King Solomon's Mines is a popular novel by the English Victorian adventure writer and fabulist Sir H.

Rider Haggard. It tells of a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party.

The mines, however, were likely operated by the Edomites, a semi-nomadic tribe that battled constantly with Israel, the researchers say. "e;The mines are definitely from the period of King Solomon,"e; archaeologist Erez Ben-Yosef of Tel Aviv University, said in a statement this week.