Sheba
Sheba West AsiaThe Queen of Sheba came to Jerusalem and tested the wisdom of King Solomon ‘with hard questions’. Around the visit of this nameless Queen legend has woven a rich tapestry. Her gifts were magnificent because the wealth of her land, present-day Yemen, derived from a near-monopoly over the supply of frankincense and myrrh. In Hebrew mythology Solomon ‘lay with the Queen of Sheba and from her went forth Nebuchadnezzar’. In Ethiopia the legend took on a political significance, for the 1955 Revised Constitution stated that the pedigree of Emperor Haile Selassie ‘descends without interruption from the dynasty of Menelik I, son of the Queen of Ethiopia, Queen of Sheba, and King Solomon of Jerusalem’. Most surprising of all, however, are the embellishments found in Islamic tradition, where the visitor has become not the Queen, but Solomon. He travelled from Mecca to Sheba and expected to find its queen with ‘legs like a donkey's because her...
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