Queen of Sheba

Narrative

Hebrew

The Queen of Sheba (Hebrew: מַלְכַּת שְׁבָא, romanized: Malkaṯ Šəḇāʾ, in the Hebrew Bible; Koine Greek: βασίλισσα Σαβά, romanized: basílissa Sabá, in the Septuagint; Syriac: ܡܠܟܬ ܫܒܐ, romanized: Malkat Šəḇāʾ; Ge'ez: ንግሥተ ሳባ, romanized: Nəgśətä Saba), whose name is not stated, came to Jerusalem "with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold, and precious stones" (1 Kings 10:2). "Never again came such an abundance of spices" (10:10; 2 Chronicles 9:1–9) as those she gave to Solomon.

The use of the term ḥiddot or 'riddles' (1 Kings 10:1), an Aramaic loanword, indicates a late origin for the text.

Sheba was quite well known in the classical world. Sheba and Seba are differentiated at some points in the Bible, but not in indigenous inscriptions.

Arabic

Although there are still no inscriptions found from South Arabia that furnish evidence for the Queen of Sheba herself, South Arabian inscriptions do mention a South Arabian queen (mlkt, Ancient South Arabian: 𐩣𐩡𐩫𐩩). And in the north of Arabia, Assyrian inscriptions repeatedly mention Arab queens.

The queen's visit could have been a trade mission. A recent theory suggests that the Ophel inscription in Jerusalem was written in the Sabaic language and that the text provides evidence for trade connections between ancient South Arabia and the Kingdom of Judah during the 10th century BC.

The ancient Sabaic Awwām Temple, known in folklore as Maḥram ("the Sanctuary of") Bilqīs, was excavated by archaeologists; no evidence was found relating to the Queen of Sheba. Another Sabean temple, the Barran Temple (Arabic: معبد بران), is also known as the 'Arash Bilqis' ("Throne of Bilqis"), which like the nearby Awwam Temple was also dedicated to the god Almaqah, but the connection between the Barran Temple and Sheba has not been established archaeologically either.

Bible stories of the Queen of Sheba and the ships of Ophir served as a basis for legends about the Israelites traveling in the Queen of Sheba's entourage when she returned to her country to bring up her child by Solomon.

Religious interpretations

In Judaism

According to Josephus (Ant. 8:165–173), the queen of Sheba was the queen of Egypt and Ethiopia, and brought to Israel the first specimens of the balsam, which grew in the Holy Land in the historian's time. Josephus (Antiquities 2.5‒10) represents Cambyses as conquering the capital of Aethiopia, and changing its name from Seba to Meroe. Josephus affirms that the Queen of Sheba or Saba came from this region, and that it bore the name of Saba before it was known by that of Meroe. There seems also some affinity between the word Saba and the name or title of the kings of the Aethiopians, Sabaco.

The Talmud (Bava Batra 15b) says: "Whoever says malkath Sheba (I Kings X, 1) means a woman is mistaken; ... it means the kingdom (מַלְכֻת) of Sheba".

A Yemenite manuscript entitled "Midrash ha-Hefez" (published by S. Schechter in Folk-Lore, 1890, pp. 353 et seq.) gives nineteen riddles, most of which are found scattered through the Talmud and the Midrash, which the author of the "Midrash ha-Hefez" attributes to the Queen of Sheba. Most of these riddles are simply Bible questions, some not of a very edifying character. The two that are genuine riddles are: "Without movement while living, it moves when its head is cut off", and "Produced from the ground, man produces it, while its food is the fruit of the ground". The answer to the former is, "a tree, which, when its top is removed, can be made into a moving ship"; the answer to the latter is, "a wick".

The rabbis who denounce Solomon interpret 1 Kings 10:13 as meaning that Solomon had criminal intercourse with the Queen of Sheba, the offspring of which was Nebuchadnezzar, who destroyed the Temple (comp. Rashi ad loc.). According to others, the sin ascribed to Solomon in 1 Kings 11:7 et seq. is only figurative: it is not meant that Solomon fell into idolatry, but that he was guilty of failing to restrain his wives from idolatrous practises (Shab. 56b).

Christianity

The New Testament mentions a "queen of the South" (Greek: βασίλισσα νότου, Latin: Regina austri), who "came from the uttermost parts of the earth", i.e. from the extremities of the then known world, to hear the wisdom of Solomon (Mt. 12:42; Lk. 11:31).

The mystical interpretation of the Song of Songs, which was felt as supplying a literal basis for the speculations of the allegorists, makes its first appearance in Origen, who wrote a voluminous commentary on the Song of Songs. Others have proposed either the marriage of Solomon with the Pharaoh's daughter, or his marriage with an Israelite woman, the Shulamite. The former was the favorite opinion of the mystical interpreters to the end of the 18th century; the latter has obtained since its introduction by Good (1803).

The bride of the Canticles is assumed to have been black due to a passage in Song of Songs 1:5, which the Revised Standard Version (1952) translates as "I am very dark, but comely", as does Jerome (Latin: Nigra sum, sed formosa), while the New Revised Standard Version (1989) has "I am black and beautiful", as the Septuagint (Ancient Greek: μέλαινα εἰμί καί καλή).

One legend has it that the Queen of Sheba brought Solomon the same gifts that the Magi later gave to Jesus. During the Middle Ages, Christians sometimes identified the queen of Sheba with the sibyl Sabba.

The most extensive version of the legend appears in the Kebra Nagast (Glory of the Kings), the Ethiopian national saga, translated from Arabic in 1322. Here Menelik I is the child of Solomon and Makeda (the Ethiopic name for the queen of Sheba; she is the child of the man who destroys the legendary snake-king Arwe) from whom the Ethiopian dynasty claims descent to the present day.

Based on the Gospels of Matthew (12:42) and Luke (11:31), the "queen of the South" is claimed to be the queen of Ethiopia. In those times, King Solomon sought merchants from all over the world, in order to buy materials for the building of the Temple. Among them was Tamrin, great merchant of Queen Makeda of Ethiopia. Having returned to Ethiopia, Tamrin told the queen of the wonderful things he had seen in Jerusalem, and of Solomon's wisdom and generosity, whereupon she decided to visit Solomon. She was warmly welcomed, given a palace for dwelling, and received great gifts every day. Solomon and Makeda spoke with great wisdom, and instructed by him, she converted to Judaism. Before she left, there was a great feast in the king's palace. Makeda stayed in the palace overnight, after Salomon had sworn that he would not do her any harm, while she swore in return that she would not steal from him. As the meals had been spicy, Makeda awoke thirsty at night, and went to drink some water, when Solomon appeared, reminding her of her oath. She answered: "Ignore your oath, just let me drink water." That same night, Solomon had a dream about the sun rising over Israel, but being mistreated and despised by the Jews, the sun moved to shine over Ethiopia and Rome (i. e. the Byzantine empire). Solomon gave Makeda a ring as a token of faith, and then she left. On her way home, she gave birth to a son, whom she named Baina-leḥkem (i. e. bin al-ḥakīm, "Son of the Wise", later called Menilek). After the boy had grown up in Ethiopia, he went to Jerusalem carrying the ring, and was received with great honors. The king and the people tried in vain to persuade him to stay. Solomon gathered his nobles and announced that he would send his first-born son to Ethiopia together with their first-borns. He added that he was expecting a third son, who would marry the king of Rome's daughter and reign over Rome, so that the entire world would be ruled by David's descendants. Then Baina-leḥkem was anointed king by Zadok the high priest, and he took the name David. The first-born nobles who followed him are named, and even today some Ethiopian families claim their ancestry from them. Prior to leaving, the priests' sons had stolen the Ark of the Covenant, after their leader Azaryas had offered a sacrifice as commanded by one God's angel. With much wailing, the procession left Jerusalem on a wind cart led and carried by the archangel Michael. Having arrived at the Red Sea, Azaryas revealed to the people that the Ark is with them. David prayed to the Ark and the people rejoiced, singing, dancing, blowing horns and flutes, and beating drums. The Ark showed its miraculous powers during the crossing of the stormy Sea, and all arrived unscathed. When Solomon learned that the Ark had been stolen, he sent a horseman after the thieves, and even gave chase himself, but neither could catch them. Solomon returned to Jerusalem, and gave orders to the priests to remain silent about the theft and to place a copy of the Ark in the Temple, so that the foreign nations could not say that Israel had lost its fame.

Islam

The Temple of Awwam or "Mahram Bilqis" ("Sanctuary of the Queen of Sheba") is a Sabaean temple dedicated to the principal deity of Saba, Almaqah (frequently called "Lord of ʾAwwām"), near Ma'rib in what is now Yemen.

I found [there] a woman ruling them, and she has been given of all things, and she has a great throne. I found that she and her people bow to the sun instead of God. Satan has made their deeds seem right to them and has turned them away from the right path, so they cannot find their way.

In the above verse (ayah), after scouting nearby lands, a bird known as the hud-hud (hoopoe) returns to King Solomon relating that the land of Sheba is ruled by a queen. In a letter, Solomon invites the Queen of Sheba, who like her followers had worshipped the sun, to submit to God. She expresses that the letter is noble and asks her chief advisers what action should be taken. They respond by mentioning that her kingdom is known for its might and inclination towards war, however that the command rests solely with her. In an act suggesting the diplomatic qualities of her leadership, she responds not with brute force, but by sending her ambassadors to present a gift to King Solomon. He refuses the gift, declaring that God gives far superior gifts and that the ambassadors are the ones only delighted by the gift. King Solomon instructs the ambassadors to return to the Queen with a stern message that if he travels to her, he will bring a contingent that she cannot defeat. The Queen then makes plans to visit him at his palace. Before she arrives, King Solomon asks several of his chiefs who will bring him the Queen of Sheba's throne before they come to him in complete submission. An Ifrit first offers to move her throne before King Solomon would rise from his seat. However, a man with knowledge of the Scripture instead has her throne moved to King Solomon's palace in the blink of an eye, at which King Solomon exclaims his gratitude towards God as King Solomon assumes this is God's test to see if King Solomon is grateful or ungrateful. King Solomon disguises her throne to test her awareness of her own throne, asking her if it seems familiar. She answers that during her journey to him, her court had informed her of King Solomon's prophethood, and since then she and her subjects had made the intention to submit to God. King Solomon then explains that God is the only god that she should worship, not to be included alongside other false gods that she used to worship. Later the Queen of Sheba is requested to enter a palatial hall. Upon first view she mistakes the hall for a lake and raises her skirt to not wet her clothes. King Solomon informs her that is not water rather it is smooth slabs of glass. Recognizing that it was a marvel of construction which she had not seen the likes of before, she declares that in the past she had harmed her own soul but now submits, with King Solomon, to God (27:22–44).

Scholarly interpretations

Folding of the Hebrew Bible's story

The dating of the story of the Queen of Sheba is not well established. A significant number of biblical philologists believe that an early version of the story of the Queen of Sheba existed before the composition of the Deuteronomistic history (c. 640–609 BCE) and was revised and placed therein by an anonymous redactor labelled the Deuteronomist (Dtr) by textual scholars. However, many scholars believe that the account from the Third Book of Kings in its present form was compiled during the so-called Second Deuteronomic Revision (Dtr2), produced during the Babylonian Captivity (c. 550 BCE). The purpose of the story seems to be to glorify the figure of King Solomon, who is portrayed as a ruler who enjoyed authority and captured the imagination of other rulers. Such an exaltation is dissonant with the general critical tone of the Deuteronomic history towards King Solomon. Later, this account was also placed in II Chronicles, written in the Settlement era.

Hypotheses and archaeological evidence

Researchers have noted that the Queen of Sheba's visit to Jerusalem could conceivably have been a trade mission related to the Israelite king's efforts to settle on the shores of the Red Sea and thereby undermine the monopoly of Saba and other South Arabian kingdoms on caravan trade with Syria and Mesopotamia. Assyrian sources confirm that South Arabia was engaged in international trade as early as 890 BC, so the arrival in Jerusalem in Solomon's time of a trading mission from a South Arabian kingdom is plausible.

There is, however, debate about the chronological plausibility of this event: Solomon lived from approximately 965 to 926 BC, while it has been argued that the first traces of the Sabean monarchy appear some 150 years later. On the other hand, Peter Stein argues that archaeological and epigraphic evidence indicates that the Sabean kingdom had already emerged by the 10th century BC.

In the 19th century, explorers I. Halevi and Glaser found in the Arabian Desert the ruins of the huge city of Marib. Among the inscriptions found, scientists read the name of four South Arabian states: Minea, Hadramawt, Qataban, and Sawa. As it turned out, the residence of the kings of Sheba was the city of Marib (modern Yemen), which confirms the traditional version of the queen's origin from the south of the Arabian Peninsula. Inscriptions found in southern Arabia do not mention female rulers, but from Assyrian documents of the 8th-7th century BC, Arabian queens in the more northern regions of Arabia are known. In the 1950s Wendell Philips excavated the temple of the goddess Balqis at Marib.

Researchers attribute the origin of the legend about the son of the Queen of Sheba in Ethiopia to the fact that apparently in the 6th century BC the Sabaeans, having crossed the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, settled near the Red Sea and occupied part of Ethiopia, 'capturing' the memory of its ruler with her and transplanting it to new soil. One of the provinces of Ethiopia bears the name Shewa (Shawa, modern. Shoa).

The viewpoint according to which the birthplace of the Queen of Sheba or her prototype was not South Arabia but North Arabia is also quite widespread. Among other North Arabian tribes, the Sabaeans are mentioned on the stela of Tiglath-Pileser III. These northern Sabeans can be associated in a number of ways with the Sabeans (Sabeans) mentioned in the book of Job (Job 1:15), the Sheba of the book of the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 27:22), and with Abraham's grandson Sheba (Genesis 25:3, cf. also Genesis 10:7, Genesis 10:28) (the name of Sheba's brother Dedan, mentioned next to it, is associated with the oasis of El-Ula north of Medina). According to some scholars, the Kingdom of Israel first came into contact with the northern Sabaeans, and only later, perhaps through their mediation, with Saba in the south. The historian J. A. Montgomery has suggested that in the 10th century BC the Sabeans lived in northern Arabia, although they controlled trade routes from the south.

In art and culture

Medieval

The 12th century cathedrals at Strasbourg, Chartres, Rochester and Canterbury include artistic renditions in stained glass windows and doorjamb decorations. Likewise of Romanesque art, the enamel depiction of a black woman at Klosterneuburg Monastery. The Queen of Sheba, standing in water before Solomon, is depicted on a window in King's College Chapel, Cambridge.

Renaissance

The Queen of Sheba was a popular feature in the Italian Renaissance. It can be found in the doors of the Florence Baptistery by Lorenzo Ghiberti, frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli in Pisa, and in the Raphael Loggie.

Piero della Francesca's frescoes in Arezzo (c. 1466) on the Legend of the True Cross contain two panels on the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon. The legend links the beams of Solomon's palace (adored by Queen of Sheba) to the wood of the crucifixion. The Renaissance continuation of the analogy between the Queen's visit to Solomon and the adoration of the Magi is evident in the Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi (c. 1510) by Hieronymus Bosch.

Literature

Boccaccio's On Famous Women (Latin: De Mulieribus Claris) follows Josephus in calling the Queen of Sheba Nicaula. Boccaccio writes she is the Queen of Ethiopia and Egypt, and that some people say she is also the queen of Arabia. He writes that she had a palace on "a very large island" called Meroe, located in the Nile river. From there Nicaula travelled to Jerusalem to see King Solomon.

O. Henry's short story The Gift of the Magi contains the following description to convey the preciousness of the protagonist Della Dillingham Young's hair: "Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts."

Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies continues the convention of calling the Queen of Sheba "Nicaula". The author praises the Queen for secular and religious wisdom and lists her besides Christian and Hebrew prophetesses as first on a list of dignified female pagans.

Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus refers to the Queen of Sheba as Saba, when Mephistopheles is trying to persuade Faustus of the wisdom of the women with whom he supposedly shall be presented every morning.

Gérard de Nerval's autobiographical novel, Voyage to the Orient (1851), details his travels through the Middle East with much artistic license. He recapitulates at length a tale told in a Turkish cafe of King Soliman's love of Balkis, the Queen of Saba, but she, in turn, is destined to love Adoniram (Hiram Abif), Soliman's chief craftsman of the Temple, owing to both her and Adoniram's divine genealogy. Soliman grows jealous of Adoniram, and when he learns of three craftsmen who wish to sabotage his work and later kill him, Soliman willfully ignores warnings of these plots. Adoniram is murdered and Balkis flees Soliman's kingdom.

Léopold Sédar Senghor's "Elégie pour la Reine de Saba", published in his Elégies majeures in 1976, uses the Queen of Sheba in a love poem and for a political message. In the 1970s, he used the Queen of Sheba fable to widen his view of Negritude and Eurafrique by including "Arab-Berber Africa".

Film

Played by Gabrielle Robinne in La reine de Saba (1913)

Played by Betty Blythe in The Queen of Sheba (1921)

Played by France Dhélia in Le berceau de dieu (1926)

Played by Dorothy Page in King Solomon of Broadway (1935)

Played by Leonora Ruffo in The Queen of Sheba (1952)

Played by Gina Lollobrigida in Solomon and Sheba (1959)

Played by Winifred Bryan in Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man (1963)

Played by Anya Phillips in Rome '78 (1978)

Played by Halle Berry in Solomon & Sheba (1995)

Played by Vivica A. Fox in Solomon (film) (1997)

Played by Aamito Lagum in Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)

Music

Solomon (composed in 1748; first performed in 1749), oratorio by George Frideric Handel; "The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba" from this work is often performed as a concert piece

La reine de Saba (1862), opera by Charles Gounod

Die Königin von Saba (1875), opera by Karl Goldmark

La Reine de Scheba (1926), opera by Reynaldo Hahn

Belkis, Regina di Saba (1931), ballet by Ottorino Respighi

Solomon and Balkis (1942), opera by Randall Thompson

The Queen of Sheba (1953), cantata for women's voices by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco

"Black Beauty" (1970), song by Focus

"Leila, the Queen of Sheba" (1981), song by Dolly Dots

"Throne of Gold" (1984), song by Steel Pulse

"Sheba" (1989), song by Bad Brains

"The Original Queen of Sheba" (1991), song by Great White

"Machine Gun" (1993), by Slowdive

"Aïcha" (1996), by Khaled

"Makeda" (1998), French-language R&B by French-Cameroonian duo Les Nubians

"Balqis" (2000), song by Siti Nurhaliza

"Thing Called Love" (1987), song by John Hiatt

Television

Played by Halle Berry in Solomon & Sheba (1995)

Played by Vivica A. Fox in Solomon (1997)

Played by Andrulla Blanchette in Lexx, Season 4, Episode 21: "Viva Lexx Vegas" (2002)

Played by Amani Zain in Queen of Sheba: Behind the Myth (2002)

Played by Yetide Badaki in American Gods as Bilquis