Trading journeys were conducted with Phoenician help to Ophir and Tarshish.
Whether associated with the exploitation of Ophir (q.v.) or not the first great voyage of African discovery appears to have been accomplished by the Phoe 1 History of Civilization, vol.
Commercial intercourse with Asia Minor, Arabia, Tarshish (probably in Spain) and Ophir filled his coffers, and his realm extended from the Euphrates to the border of Egypt.
Although the first definite endeavour to locate the Golden Chersonese thus dates from the middle of the 2nd century of our era, the name was apparently well known to the learned of Europe at a somewhat earlier period, and in his Antiquities of the Jews, written during the latter half of the 1st century, Josephus says that Solomon gave to the pilots furnished to him by Hiram of Tyre commands " that they should go along with his stewards to the land that of old was called Ophir, but now the Aurea Chersonesus, which belongs to India, to fetch gold."
Still more diversity of opinion prevails as to the southern gold-exporting port of Ophir, which some scholars place in Arabia, others at one or another point on the east coast of Africa.