What were ships of Tarshish?
The Bible mentions ships of Tarshish many times, but exactly what they were has been unclear. Some believe the term simply refers to large (for the time) ocean going ships. There has also been much controversy over where Tarshish was.
I propose in this article to avoid dealing with where Tarshish was, and who the Tarsh might have been (Tarsh-ish would mean the place of the Tarsh), and instead focus on the ships themselves. I will begin by looking at the meaning of the word Tarshish.
In the eighth or ninth century AD, the Arabs had a block printing system called Tarsh. It was used by the underclass, the Banu Sasan, to produce amulets or phylacteries that they scammed people into believing were handwritten, and disappeared by the fourteenth century (probably stamped out by the rise of Sufiism). It had little influence on Islam and only a few examples survive, and no printing blocks do.
However, the interest here is in the meaning of the Arab name for it. Bulliet gives the root meaning as referring to something that could be effaced and remade. It is probably a loan word to Arabic from Egyptian. 1
So what does "Tarsh" or "t-r-s" printing have to do with ships? Nothing directly, but the meaning of the word is significant. It means something that can be made and remade, taken apart and re-assembled. It would be significant then, if in referring to ships it had the same basic meaning - a ship that could be disassembled and re-assembled.
The question, then, is if there is any evidence either in historical records or found by archaeologists, that such ships existed in ancient times. The answer is yes to both!
In the 690's BC, The Assyrian king Sennacherib, faced with a rebellion by a tributary Babylonian king, deposed him and placed his son Ashur-nadin-shun on the throne. The rebels fled south into the marshes of Chaldea. (Saddam Hussein had a similar problem with the marsh area after the Iran-Iraq war. He solved it by diverting the water and drying the marshes, causing immense environmental damage we are still trying to undo.) Sennacherib solved the problem somewhat differently. He had ships built in Phoenicia (the coast of Lebanon). These ships were hauled overland to the Euphrates in sections and assembled there, then sailing down the river to the marshes. 2
This would have been around 200 years after Solomon, but shows that the idea of ships that could be disassembled, moved overland, and re-assembled was known - and that technique would have been just what Solomon and Hiram would have needed to get ships to Ezion Geber.
More recently, archeological work at Mersa Gawasis on the Red Sea coast of Egypt has discovered a number of caves in which disassembled ships were stored between voyages to Punt. Archeologists believe these ships were built by the Egyptians at Qena, 400 miles to the west, then hauled across the desert in pieces and reassembled. They made the roughly 2000 mile voyage to Punt and back in about two and a half months, though the whole endeavor took almost 4000 men and lasted about 4 months. Expeditions were made about every 20 years. In between, the ships were disassembled and stored in the caves.
"The Egyptian ships were also unique in that they were held together with mortise-and-tenon joints, tab-and-slot fittings that needed no metal fasteners and could be taken apart and put back together again. For added strength, the individual timbers were carved with curves that nested into adjacent parts, a little like puzzle pieces. 3" They were about 100 feet long and took over 60 tons of Lebanese cedar to build.
A 66 foot replica built and sailed on the Red Sea for two weeks averaged about 5 knots but hit 9 in a heavy wind, and rode out 20 knot winds and 10 foot waves easily. 4 5
An inscription found dates this find to the time of Amenemhat III. A carving in Hatshepsut's Temple show similar ships. So these were likely around in the time of Moses, long before Solomon. Whether the Egyptians invented them or even built them we don't really know. They might have purchased them from the Phoenicians, sailed them up the Nile, taken them apart and transported them overland to the Red Sea.
What this does prove is that ships that could be taken apart, moved overland, and put back together existed in Solomon's time. These ships would have been much more expensive than normal ships and were probably only built and used where they were needed, which is one of the reasons they were unknown until recently. The other reason is that ships were built by skilled workmen working without plans until about the 15th century AD, and the techniques were kept secret, only being passed down in families.
These ships were also bigger and sturdier than regular ships, a necessity for sailing the Gulf of Aqaba - one of the most dangerous places for sailing ships in this part of the world. Before the age of steam, it was rarely attempted.
I believe, then, that "Ships of Tarshish" were ships that could be disassembled and reassembled. There may have been different types of them - the ships Sennacherib had built would have been smaller and shallower than the ocean-going ships of the Egyptians, but the principle was the same. Solomon and Hiram likely had ships like the Egyptian ones - perhaps even larger. The Bible says the voyages of Solomon's fleet took three years round trip. The trip to Punt and back (2000 miles) took about four months total. Solomon's fleet could have gone halfway around the globe in 3 years. However, it is likely that wherever they went, they spent time trading, and also refitting and resupplying for the return voyage. We could give them a maximum 8000 mile round trip more reasonably. It is only 3000 miles to Diu Harbor, India - 25 days at 5 knots 6. So they could have traded with several ports down the west coast of India, or they could have traded down the African coast with Kenya or Tanzania, or perhaps as far as Mozambique or Madagascar. Either voyage could account for the cargoes they returned with.
I don't want to get into this in depth, but was Tarshish also a place? The Bible would indicate that there was at least one place called Tarshish, and probably more than one. Jonah took a ship going to "Tarshish" from Joppa. Some put this Tarshish in Spain, and it is possible. However, Solomon and Hiram's ships at Ezion Geber are also referred to as coming from Tarshish in 2 Chr. 9:21. To get to Spain they would have had to either circumnavigate Africa or the entire globe - neither is very likely. The most likely solution to this is that there were several places named "Tarshish". Probably the descendants of Tarshish in Genesis 10:4 became mariners, settled in numerous places near the sea, and engaged in building ships and invented the ships later called after their name. One Tarshish is associated with silver (Jer. 10:9).
Footnotes:
2DeCamp, L Sprague. The Ancient Engineers, Technology and Invention from the Earliest Times to the Renaissance. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1993.P. 67.
3 http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jun/02-egypts-lost-fleet-its-been-found/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=
4 http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jun/02-egypts-lost-fleet-its-been-found/article_view?b_start:int=2&-C=
5http://ww2.coastal.edu/cward/drward_sailingmindesert.php
6 http://ports.com/sea-route/port-of-aqaba,jordan/diu-harbor,india/
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