The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, by David Kessler
Today's date is: 5/12/2025
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| 26 hardly surprising as Jerusalem is far from the sea and the camel was by Solomon's time a domesticated beast of burden. We may guess from the gifts she brought with her - gold, spices and precious stones - that she came from the south. Indeed, in the New Testament(1) she is simply called Queen of the South, as though that was her usual appellation. While it is not disputed that she came from somewhere south of Palestine there are two principal opposing views regarding the exact location of her country. Most biblical scholars and orientalists identify Sheba with the Sabaeans, a Semitic people who established a considerable civilisation in southern Arabia which flourished from about the eighth century BC until it was replaced by the Himyarites early in the Christian era. This identification, for which there is no archaeological or epigraphic evidence, rests on the similarity of the names and the general description in the Bible of the queen and her caravan. However, neither the gold nor the precious stones were products of southern Arabia, and the great quantity of spices which she brought could have come equally from Arabia or Africa provided that the term connotes myrrh and frankincense, since these aromatic gums are sometimes called spices in the Bible. If spices is used in the ordinary sense to mean seasonings for food it is likely that they came either from the Horn of Africa, which produced cinnamon, or from India or Ceylon, which, from time immemorial, had been exporters of pepper, cinnamon and other condiments. The numerous references both in this context and elsewhere in the Bible to gold from Ophir naturally excite speculation as to where Ophir was but scholars have not yet reached a conclusion and its location is disputed. Various places have been suggested as far apart as the African coast opposite Madagascar (Sofala), the western shore of the Red Sea at its southern end (the ancient Punt), the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf(2) or even India, according to the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. (3) The reference to Ophir in the Sheba story, however, is only by way of an insertion intended, it may be, to illustrate Solomon's power and wealth. The Bible does not say that the queen's gold came from Ophir, and it might have been the product either of the gold-mines worked by the pharaohs in the region of Wadi Allaqi, not far south of modern Aswan, in Nubia, or have come from the upper reaches of the Blue Nile, at Fazugli, perhaps the gold land of Havilah. In medieval times in Europe the Queen of Sheba was usually (1) Matthew 12:42 and Luke 11:31. |