Sheba

QUEEN OF SHEBA AND BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP 127
that area to ensure security. The nature of the Babylonian settlement
indicates the exiles entered the country by the southern crescent route.
Standard works such as Martin Gilbert’s Atlas of Jewish History do not
mark Arabia let alone the Arabian routes when discussing the dispersions
of 721 and 686 B.C.E., merely drawing arrows from Palestine to Egypt, and
to Mesopotamia through the northern crescent. If these dispersals were
correct, the Jewish settlements in Mesopotamia would have tapered from
the north southwards. Instead they are concentrated in the south and taper
northwards in agreement with an arrival from Arabia from the routes
linking Taima, Medina, and Taif. The demographic evidence of the
Babylonian settlements therefore supports a western Arabian rather than a
Palestinian location for the pre-exilic Old Testament. C. J. Gadd, analyzing
the Babylonian inscriptions concerning the capture and settlement of Taima
by Nabodinus, who used Jewish assistance (556-539 B.C.E.), concluded
“that Jews, whether from among the captives of Babylonia or from those
remaining in their own homeland, were strongly represented among these
soldiers and settlers in Arabia.” 3 This indicates that the “captives of
Babylonia” returned west along the southern crescent route. It may also
suggest that those referred to as “remaining in their own homeland” may
have been Hijaz Jews who were not from Palestine.
If the exiled Israelites had been so useful to the Persians, why did the
Persians not allow them to re-establish themselves in their old kingdom?
First, Judah may have no longer have been economically viable. The Old
Testament speaks of it as a desolation. Reoriented trade routes may have
passed it by. The Sabaeans were active in Ethiopia in this period, maybe
because they were seeking other routes to escape political pressures in the
north and to share the prosperity of the Upper Nile. The Cushite ruling
dynasty of Egypt lost power and moved south around 656 B.C.E., founding
a new capital at Meroe on the Nile south of Napata, the Cushites’ former
center that Pharaoh Psamtik II would sack in 590 B.C.E. Meroe was in a
fertile, more secure location, controlling the trade routes south and east and
developing into a powerful wealthy kingdom. The area between Yemen and
Taif would therefore have become commercially marginalized, more so
because it was excluded from the Persian Empire.
Second, a high proportion of the returning Judaean exiles were priests
and may not have been welcome in their former land for their spectacular
failure in the divine mission. In addition, it is unlikely a newly
impoverished, dislocated, and defeated population would accept the reimposition
of a ruling priest caste and temple cult with its concomitant