The tale of the Queen of Sheba is a captivating narrative that has inspired countless artistic and literary works across various cultures. This unadorned biblical story has undergone myriad transformations, reinventing the Queen of Sheba as a converted heathen, the founder of a nation, and even a magical being.
Three major religious traditions-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-spanning Asia, Europe, and Africa have claimed her as their own in vastly different literary and artistic representations. Nevertheless, the characters of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and their narrative of cross-cultural exchange, uniquely transcend borders and beliefs.
The Queen of Sheba, who isn’t invoked by name in the original story, is known as Bilqis in the Muslim tradition (“Sheba” refers to her homeland, which scholars suggest might be in modern-day Yemen or Ethiopia). In the Hebrew Bible (1 Kings 10), the Queen of Sheba (Hebrew: מַלְכַּת שְׁבָא, romanized: Malkaṯ Šəḇāʾ) came to Jerusalem "with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold, and precious stones". In Geʽez, she is known as Makeda.
The earliest mention of the Queen of Sheba can be found in the Hebrew Bible (1 Kings 10). The queen hears rumors of King Solomon’s boundless wisdom and close relationship to God. When Solomon meets her in a display of riches and solves each of her riddles with ease, the queen is overwhelmed and recognizes Solomon as a valued instrument of God. She offers him gifts, and Solomon, in turn, offers her anything she desires before she returns home.
Here's the account from 1 Kings 10:
Read also: Ethiopian Cuisine: Philadelphia Guide
Now when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to test him with hard questions. She came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold, and precious stones; and when she came to Solomon, she told him all that was on her mind. And Solomon answered all her questions; there was nothing hidden from the king which he could not explain to her.
The Queen of Sheba in Different Religious Traditions
Three major religious traditions-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-spanning Asia, Europe, and Africa have claimed her as their own in vastly different literary and artistic representations.
Jewish Tradition
The Jewish tradition offers a more descriptive and, in some parts, even fantastical addition to the Queen of Sheba’s account. Some traditions state that her father is the king of Yemen, and her mother is a Jinn, making her a half-demon. As she walks along the palace of glass, she reveals her hairy legs, which some accounts attribute to her demonic half. Solomon orders her legs to be shaven and, in certain traditions, he also marries her.
Islamic Tradition
In its skeletal form, the Qurʾān (Q. 27:15-44) describes her as a powerful queen and sun-worshipper. The queen initially responds by sending over an envoy with a gift, which Solomon immediately rejects due to his wealth being greater than any other. When the queen appears before Solomon, it is she who is tested.
Christian Tradition
Around 260 CE, early Christian scholar Origen of Alexandria wrote a commentary on the Song of Songs, a Hebrew collection of poetry that explores sexual love within marriage. Origen connects the ‘beloved’, who describes herself as “Black and Beautiful” (Song of Songs, 1:5-7), with the Queen of Sheba. Origen’s allegorical interpretation of the queen is our earliest example of her as a black woman, although her Ethiopian origins were first referenced by Flavius Josephus.
Read also: Authentic Ethiopian Cuisine
Ethiopian Iteration: Makeda and the Kebra Nagast
While Canby spoke about the importance of King Soloman and the Queen of Sheba as a lucky pair in the Islamic tradition, the Ethiopian iteration of their story glorifies the latter as a key national figure. “The story of the Queen of Sheba meeting King Solomon is foundational to Ethiopian culture,” said Christine Sciacca, associate curator of European art at the Walters Art Museum.
In the 14th century in Ethiopia, a collection of legends, holistically called the Kebra Nagast (“The Glory of Kings”), emerged. The tome asserts that the Queen of Sheba was an Ethiopan ruler named Makeda. According to the translation by Miguel F. Brooks quoted in Clapp’s book, the queen is “vigorous in strength and beautiful of form”-a good match, then, for the ingenious Solomon. In this version of the narrative, the Israelite king tricks Makeda into sleeping with him, and she becomes pregnant. Makeda returns home and gives birth to a son named Menelik, who eventually takes the throne and becomes a legendary Ethiopian emperor. Subsequent rulers-up through and including Haile Selassie, who died in 1975-viewed themselves as Menelik’s descendants and often adopted his name.
Sciacca also underscored the underlying conversion narrative in Makeda’s tale. “In the Kebra Nagast, the Queen of Sheba talks about the worship of inanimate objects in her land (the sun, rocks, wood). She says she is impressed by King Solomon’s description of the God of Israel and that she will follow God from that moment on,” she said.
The Kebra Nagast also bespeaks Ethiopia’s long-standing Judeo-Christian traditions. The region was one of the first to become Christian (a scholarly debate, in fact, questions whether Armenia or Ethiopia was the very first Christian nation-there’s evidence that the latter widely adopted the religion in the late 200s and early 300s C.E.).
Yet Sciacca also offered a feminist reading: “[Makeda] was a queen in greatness, equalling King Solomon,” she said. At its core, the tale is not about a male ruler subduing a foreign woman, but about a female ruler’s power and global influence, even if she was deceived by the king.
Read also: A Taste of Ethiopia in South Carolina
Piero della Francesca, Procession of the Queen of Sheba, ca. 1252-66.
Artistic Representations
Over the centuries, the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba has been depicted in various forms of art, each reflecting the cultural and religious context of its creation.
Renaissance and Baroque Eras
Throughout the Renaissance and Baroque eras, the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba also served as a vehicle to depict impressive feats of architecture (a fitting use of the narrative-the Christian tale reads like a parable of difficult building projects). In his own 1545 version of their meeting, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Tintoretto placed her in the exact center of the painting. He employed a chiaroscuro effect to highlight the architecture in favor of the large cast of characters.
French artist Claude Lorrain took a similar approach in Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba (1648). He dwarfed his human figures with massive Palladian structures outfitted with regal columns and turrets. The sun sparkles off the sea, giving the setting a utopian aura. Solomon and the queen-wherever they may be-are clearly secondary to the fantastic scene.
These canvases appear less interested in religious mythology than in humanist values. With an age-old story, the artists depicted contemporary human achievements-in particular, the symmetrical, antiquity-inspired architecture that developed during the Renaissance. They both offer pristine visions of urban life governed by man-made structures.
King Solomon Receiving the Queen of Sheba by Frans Francken II, 1620-1629.
Ethiopian Paintings
The Walters Art Museum owns a representative example of an Ethiopian painting that depicts the story from the mid-20th century. The piece resembles a colorful comic strip, with rows of boxes offering representations of the Kebra Nagast. One box depicts Solomon and the Queen of Sheba copulating in bed. She is clearly non-white, her skin a mocha hue one might expect from an Ethiopian ruler. Solomon’s skin tone is more salmon than white. This, too, distinguishes Ethiopian art about Solomon and the Queen of Sheba from its Middle Eastern and European counterparts. In the former, both rulers possess tawny skin, while Renaissance and Baroque depictions offer versions of the queen that are almost comically white.
During the reign of Emperor Menelik II (1889-1913), a rise in the number of foreign visitors and national modernization processes led to an emerging art market for Ethiopian artists that extended beyond the church.
In 20th-century Ethiopia, the Queen of Sheba experienced a commercial rebirth in art. Following the Italian conquest of Ethiopia (1936-1941), tourism and expatriates caused the demand for Ethiopian art to skyrocket. Artists and even passionate hobbyists took advantage of the rising market by manufacturing artworks following an assembly-line production process.
The legend of the Queen of Sheba is one of the most popular themes in paintings by these workshops. According to Ethiopian written and oral histories, the Queen of Sheba became pregnant after visiting King Solomon and gave birth to a son, Menelik I, who became king of Ethiopia.
The story of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, a traditional subject of Ethiopian art, appears in this rendition by Janbaru Wandemu, painted in the 1950s. Recorded in the Kebra Nagast ( Glory of Kings), a literary work preserved in manuscripts from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century C.E., the story may have existed as early as the sixth century C.E.
Queen of Sheba Meeting King Solomon, Ethiopia, mid-20th century.
The Queen of Sheba: A Symbol of Cross-Cultural Connection
Such disparate artworks about the Queen of Sheba offer just a small glimpse of the extent to which human creativity can generate new meaning from a single myth, which can mutate and multiply to amend itself to any climate, region, and aesthetic program. The story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba is about cross-cultural connection, and so is the art we make about them. Worldwide, it’s a basic human need to tell and retell our own legends-particularly those about the deceptions inherent in love (or lust or courtship) and its power to change our own beliefs-over, and over, and over again.
The dating of the story of the Queen of Sheba is not well established. A significant number of biblical philologists believe that an early version of the story of the Queen of Sheba existed before the composition of the Deuteronomistic history (c. 640-609 BCE) and was revised and placed therein by an anonymous redactor labelled the Deuteronomist (Dtr) by textual scholars.
The purpose of the story seems to be to glorify the figure of King Solomon, who is portrayed as a ruler who enjoyed authority and captured the imagination of other rulers. Such an exaltation is dissonant with the general critical tone of the Deuteronomic history towards King Solomon.
