Queen of Sheba
The Queen of Sheba, named Bilqis in Arabic and Makeda in Geʽez, is a figure first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. In the original story, she brings a caravan of valuable gifts for Solomon, the fourth King of Israel and Judah. This account has undergone extensive elaborations in Judaism, Ethiopian Christianity, and Islam. It has consequently become the subject of one of the most widespread and fertile cycles of legends in West Asia and Northeast Africa, as well as in other regions where the Abrahamic religions have had a significant impact.
Modern historians and archaeologists identify Sheba as one of the South Arabian kingdoms, which existed in modern-day Yemen. However, because no trace of her has ever been found, the Queen of Sheba's existence is disputed among historians.
Narrative
Hebrew
The Queen of Sheba, whose name is not stated, came to Jerusalem "with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold, and precious stones". "Never again came such an abundance of spices" as those she gave to Solomon.The use of the term or 'riddles', 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. 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 ''Bilqīs, was excavated by archaeologists; no evidence was found relating to the Queen of Sheba. Another Sabean temple, the Barran Temple, is also known as the 'Arash 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, 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 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 says: "Whoever says malkath Sheba means a woman is mistaken;... it means the kingdom of Sheba".
A Yemenite manuscript entitled "Midrash ha-Hefez" 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. 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.
Christianity
The New Testament mentions a "queen of the South", 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.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.
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 translates as "I am very dark, but comely", as does Jerome, while the New Revised Standard Version has "I am black and beautiful", as the Septuagint.
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.
Ethiopian
The most extensive version of the legend appears in the Kebra Nagast, the Ethiopian national saga, translated from Arabic in 1322. Here Menelik I is the child of Solomon and Makeda from whom the Ethiopian dynasty claims descent to the present day.The 1922 regnal list of Ethiopia claims that Makeda reigned from 1013 to 982 BC, with dates following the Ethiopian calendar.
In the Ethiopian Book of Aksum, Makeda is described as establishing a new capital city at Azeba.
Edward Ullendorff holds that Makeda is a corruption of Candace, the name or title of several Ethiopian queens from Meroe or Seba. Candace was the name of that queen of the Ethiopians whose chamberlain was converted to Christianity under the preaching of Philip the Evangelist in 30 AD. In the 14th-century Ethiopic version of the Alexander romance, Alexander the Great of Macedonia is said to have met a queen Kandake of Nubia. The tradition that the biblical Queen of Sheba was an ingenuous ruler of Ethiopia who visited King Solomon in Jerusalem is repeated in a 1st-century account by Josephus. He identified Solomon's visitor as a queen of Egypt and Ethiopia.
According to one tradition, the Ethiopian Jews also trace their ancestry to Menelik I, son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. An opinion that appears more historical is that the Falashas descend from those Jews who settled in Egypt after the first exile, and who, upon the fall of the Persian domination, on the borders of the Nile, penetrated into the Sudan, whence they went into the western parts of Abyssinia.
Several emperors have stressed the importance of the Kebra Negast. One of the first instances of this can be traced in a letter from Prince Kasa to Queen Victoria in 1872. Kasa states, "There is a book called Kebra Nagast which contains the law of the whole of Ethiopia, and the names of the shums, churches and provinces are in this book. I pray you will find out who has got this book and send it to me, for in my country my people will not obey my orders without it." Despite the historic importance given to the Kebra Negast, there is still doubt to whether or not the Queen sat on the throne.
Islam
The Temple of Awwam or "Mahram Bilqis" is a Sabaean temple dedicated to the principal deity of Saba, Almaqah, near Ma'rib in what is now Yemen.In the above verse, after scouting nearby lands, a bird known as the hud-hud 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.
The story of the Queen of Sheba in the Quran shares some similarities with the Bible and other Jewish sources. Some Muslim commentators such as Al-Tabari, Al-Zamakhshari and Al-Baydawi supplement the story. Here they claim that the Queen's name is Bilqīs, probably derived from or the Hebraised pilegesh. The Quran does not name the Queen, referring to her as "a woman ruling them", the nation of Sheba.
According to some, he then married the Queen, while other traditions say that he gave her in marriage to a King of Hamdan. According to the scholar Al-Hamdani, the Queen of Sheba was the daughter of Ilsharah Yahdib, the Sabaean king of South Arabia. In another tale, she is said to be the daughter of a jinni and a human. According to E. Ullendorff, the Quran and its commentators have preserved the earliest literary reflection of her complete legend, which among scholars complements the narrative that is derived from a Jewish tradition, this assuming to be the Targum Sheni. However, according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica Targum Sheni is dated to around 700 similarly the general consensus is to date Targum Sheni to late 7th- or early 8th century, which post-dates the advent of Islam by almost 200 years. Furthermore, M. J. Berdichevsky explains that this Targum is the earliest narrative articulation of Queen of Sheba in Jewish tradition.