The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, by David Kessler
Today's date is: 5/12/2025
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| 35 of the Queen of Sheba. There is little doubt that there is a kernel of truth in the story ofher journey but it is not impossible that its date has been adjusted to coincide with Solomon's reign and thus to add yet more glory and importance to it. This is not an uncommon phenomenon. For instance, Professor]. B. Segal cites the example of a legend which grew up around the first king to be converted to Christianity. (1) His name was Abgar and about the year 200 he ruled the kingdom of Edessa, the modern Urfa, in Asia Minor. In the process of story-telling and, perhaps, to lend weight to the account of the conversion, the event was attributed to the reign of an earlier Abgar, roughly contemporary with Jesus, and after a short while letters were circulating which were said to have passed between the two. Another example, taken from Ethiopian history, of what A. H. M. Jones calls 'a very common tendency of popular history to attach famous events to famous names'(2) occurs in the traditional account of the conversion of Abyssinia to Christianity, as we shall see in the next chapter. About two hundred years after Solomon, the Egyptians, under their Ethiopian, or Nubian, pharaohs, were attempting to build a defensive alliance to ward off the threat from Assyria with the help of small states such as Israel and Judah. It was a feature of Nubian society at that time that while it 'was by no means matriarchal, there can be no doubt that queens enjoyed an unusually high place both as consorts and as dowagers ... and it is evident that they often acted as counsellors, and sometimes as regents, for their sons'.(3) Tirhaka, who had been contemptuously called a broken reed by the Assyrian rabshakeh, records in one of his inscriptions that he summoned his mother all the way from Napata to be present at his coronation in Egypt. (4) Can we not suppose- though admittedly it is pure conjecture that after his coronation ceremonies were over the newly crowned pharaoh might have asked his mother to lead a delegation to King Hezekiah to invite him to join the alliance? Moreover, by the time that the queen mother had reached Thebes from Napata for the coronation she was half-way to Jerusalem and, perhaps, the most arduous part of the journey was accomplished. Her gifts of gold, spices and precious stones, all of which were available in Nubia and Upper Egypt, would come in useful in building a treaty of (1) Edessa, p. 64. |