The existence of the Queen of Sheba has been shrouded in mystery for thousands of years. It is mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible, in the ‘First Book of Kings’. According to this book, about one thousand years before Christ, the Queen of Sheba came to Israel (Jerusalem) to meet King Solomon. And she brought with her a lot of precious gifts, including gifts made of high-quality gold, spices filled in hundreds of jars loaded on camel caravans, and many precious and rare gems.
Queen wants to test King Solomon
By now Solomon’s fame as a wise and majestic emperor had spread far and wide in the world. It is said that Solomon had the blessings of God and the association of the gods. Once a sage wanted to test Solomon. He took a bird in his palm and asked Solomon, “Tell me whether this bird is alive or dead”. Solomon immediately replied that it depends on you whether that bird will be alive or dead. Pleased with his answer, the saint blessed him and went away.
Queen was impressed King Solomon
But the queen of Sheeba did not believe in all these stories. She wanted to test Solomon. In their meeting, the Queen of Sheba asked Solomon many mysterious questions. Solomon answered all the questions satisfactorily. Sheba was pleased and gave all the gifts to Solomon. Solomon also gave royal hospitality to Sheba and gave many gifts. After that, the Queen of Sheba returned to her mysterious kingdom ‘Sheba’. This incident is also repeated with slight changes in the ‘Second Book of Chronicles’ of the Bible. Even Jesus said that she had come from the southern part of Arabia to hear the wisdom of Queen Solomon.
Mysterious personality of Queen and Solomon’s test
Sheeba’s whole personality is mysterious. Sheeba was wise and beautiful, but in some places, she is portrayed as a sorceress or a queen who could enthrall anyone with her beauty. It is said that the Queen of Sheba had a lot of hair on her legs. Solomon had also heard all these things about the Queen of Sheba. He thought of testing this thing. There was a place in Solomon’s luxurious palace, whose floor was covered with strange glass, which gave the impression that water was scattered all over the floor.
Solomon took Queen Sheba to that room during his hospitality. There the queen stopped and raised her long skirt slightly to avoid getting wet from the water, and Solomon saw that the queen had hair on her legs. By now Solomon, who had almost made up his mind to marry Sheeba, had put the idea of marrying Sheeba out of his mind.
Solomon had married Sheba
On the other hand, an Ethiopian priest named ‘Yetshak’, quoting the famous book ‘Glory of the Kings’, wrote that Solomon had married the queen of Sheba and they both had a son named Menelik. Ethiopians believe that the queen and her son later converted to Judaism.
According to Muslim legend, Solomon married the Queen of Sheba. And removed all the signs of ugliness from the hairy body of the queen forever. In the Bible, nothing specific has been mentioned about the name, beauty, caste, and country of the Queen of Sheba. Even in the Gospel of St. Matthew, Jesus describes her as a queen of the south, who came from the farthest reaches of the earth to test Solomon’s wisdom.
Description in other legends
If we go by the Bible’s first book of Kings, a thousand years before Christ, Solomon The reign was the golden age. Solomon’s armies controlled the routes from the Euphrates to the Sinai desert and from the Red Sea to Palmyra and collected taxes from merchant ships and convoys that passed through them. By that time Jerusalem had become a very famous city and the construction of the historic temple there had also been completed.
It appears from this meeting between the Queen of Sheba and Solomon that Sheba wanted to use Israel’s ports for trade through the Mediterranean Sea route from her empire so that her empire could have trade relations with the majestic Solomon’s empire. But there is no concrete evidence for this. A French writer Gerard de Nerval named the Queen of Sheba Balkis and described her as the Queen of the Morning in his work ‘Voyage en Orient’.
Mystery of kingdom of Sheba
Whereas on earth the Kingdom of Sheba was located is still a mystery, but most scholars agree that the Kingdom of Sheba was located in a lush and beautiful place somewhere near the desert of Marib in southern Arabia. Marib, once the capital of the Sabian Empire, is today a beautiful and historic city in Yemen. In some ancient texts, the capital of Sheba was an ancient Arabian city on the shores of the Red Sea. The Book of Ezekiel tells that the Kingdom of Sheba traded unique spices, rare gems, and gold.
It is said that Sheeba had twelve brothers. At that time, in that region, the kings used to name their kingdoms after themselves. Ancient writings suggest that Sheba named her empire after herself, just as two of Sheba’s brothers, Ophir and Havilah, named their kingdoms after themselves. It is also significant here that Sheeba’s brothers and their empire are completely lost in the dark, mysterious cave of history. Research is needed on that too. It is said that Sheba’s city empire was the largest in comparison to his brothers.
Kingdom of Sheba was prosperous
The main basis of the prosperity of the kingdom of Sheba was the trade there. Somewhere his city has been called by the name of two gardens. It is said that these gardens were watered by a big dam. About twenty-one hundred years ago, the historian Diodorus described the dazzling prosperity of the Kingdom of Sheba. The inhabitants of Sheba knew the secret of the monsoon winds that blow from February to August-September, which they exploited to expand their economy. took advantage The inhabitants of Sheeba also traded with southern and western India, mainly in silks and spices. The residents there mainly worshiped Sun, Moon, and Venus. Their governance system was very similar to the Babylonian and Sumerian systems, that is, the emperor there used to be the chief priest as well.
Existence of Sheba Kingdom
Although the dating of the existence of the Kingdom of Sheba is in doubt, it was protected by being surrounded by desert on all sides. In 1934, Andre Malraux, a French journalist, saw temples with some twenty minarets standing tall during his aerial journey over the desert of southern Arabia. He also sent this information to his newspaper office in Paris, but unfortunately, his claim could not be confirmed later.
As mysterious as she is, the Queen of Sheeba also has an alluring personality. Sheba’s historic meeting with Solomon makes this mystery even more intriguing. Almost all the classical historians of the world, like Strabo, Herodotus, etc. have mentioned this incident. The truth of the Queen of Sheba, entangled in legends and historical facts, is like a challenge, whose testimony is still being given by the ruins of the temples lying in the desert of Marib as if saying that once upon a time there used to be a magnificent city of the Queen of Sheba. ..!