Sheba

QUEEN OF SHEBA AND BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP 171
continued to retain customs reminiscent of the Old Testament, carrying arklike
battle-standards. The Bedouin had three different ark-like devices. First,
in the 1920s the Ruala Bedouin, who claimed Israelite ancestry, bore a kind
of altar on camelback called a markab (ship) or abu duhur (Father of the
Ages), accompanied into battle by a bare breasted young woman screaming
exhortations to the troops. The tradition was of antiquity, and the markab
had been passed from tribe to tribe as a war trophy. Another camel-borne
battle-standard was called ofte. The markab was a large framework made
from acacia wood and decorated with ostrich feathers. The ofte was a
smaller but similar structure. The third kind of Ark was called mahmal and
was similar to the camel litters for women except that it was covered with
velvet cloth and silver decorations. Like the markab, a young woman
accompanied the mahmal into battle. Mahmals also carried boxes
containing prayers or the Holy Qur’an. The Wahhabi rulers banned
mahmals in the late 1920s.
The Ark cult developed in similar ways among Israelites and Arabs. In
both cases it was not so much the Ark itself that was important but God’s
presence and the law. The nomadic life gave way to a sedentary urbanbased,
centralized empire. Solomon built the First Temple to house the Ark
and the sacred texts. The Muslims rebuilt the Ka’bah as a black cube
measuring the same as the First Temple’s inner sanctum. The rise of central
government, a literate bureaucracy, and Jewish-Islamic hostility towards
images probably diminished the prestige of cultic objects and enhanced the
power of the written word.
The Old Testament states that the Ark of the Covenant was originally
housed at Shiloh and then carried into battle against the Philistines at Eben.
The victorious Philistines then took it to Ekron via Ashdod and Gath.
Fearful of its powers, they returned it to the Israelites at Beth-shemesh.
These Israelites found themselves ill equipped to deal with the Ark and
called in the priest at Nadab in Gibeah to remove it. Later David took it via
Goren to his capital, the City of David.
The City of David and Jerusalem of the Old Testament were probably
not located in the same place. Kamal Salibi’s place name analysis,
undertaken with far more thoroughness than Edwin Robinson’s mid
nineteenth century survey of Palestinian Old Testament nomenclature,
placed Shiloh just north of Mecca and the City of David to the north-west
of Abha in Asir (see Map 9). Onomastic studies conclude that Solomon’s
name derives from the Medina area. Solomon’s capital of Jerusalem was
probably near Nimas, northeast of the City of David on the escarpment