Queen of Sheba
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The Queen of Sheba, (Arabic ملكة سبأ Malikat sabaʾ , Ge'ez: ንáŒáˆ¥á‰° ሳባ Nigista Saba), referred to in the Bible books of 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles, the New Testament, the Qur'an, and Ethiopian history, was the ruler of Sheba, an ancient kingdom which modern archaeology speculates was located in present-day Yemen or Eritrea, Ethiopia. Unnamed in the Biblical text, she is called Makeda (Ge'ez: ማáŠá‹³ mÄkidÄ) in the Ethiopian tradition, and in Islamic tradition her name is Bilqis. Alternative names given for her have been Nikaule or Nicaula. She supposedly lived in the 10th century BC.
[edit] Biblical account
According to the Hebrew Bible, the (unnamed) queen of the land of Sheba heard of the great wisdom of King Solomon of Israel and journeyed there with gifts of spices, gold, precious stones and beautiful wood to test him with questions, as recorded in First Kings 10:1-13 (largely copied in 2 Chronicles 9:1-12). The queen was awed by Solomon's wisdom and wealth, and pronounced a blessing on Solomon's God. Solomon reciprocated with gifts and "everything she desired," whereupon the queen returned to her country. The queen was apparently quite rich herself, as she brought 4.5 tons of gold with her to give to Solomon (1 Kings 10:10).
The Song of Solomon/Song of Songs contains some references which have been at various times interpreted as referring to love between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Thus, the female lover at 1:5 declares "I am black, but comely." However, the scholarly view holds that the Song is about Solomon's wife, Pharaoh's daughter, who is unnamed.
[edit] Later Jewish legends
The Jewish historian Josephus (Antiquities 8.6.2ff) emphasizes her love for learning. He gives her the name "Nikaule," evidently conjecturing a connection with the Nitocris of Herodotus (2.100).
Later Jewish legend fleshed out many of the narrative details. Solomon's gift of "whatever she desired" was made concrete in a sexual relationship, and great efforts were expended in compiling lists of the riddles by which the Queen of Sheba had tested Solomon's wisdom. Another tradition related that when the queen met Solomon, he was sitting in a glass house. Thinking she was in water, the queen raised her dress, exposing her hairy legs. Solomon's displeasure became an aetiological story for the origin of depilatories.
The Queen of Sheba is sometimes identified with Lilith.
[edit] Modern African account
Modern African and African American Scholars have long been disturbed by the attempt to take the Queen of Sheba from her Black origins. She is indeed one of two Black queens mentioned in the Bible, the second being Kandake in the Book of Acts. Josephus refers to Sheba as "Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia". Both early church fathers Origen and Jerome considered her a queen of Black African nationality.
Indeed, according to Strabo, in the second century BC Ethiopians lived along both the Eastern African and Arabian coastlines. Homer further has this to say: "The Ethiopians that border Egypt are themselves, also, divided into two groups; for some of them live in Asia and others in Libya (Africa) though they differ in no respect from each other". There is no doubt that many peoples crossed the narrows of the Red Sea in both directions from an early date, and even in historical times, Ethiopian kings have held dominance over parts of southern Arabia, eg. in the 6th century AD.
[edit] Qur'anic account
The Qur'an never mentions the Queen of Sheba by name, though Arab sources name her Balqis. The story is similar to the one in the Bible. The Qur'anic narrative has Solomon getting reports of a kingdom ruled by a queen whose people worship the sun. He sends a message inviting her to come to him in submission. She replies with a gift after consulting her people. He replies threatening an invasion. Then one of the jinn servants of Solomon proposes to bring him the throne of Sheba 'in the twinkling of an eye' (27:40). The queen arrives at his court, is shown her throne, and when she enters his crystal palace she accepts Abrahamic monotheism and the worship of God alone. (See also Similarities between the Bible and the Qur'an.)
[edit] Modern Arab view
Some modern Arab academics have placed the Queen of Sheba not in Yemen, as older Arab sources did, but rather as a ruler of a trading colony in Northwest Arabia, established by South Arabian kingdoms[citation needed]. Modern archeological finds do indeed confirm the fact that such colonies existed, with south Arabian script and artifacts, although nothing specific to Bilqis has been uncovered.
[edit] Ethiopian and Eritrean account
The Imperial family of Ethiopia claims its origin directly from the offspring of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (Ge`ez: ንáŒáˆ¥á‰° ሣብአnigiÅ›ta Åšab'a , who is named Makeda (Ge`ez: ማáŠá‹³) in the Ethiopian account. The etymology of her name is uncertain, but there are two principal opinions about its source. One group, which includes the British scholar Edward Ullendorff, holds that it is a corruption of "Candace", the Ethiopian queen mentioned in the New Testament Acts; the other group connects the name with Macedonia, and relates this story to the Ethiopian legends about Alexander the Great. The Italian scholar Carlo Conti Rossini, however, was unconvinced by either of these theories and believed the matter unresolved.[1]
The Ethiopian narrative Kebra Negast ('the Glory of Kings'), is supposed to record the history of Makeda and her descendants. King Solomon is said in this account to have seduced the Queen, and sired a son by her, who would eventually become Menelik I, the first Emperor of Ethiopia. The tradition that the biblical Queen of Sheba was a ruler of Ethiopia who visited King Solomon in Jerusalem in ancient Israel is supported by the 1st century AD Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who identified Solomon’s visitor as a queen of Egypt and Ethiopia.
It was long held that the ancient communities that evolved into the modern Ethiopian state were formed by a migration across the Red Sea of Semitic-speaking South Arabians who intermarried with local non-Semitic-speaking peoples. Indeed, the ancient Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum ruled much of Southern Arabia including Yemen until the rise of Islam in the 7th century, and both the indigenous languages of Southern Arabia and the Amharic and Tigrinya languages of Ethiopia are South Semitic languages. There is also evidence of ancient Southern Arabian communities in modern day Ethiopia and Eritrea in certain localities, attested by archaeological artifacts and ancient Sabaean inscriptions in the old South Arabian alphabet. However there is no archaeological evidence to verify the story of the Queen of Sheba — and the longstanding presumption that Sabaean migrants had played a direct role in Ethiopian civilization has recently come under attack.[2] Sabaean influence is speculated by more recent authors to have been minor, limited to a few localities, and disappearing after a few decades or a century, perhaps representing a trading or military colony in some sort of symbiosis or military alliance with the Ethiopian civilization of D`mt or some proto-Aksumite state.[3]
Bernard Leeman (2005) supports the Ethiopian traditions, citing Sabaean inscriptions near Mekele testifying to the existence of three Queens of Sheba who ruled jointly with Sabaean (Sheban) kings. He also notes that the Torah in the Sheba-Menelik Cycle of the Ge'ez Kebra Nagast lacks all the temple and kingship laws of Deuteronomy, indicating that the Ethiopians probably received it during King Solomon's time before Ezra produced the "definitive" Torah centuries later. Leeman's work, supported partly by research into the Ancient West Arabian language and geographical references in the Sheba-Menelik Cycle, was presented as a solution to the present impasse in Biblical archaeological debate. In brief, he believes that the Old Testament and Sheba Menelik Cycle are both credible accounts but the Queen of Sheba and Solomon were neighbours, and ancient Israel and Judah up to 586 BC were in western Arabia, not Palestine. Since this undermines the raison d'être of the State of Israel, his views are highly controversial.
[edit] Christian interpretations
The Queen of Sheba is mentioned as the "Queen of the South" in the Matthew 12:42 and Luke 11:31 in the New Testament, where Jesus indicates that she and the Ninevites will judge the generation of Jesus' contemporaries who rejected him.
Christian interpretations of the Queen of Sheba scriptures in the Hebrew Bible typically have emphasized both the historical and metaphorical values in the story. The account of the Queen of Sheba can be interpreted as Christian metaphor and analogy. The Queen's visit to Solomon has been compared to the metaphorical marriage of the Church to Christ where Solomon is the anointed one or messiah and Sheba represents a Gentile population submitting to the messiah.
The Queen of Sheba's chastity has also been depicted as a foreshadowing of the Virgin Mary, and the three gifts that she brought (gold, spices and stones) have been seen as analogous to the gifts of the Magi (gold, frankincense and myrrh), which is consistent with a passage from Isaiah 60:6; And they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring forth gold and incense; and they shall show forth the praises of the Lord.[4]
[edit] Medieval depictions
Art in the middle ages depicting the visit of the Queen of Sheba includes the Portal of the Mother of God at the 13th Century Amiens Cathedral, which is included as an analogy as part of a larger depiction of the gifts of the Magi.[5]. The 12th century cathedrals at Strasbourg, Chartres, Rochester and Canterbury include artistic renditions in such elements as stained glass windows and door jamb decorations.[6]
[edit] Renaissance depictions
Boccaccio's On Famous Women (Lat. De Mulieribus Claris) follows Josephus in calling her Nicaula, and Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies continues the convention. Piero della Francesca's frescoes in Arezzo (ca 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. See the Piero della Francesca entry for images. The Renaissance continuation of the metaphorical view of the Queen of Sheba as an analogy to the gifts of the Magi is also clearly evident in the Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1510 by Hieronymus Bosch. Bosch chooses to depict a scene of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon in an ornately decorated collar worn by one of the Magi.[7]
[edit] Modern theories
A theory has been voiced that the meeting between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba was not for love or admiration but a discussion about trade. According to the Bible Solomon built a fleet of ships at Ezion-geber. The theory is that Solomon intended to routinely sail to East Africa and there trade, bypassing the South Arabian kingdom of Sheba which previously acted as middleman in this trade.[citation needed] The revisionist historian Ralph Ellis suggests that the Queen of Sheba (Seba) may have been the queen of Pharaoh Psusennes II, who ruled in Lower Egypt in this same era and whose Egyptian name was Pa-Seba-Khaen-Nuit. He suggests that the link between this queen and Ethiopia may have been derived from the Kebra Negast, which indicates that the eastern borders of Ethiopia terminated at Gaza and Jerusalem (KN 92).
[edit] The Queen of Sheba in popular culture
In Britain, and Canada, there is a common colloquial remark "And I'm the Queen of Sheba." or "If (that is so), then I'm the Queen of Sheba.", meaning "I do not believe that statement."
Another common colloquial usage in the UK (and USA) is to poke fun at another person who has dressed up fancily, or has perhaps displayed superior behavioral traits, resulting in someone remarking, "Who does she think she is, The Queen of Sheba?".
[edit] Songs
- Bonnie Raitt makes a reference to the Queen of Sheba in the song "Thing Called Love" by saying "Baby, you know I ain't no Queen of Sheba." The song was written by John_Hiatt.
- Dolly Dots make a referance to The Queen of Sheba in the song "Leila Queen of Sheba" by saying "this day about a story talke by Leila Queen of Sheba"
[edit] Operas
- George Frideric Handel, Solomon (1749)
- Charles Gounod, Reine de Saba (1862)
- Karl Goldmark, Die Königin von Saba (1875)
[edit] Ballets
- Ottorino Respighi, Belkis, regina di Saba (1930-31)
[edit] Movies
- Queen of Sheba's Pearls (2004), starring Swedish actress Helena Bergström
- The Queen of Sheba (1921), starring Betty Blythe
- Solomon and Sheba (1959), starring Yul Brynner and Gina Lollobrigida
- The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man (1963), directed by Ron Rice
- Solomon and Sheba (1995), starring Halle Berry
[edit] Books
- Wisdom's Daughter: A Novel of Solomon and Sheba (2005), written by India Edghill.
- Small role in American Gods (2002), written by Neil Gaiman.
- Queen of Sheba and Biblical Scholarship", written by Dr Bernard Leeman, Queensland Academic Press 2005, (3rd edition 2007) ISBN 0-9758022-0-8
- Sheba: Through the Desert in Search of the Legendary Queen (2001), written by Nicholas Clapp
- Brief appearance in The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1874), by Flaubert
- "Sandstorm", a novel written by James Rollins. The Queen of Sheba is featured prominantly.
- Other: Sheba is a brand of cat food. A black cat appears on the label.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ David Allen Hubbard, "The Literary Sources of the Kebra Nagast", doctoral thesis (St. Andrews, 1954), pp. 303f.
- ^ Pankhurst, Richard K.P. Addis Tribune, "Let's Look Across the Red Sea I", January 17, 2003.
- ^ Stuart Munro-Hay, Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh: University Press, 1991, pp.57.
- ^ Byrd, Vickie, editor; Queen of Sheba: Legend and Reality, (Santa Ana, California: The Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, 2004), p. 17.
- ^ Murray, Stephen, The Portals:Access to Redemption, http://www.mcah.columbia.edu/Mcahweb/facade/body.html, webpage, accessed August 6, 2006.
- ^ Byrd, Vickie, editor; Queen of Sheba: Legend and Reality, (Santa Ana, California: The Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, 2004), p. 17.
- ^ Web Gallery of Art, http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/b/bosch/91adorat/01tripty.html, website accessed August 2, 2006
[edit] External links
- The Queen Of Sheba by Michael Wood and the BBC.
- Jewish Encyclopedia with information on Jewish and Muslim legends
- The Queen of Sheba Ship
- The Queen of Sheba, web directory with thumbnail galleries
- Makeda, Queen of Sheba by Torrey Philemon.
- "Queen of Sheba mystifies at the Bowers" - Gladys Rama's review of a museum exhibit for UC Irvine's 'New U' publication
