Sheba

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WESTERN ARABIA AND THE SHEBA-MENELIK CYCLE
where the megaliths were found. The Yemeni tradition mentioned earlier
maintains that the Virgin Mary, a Levite, was also from the region and
launched the Nazarene sect in Najran, east of Jizan. Research is at present
hampered by Saudi political considerations and Yemeni rural volatility.
The history of the Ark of the Covenant, which occupies the next
chapter, is a logical extension of the Salibi hypothesis and the theft of the
Ark narrative from the Sheba-Menelik Cycle. The Ark’s nature is unknown.
It was reputedly the gold-covered earthly abode of God that annihilated
Israel’s enemies and those of its own guardians who mishandled or defiled
it albeit unintentionally. The ruling elite of Israel regarded the Ark as the
symbol of their state power. It was the focal point of their religion and
divine purpose.
Graham Hancock in his entertaining book on the Ark of Covenant, The
Sign and the Seal, uncritically accepted the Kebra Nagast with all its
interpolations, for example, the existence of Alexandria and Cairo in
Solomon’s time. He ignored the bizarre geographical references and
explained how it was most likely that Jewish priests, not Menelik’s party,
took the Ark down the Nile and eventually housed it in Ethiopia. Hancock
is not alone in having a touching faith in ancient customs. Take the idea that
it was Menelik’s companions who stole the Ark. If Solomon’s state really
did exist in Palestine, Azariah’s theft of the Ark would have been madness.
Azariah could not have hoped for many days’ grace before the theft was
discovered, and Solomon’s centralized military would have used signal
fires and cavalry to cut off any means of escape. Even if Menelik had
managed to reach Egypt, the situation is very unconvincing. Can anyone
seriously imagine the authorities of dynastic Egypt, a country with a large,
dense, and heavily policed population, happily waving through a small
band of hunted criminals fleeing from one of the most powerful monarchs
in the Middle East, from whom they had just stolen the deadliest weapon
known to mankind? Hancock’s suggestion that Israelite priests carried the
Ark south before King Josiah’s time (ca. 640 B.C.E.) to Elephantine
(Aswan) on the Nile is equally unacceptable. The Elephantine Jewish
settlement was a mercenary garrison established by the Persians in the 520s
B.C.E. The Jewish troops were Aramaic-speaking and, from their
correspondence and rituals, their idiosyncratic religious practices seem
related to the pagan-Israelite mix of the destroyed northern kingdom of
Israel. They corresponded with the settlement in New Jerusalem but did not
adhere to the laws in Deuteronomy. Their language, beliefs and social
organization were far removed from the Hebraic and Israelite culture in