In Search of King Solomon's Mines

King Solomon, the Bible's wisest king, possessed extraordinary wealth. He built a temple in Jerusalem that was purportedly covered in gold. Intrigued by a map he finds in a shop near the site of that temple, Tahir Shah sets out to find the wise king's gold mines. A multitude of clues points him across the Red Sea to Ethiopia, the land of the Queen of Sheba. Shah's trail takes him to a remote cliff-face monastery where the monks hoist visitors up on a leather rope, to the ruined castles of Gondar, and to the churches of Lalibela, hewn from solid rock. In the south he encounters an illegal gold mine of Biblical proportions, where thousands of men, women, and children dig with their hands. But the hardest leg of the journey is to the accused mountain of Tullu Wallel, where legend says the devil keeps watch over the entrance to an ancient mine shaft....