Who was the Queen of Sheba?

Her story in the Bible

The visit takes only thirteen verses in 1 Kings 10, with a shorter retelling in 2 Chronicles 9. The queen hears of Solomon’s fame and comes to Jerusalem with a very great caravan: camels loaded with spices, gold and precious stones. She tells him “all that was in her heart,” and Solomon answers every question.

Then she looks around: the palace, the food on his table, his officials, his servants, the cupbearers, the stairway up to the Temple. The text says there was “no more spirit in her.” The queen who came to test him is overwhelmed.

However, I didn’t believe the words until I came and my eyes had seen it. Behold, not even half was told me! Your wisdom and prosperity exceed the fame which I heard.

She gives him one hundred twenty talents of gold and more spices than Jerusalem would ever see again. Solomon gives her “all her desire, whatever she asked.” Then she goes home. The text never names her and never says what she desired.

Where was Sheba?

Sheba was Saba, a kingdom in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, in today’s Yemen. Its capital was Marib, famous for its great dam. Its wealth was incense, frankincense and myrrh, carried north by camel caravans through Najran and Tayma toward Gaza and Jerusalem, a journey of some 2,400 kilometers. That is why a queen of Sheba arriving with spices and gold makes sense: she controlled the far end of the incense road.

Makeda, Bilqis and the Queen of the South

Because the Bible says so little, three traditions filled the silence.

• Ethiopia. The Kebra Nagast, a fourteenth-century epic, calls her Queen Makeda. She and Solomon have a son, Menelik, who brings the Ark of the Covenant to Aksum. Ethiopia’s emperors claimed descent from them until the last, Haile Selassie, was deposed in 1974.
• Islam. The Quran tells the visit in its 27th sura. Solomon, Sulayman, hears of her from a hoopoe bird, her throne is brought to him in an instant, and she mistakes his glass floor for water. Later Arab tradition names her Bilqis.
• The Gospels. Jesus calls her “the Queen of the South,” who “came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon” (Matthew 12:42).

Did she exist?

No inscription outside the Bible names her, and historians can’t confirm the visit. What is certain is the setting. The Sabaean kingdom was real and rich, and its incense trade with the north is well documented. The Bible’s queen of Sheba stands at the meeting point of that trade and the reputation of Solomon, the king whose name still means wisdom.