He was christened Hiram, after an ancestor, with Ulysses for a middle name.
The Tyrian annals, moreover, alluded to the connexion between Hiram and Solomon.
In contrast to Hiram I., king of Tyre, Ithobal or Ethbaal is styled in 1 Kings xvi.
The fragment of a bronze bowl discovered in Cyprus in 1876, which bears round its edge an inscription dedicating it to BaalLebanon as a gift from a servant of Hiram, king of the Sidonians, is probably the oldest Phoenician document which we possess.
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."
