In contrast to the suggestion of a political motive for the Queen of Sheba's journey, some writers have suggested - on the assumption that she was an Arabian and not an African ruler- that the visit was prompted by economic considerations, due to the increasing maritime trade in the Red Sea in competition with the overland route from the Yemen. The traditional Red Sea traffic, however, was not only coastal but was more far-ranging and largely concerned with countries bordering the Indian Ocean. It was older than the reign of King Solomon. On the other hand, Sabaean prosperity in south Arabia, which depended largely on the overland incense routes, was developed at a much later period. Nor was Solomon the only Israelite ruler who was interested in the Red Sea trade and the port facilities in the Gulf of Aqaba. For example, 100 years after Solomon King Uzziah (Azariah) 'built Eloth and restored it to Judah', (1) while Jehoshaphat, an earlier king, 'made ships of Tharshish to go to Ophir for gold', though admittedly they failed to make the voyage.(2) These monarchs recognised, like the modern rulers of Israel, the commercial and strategic value of access to the Red Sea. At times - as in the case of Solomon - they developed, in alliance with the Phoenicians, a flourishing entrepot trade by exploiting the Sinai land bridge between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean as well as, perhaps, operating the nearby copper mines at Timna.

Egyptian inscriptions and reliefs, especially those at Queen Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el Bahri with their detailed and beautiful illustrations of the maritime expedition to Punt (Somalia), also emphasise the significance of the Red Sea trade route. The temple was built about 1480 BC, five hundred years before Solomon. If the suggestion promoted by Immanuel Velikowsky, in his Ages in Chaos, were accepted, that this eighteenth-dynasty Egyptian queen should be identified with the Queen of Sheba, it would require a complete rewriting of the usual conventions of Egyptian chronology.

The concept that the Queen of Sheba came from Ethiopia is basic to the country's tradition and is repeatedly affirmed in the

(1) 2 Chronicles 26:2.
(2)1 Kings 22:48.