Sola Rey

QUEEN OF SHEBA

The Queen of Sheba is a queen regnant who appears in the Bible.

The tale of her visit to King Solomon has undergone extensive Jewish, Arabian and Ethiopian elaborations, and has become the subject of one of the most widespread and fertile cycles of legends in the Orient.

Almost 3,000 years ago, the ruler of Sheba, which spanned modern-day Ethiopia and Yemen, arrived in Jerusalem with vast quantities of gold to give to King Solomon. Now an enormous ancient goldmine, together with the ruins of a temple and the site of a battlefield, have been discovered in her former territory.

An initial clue lay in a 20ft stone stele (or slab) carved with a sun and crescent moon, the “calling card of the land of Sheba”, Schofield said. “I crawled beneath the stone – wary of a 9ft cobra I was warned lives here – and came face to face with an inscription in Sabaean, the language that the Queen of Sheba would have spoken.”

Although local people still pan for gold in the river, they were unaware of the ancient mine. Its shaft is buried some 4ft down, in a hill above which vultures swoop. An ancient human skull is embedded in the entrance shaft, which bears Sabaean chiselling.

once she has the funds and hopes to establish the precise size of the mine, whose entrance is blocked by boulders.

Tests by a gold prospector who alerted her to the mine show that it is extensive, with a proper shaft and tunnel big enough to walk along.

Sheba was a powerful incense-trading kingdom that prospered through trade with Jerusalem and the Roman empire. The queen is immortalised in Qur’an and the Bible, which describes her visit to Solomon “with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold and precious stones … Then she gave the king 120 talents of gold, and a very great quantity of spices.”

This is another remake of The Queen of Sheba & Solomon staring actress Vivica A. Fox.

Although little is known about her, the queen’s image inspired medieval Christian mystical works in which she embodied divine wisdom, as well as Turkish and Persian paintings, Handel’s oratorio Solomon, and Hollywood films. Her story is still told across Africa and Arabia, and the Ethiopian tales are immortalised in the holy book the Kebra Nagast.

Here is said to be one of the world’s oldest love stories. The Bible says she visited Solomon to test his wisdom by asking him several riddles. Legend has it that he wooed her, and that descendants of their child, Menelik – son of the wise – became the kings of Abyssinia.

Archaeologists strike gold in quest to find Queen of Sheba’s …

David Hatcher Childress is an American author, and the owner of Adventures Unlimited Press, a publishing house established in 1984 specializing in books on unusual topics such as ancient mysteries.

Quote:

Even The ancient book of Kebra Nagast speaks of an old Ethiopean legend of King Solomon flying from Isreal to meet The Queen of Sheba. – David Childress

The Kebra Nagast  or The Glory of the Kings, is a 14th-century account written in Ge’ez of the origins of the Solomonic line of the Emperors of Ethiopia. The text, in its existing form, is at least 700 years old and is considered by many Ethiopian Christians and Rastafari to be an inspired and a reliable work. It contains an account of how the Queen of Sheba/ Queen Makeda of Ethiopia met King Solomon and about how the Ark of the Covenant came to Ethiopia with Menelik I (Menyelek). It also discusses the conversion of the Ethiopians from the worship of the Sun, Moon and stars to that of the “Lord God of Israel”. As the Ethiopianist Edward Ullendorff explained in the 1967 Schweich Lectures, “The Kebra Nagast is not merely a literary work, but it is the repository of Ethiopian national and religious feelings.”

An artist interpretation of The Queen of Sheba (above) , Prague, Czech Republic.

 

Exit mobile version