Editing Tarshish (section)

===Sardinia===
Thompson and Skaggs<ref name=":02"/> argue that the Akkadian inscriptions of Esarhaddon (AsBbE) indicate that Tarshish was an island (not a coastland) far to the west of the Levant.  American scholars [[William F. Albright]] (1891–1971) and [[Frank Moore Cross]] (1921–2012) suggested Tarshish was [[Sardinia]], because of the discovery of the [[Nora Stone]], whose Phoenician inscription mentions Tarshish.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Albright |first=W.F. |author-link=W. F. Albright |year=1941 |title=New light on the early history of Phoenician colonization |journal=[[Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research]] |volume=83 |issue=83 |pages=14–22 |jstor=3218739 |publisher=The [[American Schools of Oriental Research]]|doi=10.2307/3218739 |s2cid=163643292 }}</ref> Cross read the inscription to understand that it was referring to Tarshish as Sardinia.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Cross |first=F.M. |year=1972 |title=An interpretation of the Nora Stone |journal=[[Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research]] |volume=208 |issue=208 |pages=13–19 |publisher=The [[American Schools of Oriental Research]] |doi=10.2307/1356374 |jstor=1356374|s2cid=163533512 }}</ref> 

In 2003, Christine Marie Thompson identified the Cisjordan Corpus, a concentration of [[hacksilver]] hoards in Israel and Palestine (Cisjordan). This Corpus dates between 1200 and 586&nbsp;BC, and the hoards in it are all silver-dominant. The largest hoard was found at [[Eshtemoa|Eshtemo'a]], present-day [[as-Samu]], and contained 26&nbsp;kg of silver. Within it, and specifically in the geographical region that was part of Phoenicia, is a concentration of hoards dated between 1200 and 800&nbsp;BC. There is no other known such concentration of silver hoards in the contemporary Mediterranean, and its date-range overlaps with the reigns of King Solomon (990–931&nbsp;BC) and Hiram of Tyre (980–947&nbsp;BC).

Hacksilver objects in these Phoenician hoards have lead isotope ratios that match ores in the silver-producing regions of Sardinia and Spain, only one of which is a large island rich in silver. Contrary to translations that have been rendering Assyrian ''tar-si-si'' as 'Tarsus' up to the present time, Thompson argues that the Assyrian tablets inscribed in Akkadian indicate ''tar-si-si'' (Tarshish) was a large island in the western Mediterranean, and that the poetic construction of Psalm&nbsp;72:10 also shows that it was a large island to the very distant west of Phoenicia. The island of Sardinia was always known as a hub of the metals trade in antiquity, and was also called by the [[ancient Greece|ancient Greeks]] as ''Argyróphleps nésos'' "island of the silver veins".

The same evidence from hacksilver is said to fit with what the ancient Greek and Roman authors recorded about the Phoenicians exploiting many sources of silver in the western Mediterranean to feed developing economies back in Israel and Phoenicia soon after the fall of [[Troy]] and other palace centers in the eastern Mediterranean around 1200&nbsp;BC. Classical sources starting with [[Homer]] (8th&nbsp;century&nbsp;BC), and the Greek historians [[Herodotus]] (484–425&nbsp;BC) and [[Diodorus Siculus]] (d.&nbsp;30&nbsp;BC) said the Phoenicians were exploiting the metals of the west for these purposes before they set up the permanent colonies in the metal-rich regions of the Mediterranean and Atlantic.<ref name="ReferenceA"/><ref name=":02">{{cite journal |author1=Thompson, C.M. |author2=Skaggs, S. |year=2013 |title=King Solomon's silver?: Southern Phoenician hacksilber hoards and the location of Tarshish' |journal=Internet Archaeology |issue=35 |id=35 |doi=10.11141/ia.35.6|doi-access=free }}</ref>