The visit of the Queen of Sheba to inquire of Solomon is one of the most remarkable events recorded in the Bible. It sounds like a fairy tale—an exotic queen from a distant land came to Jerusalem with a train of camels bearing spices, large quantities of gold, and precious stones, and tested the king with “hard questions” (1 Kgs 10:1–13). Could this be true? In antiquity, nations normally were governed by men, not women. Was there such a place as Sheba? Archaeology provides us with some answers.
In the area of modern Yemen in the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula was an ancient kingdom called Saba. In addition to being the largest nation in Arabia, the Sabeans also were the richest and most powerful. They gained their wealth mainly from the incense trade, which they had a corner on since incense only grows on the southern coast of Yemen and in Somalia to the south across the Gulf of Aden—areas controlled by the Sabeans. Their written language appeared at the end of the second millennium BC, just before the time of Solomon. Sabean inscriptions reveal something truly amazing. Other languages of ancient South Arabia belong to the Southern Semitic branch of Afro-Asiatic. Sabaic, on the other hand, was a Central Semitic language related to Ugaritic, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic. Ernst A. Knauf (emeritus associate professor, Institute of Old Testament Studies, University of Bern) states, “Sabaic looks like an intruder within the territory of the other languages.”1 Scholars are in agreement that the Sabeans descended from Seba, son of Cush, son of Ham, and Sheba, son of Raamah, son of Cush (Gn 10:6–7). There is little doubt that the Queen of Sheba was a Sabean from the area of today’s Yemen in Southern Arabia.
The Old Testament has much to say about Seba, Sheba, and the Sabeans. Sheba had traveling merchants (Jb 6:19); gifts from the kings of Sheba and Seba, and the gold of Sheba specifically, were seen as fitting for Solomon (Ps 72:10, 72:15); Isaiah associates Sheba with gold, incense, and camels (Is 60:6); the Lord did not care about incense from Sheba (Jer 6:20); the merchants of Sheba traded with Tyre “the finest of all kinds of spices and precious stones, and gold . . . beautiful garments, blue fabric, embroidered work and multicolored rugs with cords twisted and tightly knotted” (Ez 27:22–24; NIV); Sheba will say to Gog, “Have you come to plunder? Have you gathered your hordes to loot, to carry off silver and gold, to take away livestock and goods and to seize much plunder?” (Ez 38:13; NIV). The Sabeans, we are told, were marauders (Jb 1:14–15), were tall (Is 45:14), had illicit relations with Oholah (Samaria) and Oholibah (Jerusalem) (Ez 23:42), and were a faraway people that dealt in the slave trade (Jl 3:8).
These references attest to the fact that the Sabeans were long-distance traders in precious commodities like spices, gold, and precious stones, such as the Queen of Sheba brought to Solomon.
When the Assyrians expanded their empire to the west in the eighth century BC, they encountered the Arab nations of the Arabian Peninsula. Much to their surprise, many of these nations were ruled by women! The Assyrians called them “Queens of the Arabs.” Some eight subdued Arab queens are recorded in the Assyrian annals from the time of Tiglath-pileser III (744–727 BC) to Ashurbanipal (668–627 BC). This evidence recently was assembled and published by Assyriologist Ellie Bennett in her book The Queens of the Arabs during the Neo-Assyrian Period.2 The queen given the most attention in the Assyrian texts was Samsi, during the reigns of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II (721–705 BC). She met Tiglath-pileser III in battle ca. 733 BC at Mount Saqurri,3 probably Jebel al-Druze in southern Syria,4 and was defeated. Samsi lost 9,400 soldiers, and her camp was plundered and burned. The Assyrian king claims to have captured “1,000 people, 30,000 camels, 20,000 oxen, […] …, 5,000 (pouches) of all types of aromatics, …, thrones of her gods, [the military equipment (and) staffs of her goddess(es)], (and) her property.”5
Samsi escaped into the desert, but soon returned to submit to the Assyrian king. She brought camels and she-camels with their young as tribute. In consideration of her defeat, other nations submitted to Assyria, including Saba.6 They brought “gold, silver, [camels, she-camels, (and) all types of aromatics]” to Tiglath-pileser III as tribute.7 Subsequently, Tiglath-pileser III allowed Samsi to return to her homeland, but with an Assyrian official and a garrison of 10,000 soldiers to ensure her loyalty to the king.8 During the reign of Sargon II, Samsi, along with the king of Egypt and “Itʾamar, of Saba,” paid tribute of “gold dust from the mountains, choice stones, elephant ivory, ebony seeds, all kinds of aromatics, horses, camels.”9
Wall relief from the Central Palace of Tiglath-pileser III at Nimrud in Iraq, depicting the Arab queen Samsi bringing camels as tribute to the king following her defeat at the hands of the Assyrian army in 733 BC.10 It is part of a series of reliefs depicting the prisoners and booty from the battle. BM 118901. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1849-1222-15.
The fact that it was not unusual for the countries of the Arabian Peninsula to be ruled by women during the Neo-Assyrian period lends credence to the account of the Queen of Sheba in the Bible some 200 years earlier. The Assyrian records of captured spoils and tribute from these nations included spices, gold, and precious stones, exactly the treasures the queen brought to Solomon. This demonstrates the authenticity of the biblical narrative, as do the references to Saba, the Queen of Sheba’s homeland.
Endnotes
1 Ernst A. Knauf, “Sabeans,” in The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, ed. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, vol. 5, S-Z (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2009), 14.
2 Eleanor Bennett, The Queens of the Arabs during the Neo-Assyrian Period, State Archives of Assyria Studies 33 (Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2024). Page citations of Bennett’s work will refer to her doctoral dissertation from 2021.
3 Eleanor Bennett, “The ‘Queens of the Arabs’ during the Neo-Assyrian Period” (PhD diss., University of Helsinki, 2021), 91, 94, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351021749.
4 Bennett, 95–96.
5 Bennett, 94. Ellipses and brackets original.
6 Bennett, 94–95.
7 Bennett, 94. Brackets original.
8 Bennett, 94, 103–4.
9 Bennett, 163–64.
10 For a discussion on the identification of the figure in the relief as Samsi, see Bennett, 71–74.
Bibliography
Bennett, Eleanor. The Queens of the Arabs during the Neo-Assyrian Period. State Archives of Assyria Studies 33. Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2024.
———. “The ‘Queens of the Arabs’ during the Neo-Assyrian Period.” PhD diss., University of Helsinki, 2021. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351021749.
Knauf, Ernst A. “Sabeans.” In The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, edited by Katharine Doob Sakenfeld. Vol. 5, S-Z, 13–15. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2009.
