to Spain as slaves in the gold diggings. The Carthaginians also exploited mines in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.