8. HOW SOLOMON LOST AND RECOVERED HIS RING.
One day that Solomon retired to perform the necessary functions of nature, he placed his ring in the hand of Djarada; for on such occasions he was wont to remove the ring from his finger. For the first time he forgot the advice of the queen of the ants, and gave no praise to God as he committed the signet to other hands.
Sachr, the mighty Jinn,[[678]] took advantage of this act of forgetfulness, and, assuming the form of Solomon, came to the Egyptian princess and asked her for the ring. She, nothing doubting, restored it to him; and Sachr went to the hall of audience, and ascended the throne.
When Solomon returned, he asked Djarada for the signet.
“I have already given it thee,” said she; and then, contemplating him with attention, she exclaimed, “This is not the king! Solomon is in the judgment-hall; thou art an impostor, an evil spirit who has assumed his shape for evil purposes.”
Then Solomon was driven, at her cry, from the palace, and every one treated him as a fool or rogue. He begged from door to door, saying, “I, Solomon, was king in Jerusalem!” but the people mocked him. For three years he was an outcast, because he had transgressed three precepts of the Law—“The king set over thee ... shall not multiply horses to himself ... neither shall he multiply wives to himself; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.”[[679]] And this is what befell him in that time. He went into the land of the Ammonites, and there he fell into great want; but the master cook of the king’s house took him to serve as scullion in the kitchen. After he had served for some time, he one day cooked some meats for the king; and when the king tasted the meats Solomon had baked, he was well pleased, and sent for Solomon and asked him if he would be his head cook.
Then Solomon consented, and the king of the Ammonites dismissed the master cook, and placed Solomon in his room, and Solomon excelled greatly in cooking, and pleased the king more and more with the variety and excellence of his dishes every day.
Now it fell out that Naama, daughter of the king, saw Solomon from day to day, and she conceived an ardent passion for him, and she went to her mother and said, “I shall die of love, unless I am given the head cook to husband.”
The queen was astonished and ashamed, and said, “There are kings and princes and nobles in Ammon; take to you which you will.” But Naama answered, “I will have none save the head cook.”
Then the queen went and told the king, and he was exceeding wrath, and would have slain both Solomon and Naama; but when the first fury of his anger was cooled down, he bade one of his servants take them, both Solomon and Naama, and conduct them into the desert, and there leave them to perish.[[680]] The command of the king was executed, and Solomon and Naama were left in the wilderness without food. Then they wandered on till they came to the borders of the sea, and Solomon found some fishers, and he laboured for them, and every day they gave him, in payment for his services, two fish.
Thus passed the time, till one day Solomon’s wife, Naama, on cleaning one of the fishes, found in its belly a ring, and she brought it to her husband; and, behold! it was his signet which he had put in the hands of Djarada, and which had been taken from her by subtlety by the evil spirit. And this was how he recovered it: on the ring was engraved the Incommunicable Name, and this the Jinn could not endure; therefore he could not wear the signet, and he had cast it into the sea, where the fish had swallowed it.
Now when Solomon recovered his ring, he was filled with joy, and the light returned to his eyes; he went back to Jerusalem with great haste, and all the people recognized him, and bowed before him; and when the Evil Spirit saw Solomon, and that he had the signet upon his hand, he uttered a loud cry and fled. Solomon refused to see again Djarada, the author of his misfortune; but he visited Queen Balkis every month, till the day of her death.[[681]]
When Balkis died, he had her body conveyed to Tadmor in the desert, the city she had built; but her grave was known to none till the reign of the Calif Walid, when, in consequence of a heavy rain, the walls of Tadmor fell. Then was found an iron sarcophagus which was sixty ells long and forty ells wide, which bore this inscription:—“Here lies the pious Balkis, queen of Sheba, wife of the prophet Solomon, son of David. She was converted to the true faith in the thirteenth year of the reign of Solomon; she married him in the fourteenth, and died in the three-and-twentieth year of his reign.”
The son of the Calif raised the lid of the coffin, and beheld a woman, as fresh as if she had only been lately buried.
He announced the fact to his father, and asked what should be done with the sarcophagus. Walid ordered him to leave it where it had been found, and to pile blocks of marble over it, so that it might not again be disturbed by the hand of man.[[682]]
Solomon, when he was again on the throne, placed a crown on the head of Naama, and seated her beside him, and sent for the king of Ammon. And when the king came, he was filled with astonishment, and wondered how his daughter had escaped from the desert and had found favour with the greatest of monarchs. Then said Solomon, “See! I was thy head-cook, and this is thy daughter; bid her come to thee and kiss thee.” Then the king of Ammon kissed his daughter, and returned, glad of heart, to his own land.[[683]]