Sheba

QUEEN OF SHEBA AND BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP 95
Italian archaeologist Rodolfo Fattovich. 2 None, including Schneider,
realized the importance of the inscriptions for Old Testament archaeology
and for verifying the narrative of the Sheba-Menelik Cycle. Unfortunately
Schneider never responded to this writer’s many attempts to discuss his
article and died only a few months before this manuscript was completed.
The Sabaean inscriptions are on two stone incense burners at Adde
Kawerh, Abuna Garima, on the Genfel River south-southwest of Wuqro
near Mekele in Ethiopia and date from ca. 800 B.C.E. They give the names
of four Sheban kings of D’mt: W’m Hywt, Rd’m, Rbh, and Lmn, who bore
the titles, mlk sr’n, syrt, mkrb d’mt, mlk sr’n yg’dyn, and mkrb d’mt wsb.
The offices of Mlk (king) and Mkrb (mukarrib) may have possessed the
same regal and priestly authority as in Sabaea. These inscriptions are the
earliest non-biblical references to queens of Sheba for they state that the
first three rulers governed with queens, ruling together over the sb and the
br, the Reds and the Blacks. 3
Modern Ethiopians and Eritreans still maintain such a division. Reds
refer to Semitic speakers (Tigrinya, Amhara, Gurage, and Tigré) and
Blacks to Cushitic speakers (Agaw, Oromo, and Somali). Reds and Blacks
in the Queen of Sheba’s day may have had the same connotation.
Archaeological evidence shows that two different groups entered the
plateau from the north and from the southeast around 1100 B.C.E. as the
climate in the plains became hotter and drier. The northern group were
probably Semitic-speaking peoples descended from a group that never left
Africa. These were supplemented by small groups of Semites from Arabia
such as the Sabaeans. The traditional idea that the Semitic speakers of
Ethiopia and Eritrea have an Arabian origin is currently being challenged
and will be discussed later. The southeast group would have been Cushitic
speakers whose descendants, such as the Saho, have lived for so long
beside the Semitic speakers that they share a common culture. This leads to
a very interesting problem.
All authorities accept that the name sb on the inscriptions means
Shebans/Sabaeans, although (as discussed earlier) it was used in the time of
the Queen of Sheba to describe small political units in Sheba itself, most
likely called Sab. Schneider did not however translate br; he merely noted
that “La signification du mot est obscure ici. Mis en opposition avec sb’. Il
semble designer un groupe de population.” (“The significance of this word
is not clear here. It is contrasted with sb. It seems to denote a population
group.”) Had the word br been discovered near Palestine, the biblical