Queen
of Sheba
c. 950 BC
According to the Bible - specifically, Chronicles and the Book of Kings -
King Solomon's
wisdom was so renowned that the nameless queen of faraway Sheba (probably
somewhere in Yemen) came all
the
way to Jerusalem to ask him questions. To prove herself worthy to see
the king, she brought
a caravan loaded with valuable gifts for Solomon.
And that's all the Bible says about that. Any other stories you might hear didn't arise until hundreds of years after the fact.
Eventually public imagination came to identify the unnamed lovers who pitch woo with hot sexy talk in the Bible's Song of Songs as Solomon and Sheba,
although the Church insists that there's nothing erotic about the poem.
They explain that the Song of Songs really expresses the love between God and
the Church as a metaphor - a sweaty, throbbing metaphor.
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Women from the Bible: