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Concept
Queen of Sheba
Summary
The Queen of Sheba (Malkaṯ Səḇāʾ; Malikat Sabaʾ; Nəgśətä Saba) is a figure first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. In the original story, she brings a caravan of valuable gifts for the Israelite King Solomon. This account has undergone extensive Jewish, Islamic, Yemenite and Ethiopian elaborations, and it has become the subject of one of the most widespread and fertile cycles of legends in Asia and Africa.
Modern historians identify Sheba with the South Arabian kingdom of Saba in present-day Yemen and Ethiopia. The queen's existence is disputed among historians.
The Queen of Sheba (Malkaṯ Šəḇāʾ, in the Hebrew Bible; basílissa Sabá, in the Septuagint; ܡܠܟܬ ܫܒܐ; 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. She came "to prove him with hard questions", which Solomon answered to her satisfaction. They exchanged gifts, after which she returned to her land.
The use of the term or 'riddles' (1 Kings 10:1), an Aramaic loanword whose shape points to a sound shift no earlier than the sixth century BC, indicates a late origin for the text. Since there is no mention of the Fall of Babylon in 539 BC, Martin Noth has held that the Book of Kings received a definitive redaction around 550 BC.
Sheba was quite well known in the classical world, and its country was called Arabia Felix. Around the mid-1st millennium BC, there were Sabaeans also in Ethiopia and Eritrea, in the area that later became the realm of Aksum. There are five places in the Bible where the writer distinguishes Sheba (שׁבא), i.e. the Yemenite Sabaeans, from Seba (סבא), i.e. the African Sabaeans. In Ps. 72:10 they are mentioned together: "the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts". This spelling differentiation, however, may be purely factitious; the indigenous inscriptions make no such difference, and both Yemenite and African Sabaeans are there spelled in exactly the same way.
Official source
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