[1] The Sceptics of the Old Testament, pp. 149, 155.
Chapter VIII.
The Book of Proverbs and the Avesta.
The legend of the Queen of Sheba forms not only a poetic prologue to the epical tradition of Solomon’s wisdom, but has a substantial connexion with the character of that wisdom, to whose final personification she contributed.
The corresponding Oriental stories do not necessarily deprive this legend of historic basis, but point to the region of this “Queen of the Seven (Sheba).” Those Oriental pilgrimages of eminent women to great sages, however invested with magnificence, are natural; even such romances could not have been invented unless in accordance with the genius of the country in which they were written. There is no antecedent improbability that a queen, belonging to a region in which her sex enjoyed large freedom, should have made a journey to meet Solomon.
The Abyssinians, who regard her as the founder of their dynasty, at the same time show how little characteristic of their country the legend was, by their ancient tradition, that it was the Queen of Sheba who provided that no woman should sit on the throne, forever! They claim that this Queen is referred to in Psalm xlv.—“At thy right hand doth stand the Queen, in gold of Ophir.” This psalm is Solomonic, but the reference is no doubt to the Queen Mother, Bathsheba (whose throne was on his “right hand,” 1 Kings ii. 19). Neither Naamah the Ammonitess, mother of Solomon’s successor, nor the daughter of Pharaoh, who was his especially distinguished wife, is described as a queen,—this indeed not being a Jewish title for a king’s wife. The psalm indicates much glory to be conferred on a woman by wedlock with Solomon, but not that he was to derive any honor from either or all of the “threescore queens” assigned him in later times (Cant. vi. 8). In another Solomonic Psalm (lxxii.) it is said:
“The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents:
The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts,