Queen of Sheba

The Queen of Sheba as imagined in Ethiopia in the 1600s

The Queen of Sheba as imagined in the US in 1995.

The Queen of Sheba (-1020? to -955?) is a figure of Arab, Jewish, Ethiopian, Coptic (Egypt) and even Yoruban (Nigeria) legend. She appears in the holy books of some 56% of mankind: the Bible, the Koran and the Kebra Nagast (Ethiopian/Rastafarian). Archaeologists, to date, have found no sign of her. National Geographic in 2018 termed her “elusive”.

Names: She is known as Bilqis (بِلْقِيْس) by Arabs and Persians, Makeda by Ethiopians, Nikaulis by Jewish Roman historian Josephus, Black Minerva by the Greeks, the Queen of the South by Jesus, etc.

What sources say, from oldest to newest:

• Bible (by the -200s): She visited King Solomon, bringing spices and gold and precious stones, and tested his wisdom. She discovered that “the half was not told” about his wisdom and wealth. Solomon “gave unto the queen of Sheba all her desire, whatsoever she asked, beside that which Solomon gave her of his royal bounty.” Wink, wink? See 1 Kings 10. Some see her as the woman in Song of Solomon 1:5 who says, “I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem”. In Matthew 12:42 (written by +100) Jesus says she is “The queen of the south” who “came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon” and “shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it.”
• Josephus (90s) places her in Ethiopia. That puts her just south of Ancient Egypt in Nubia, known by the Greeks and Romans and the King James Bible as Ethiopia, a name that was hijacked in the 1900s by Abyssinia, what “Ethiopia” now means in English, on Google Maps, and in this post.
• Koran (600s): She comes from an unbelieving people seduced by Satan, worshipping the Sun. Solomon converts her to the one true God.
• Kebra Nagast (1300s), based on an earlier oral tradition: King Solomon seduced her! Sexually and religiously. She becomes the first recorded Ethiopian Jew. When she got back home she gave birth to their son, Menelik I, the first in a long line of Ethiopian kings that goes all the way down to Haile Selassie, who ruled Ethiopia till 1974. Menelik, at age 22, visited Solomon and made off with the Ark of the Covenant, reportedly still in the ancient city of Axum in northern Ethiopia.

Western scholars place her in the ancient kingdom of Saba in southern Arabia, in what is now Yemen. Marib was its capital back then. It produced nearly all the world’s frankincense and myrrh and was on the Incense Routes. Israel was on two trade routes it would have been interested in. Saba had a huge influence on Eretria and northern Ethiopia, just on the other side of the Red Sea. It may have ruled or colonized parts of them. But a southern Arabian influence does not appear in the archaeological record till the -400s, some 500 years after the Queen of Sheba. And in the known lists of Sabean rulers, there is no word of a queen in the -900s.

Hollywood whitewashing: The Queen of  Sheba was played by White women till Halle Berry played her in 1995 (pictured above).

Yemeni artist Ahlam, circa 2019. What the Queen of Sheba might have looked like. (Via place.network)

– Abagond, 2021.

See also:

• Hollywood whitewashing
• fellow queens:
  • Nefertiti
  • Queen Tiye
  • Cleopatra
  • Queen Nzinga
  • Aqualtune
• holy books
  • Bible
  • Koran
  • Kebra Nagast
• people in the Bible:
  • Jesus Christ
  • Virgin Mary
  • St Mary Magdalene
  • Ramses II – the probable Pharaoh of Exodus
• Halle Berry
• Josephus
• The map of Black people – Yemen as part Black
• Yemen
• Ethiopia (ኢትዮጵያ)
  • The term “Ethiopia”
  • Ethiopia: a brief history
  • Axum
• Nubia

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