A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Sheba, (the Queen of)
SHEBA (the Queen of) as she is erroneously called, the proper name being Saba.
Many have thought this queen was an Arabian, but Saba was a separate state, and the Sabeans a distinct people from the Ethiopians and the Arabs, till very lately. We know from history, that it was a custom amongst them, to have women for their sovereigns, in preference to men; a custom which still subsists among their descendants. Her name, the Arabs say, was Belkis; the Abyssinians, Magneda. Our Saviour calls her the Queen of the South, without mentioning any other name; but gives his sanction to the truth of the voyage. "The Queen of the South, (or Saba, or Azab) shall rise up in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it; for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here." No other particulars, however, are mentioned about her in scripture. The gold, the myrrh, cassia, and frankincense, which she brought as presents to that great prince, were all the produce of her own country.
Whether she was a Jewess, or a Pagan, is uncertain; Sabaism was the religion of all the East. It was the constant attendant and stumbling block of the Jews; but considering the multitude of that people then trading from Jerusalem, and the long time it continued, it is not improbable that she was a Jewess. She likewise appears to have been a person of learning, and that sort of learning which was then almost peculiar to Palestine, not to Ethiopia. For we see that one of the reasons of her coming, was to examine whether Solomon was really the learned man he was said to be. She came to try him in allegories, or parables, in which Nathan had instructed him.
The annals of Abyssinia say she was a Pagan when she left Azab; but, being full of admiration at the sight of Solomon's works, she was converted to Judaism in Jerusalem, and bore him a son, whom she called Menilek, and who was their first king.
She returned home with her son, and, after keeping him some years, sent him back to his father to be instructed. Solomon did not neglect his charge, and he was anointed and crowned King of Ethiopia, in the temple of Jerusalem, and at his inauguration took the name of David. After this he returned to Azab, and brought with him a colony of Jews, among whom were many doctors of the law of Moses. All Abyssinia was thereupon converted, and the government of the church and state modelled according to what was then in use in Jerusalem. The magnificence of the latter court, and the good order there established, formed a very seductive example, and the Queen of Saba on beholding it, exclaimed "happy are those who behold Solomon every day, and who live under his laws!"
The Queen of Saba having made laws irrevocable to all her posterity, died, after a long reign of forty years, in 986 before Christ, placing her son Menilek upon the throne, whose posterity, the annals of Abyssinia would teach us to believe, have ever since reigned. So far we must indeed bear witness with them, that this is no new doctrine, but has been steadily and uniformly maintained from their earliest account of time; first, when Jews, and in latter days after they had embraced Christianity.
The tradition amongst a sect called the Falasha, who believe themselves descendants of those Jews who came from Jerusalem with Menilek is, that the Queen of Saba was a Jewess, and her nation Jews before the time of Solomon; that she lived at Saba or Azaba, the myrrh and frankincense country, upon the Arabian gulf. They say further, that she went to Jerusalem, under protection of Hiram, King of Tyre, whose daughter is said, in the forty-fifth Psalm, to have attended her thither; that she went not in ships, nor through Arabia, for fear of the Ishmaelites, but from Azab round Masuah and Suakem, and was escorted by the shepherds, her own subjects, to Jerusalem, and back again, making use of her own country vehicle, the camel, and that hers was a white one, of prodigious size and exquisite beauty. They agree also in every particular, with the Abyssinians, in the remaining part of the story.