This image is King Solomon and Queen of Sheba as depicted in an illuminated manuscript of Speculum Humanae Salvationis (ca. 1430). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Show In Brief Sheba, despite the mystery of her origins, presents us with a valid memory of women who managed to carve out high-ranking positions for themselves in worlds dominated by men. An independent woman ruling a fabulously wealthy Arabian or African kingdom to the south of Judah, this unnamed queen appears in one of the many stories emphasizing the grandeur of Solomon’s court and his international reputation for extraordinary wisdom. Whether viewed as a dangerous demonic partner or a noble ancestress, traditional sources portray her as an able ruler, and hence, a powerful human incarnation of the virtues and abilities residing in Woman Wisdom of Proverbs 1–9. Bibliography Abbott, Nabia. “Pre-Islamic Arab Queens.” American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature 58 (1941): 1–22. Fontaine, Carole R. “More Queenly Proverb Performance: The Queen of Sheba in the Targum Esther Sheni.” In Wisdom, You Are My Sister: Studies in Honor of Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm., on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, edited by Michael L. Barré, 216–233. Washington, D. C.: 1997. Lassner, Jacob. Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam. Chicago: 1993. Meyers, Carol, General Editor. Women in Scripture. New York: 2000. Pritchard, James B., ed. Solomon and Sheba. London: 1974. More Like ThisHave an update or correction? Let us know Over the centuries, the Bible's barebones account of the meeting between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba has been fleshed out by additional religious texts and folktales.
Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images In the Quran, the foundational scripture of Islam, the Queen of Sheba is given a name, Bilqis, and it's Solomon who first hears about her fame. In the Quranic account, Solomon (called Sulaiman) is so powerful that he can talk to animals and commands supernatural creatures called jinns. A hoopoe bird tells Solomon that the Kingdom of Sheba ("Saba") is ruled by a woman named Bilqis who "has been given everything and ... possesses a magnificent throne." When Solomon hears that the queen and her people worship the sun and other idols, he has the hoopoe bird deliver a letter asking Bilqis to convert to Islam. The queen's advisers tell her to rise up against Solomon, but instead she sends him expensive gifts, which the wealthy king rejects and then threatens to invade Sheba himself. Humbled, the Queen of Sheba journeys to visit Solomon. Before she gets there, Solomon has his jinns and magicians transport the queen's throne to Jerusalem. When the queen arrives and sees her throne, she's convinced that Solomon is a prophet and converts to Islam. She also mistakes the shiny throne room floor for water and shamefully lifts up her skirts to avoid getting wet, exposing her hairy legs. In the ninth century C.E., the story of Sheba and Solomon was picked up again by Jewish rabbis in elaborate biblical commentaries known as "midrash" and "aggadah." In these later accounts, based on centuries of Jewish folklore, we learn that the Queen of Sheba presented Solomon with a series of riddles about women and gender, topics that a typical man wouldn't know much about. But when Solomon answered correctly, the queen was so impressed that she converted to Judaism. But the most complete and colorful treatment of the Queen of Sheba comes from the 14th-century Ethiopian epic called the "Kebra Nagast." In this tale, the queen is named Makare and she's the ruler of Ethiopia. After visiting Solomon and converting to Judaism, the queen is tricked into sleeping with Solomon and she gives birth to their son, Menelik. When Menelik grows up, he goes back to Jerusalem to meet his famous father. By a twist of fate, Menelik ends up returning home to Ethiopia with the Ark of the Covenant, which was stolen by Jewish nobles from the Temple and stashed in Menelik's caravan without his knowledge. In a dream, Solomon is told about the theft, but God decrees that the Ark should remain in Ethiopia, where some believe it still resides. Other legends and folktales depict the Queen of Sheba as only half human, either a demigod or a demon, says Coulter-Harris. In Classical Arabic folklore, Bilqis was the daughter of a human king and a jinn mother, giving her supernatural powers, and in Eritrean legends, her legs were more than just hairy. "According to the Eritrean account, seven saints were killing a dragon and dragon blood fell on one of the queen's feet, transforming it into a donkey's foot," says Coulter-Harris. "In a lot of these stories, the Queen of Sheba has some kind of deformity of the leg or the feet." Who was the real Queen of Sheba?The queen of Sheba appears in the Antiquities of Josephus (8.5. 5) with the name Nicaulis, a noble philosopher and ruler from Egypt or the Horn of Africa. She also appears in the Qur'an (Sura 27) as a queen who submits to Solomon, the prophet of Allah, and converts to Islam.
Who was Solomon's favorite wife?Excavators at Jerusalem are reported to have found on Temple Mount the burial place of the mummy of Moti Maris, the favorite wife of King ...
Who was the first king of Sheba?Menelik I (Ge'ez: ምኒልክ) was the claimed first Emperor of Ethiopia.
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Menelik I.. What is Sheba called today?The realm of Sheba remains lost to history. The two leading locations are the kingdom of Saba in modern Yemen and the ancient kingdom of Aksum in Ethiopia.
Is Queen of Sheba a goddess?Meet the real Bilquis, Queen of Sheba
Bilquis identifies herself as the Queen of Sheba, an ancient Ethiopian monarch and a forgotten goddess now in reduced circumstances.
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Who was the first Queen of Sheba?
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