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Queen of Sheba & Solomon: What 1 Kings Says—and What Later Traditions Add
Who was the Queen of Sheba? Separate 1 Kings 10 from later Ethiopian, Jewish and Islamic traditions about the famous royal visitor.
First Kings never gives the Queen of Sheba a personal name.
In 1 Kings 10, the queen hears of Solomon’s fame and comes to Jerusalem to test him with hard questions. She brings a large caravan, gold, spices and precious stones. Solomon answers her questions, and she is overwhelmed by his wisdom, palace, officials, servants, worship and prosperity.
Where was Sheba?
Sheba is commonly connected with the ancient Sabaean kingdom of South Arabia, especially the region of modern Yemen, though the history of Sabaean influence and Red Sea connections makes simplistic identification risky. The biblical narrative itself does not provide the queen’s personal biography or ancestry.
Later traditions become much larger stories.
Ethiopian tradition, especially the much later Kebra Nagast, knows the queen as Makeda and develops a royal lineage narrative involving Solomon and Menelik. That tradition is culturally and religiously important, but it is not contained in 1 Kings.
The Qur’an tells a substantial Solomon-and-Saba narrative in Surah 27 involving the hoopoe, a female ruler, correspondence, her throne and her eventual recognition of God. The Qur’an does not call her Bilqis; Bilqis is a later Islamic name.
What does the biblical visit do?
In Kings, the Queen of Sheba functions as an international witness to Solomon’s reputation at its peak. Her visit comes immediately before the narrative’s intensified description of royal wealth—and just before chapter 11 exposes Solomon’s religious failure. The placement makes the glory feel deliberately unstable.
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