Sheba

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28 THE SEARCH FOR EVIDENCE Arabia. The Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age between the thirteenth and the tenth centuries B.C.E., but the change was gradual and unconnected to any nomad invasion. Obviously states like Solomon’s or Omri’s did not exist in this area, even though the Assyrians and Moabites both mention Omri. As for the investigation of individual sites, there is no archaeological evidence to support the “Golden Age” of David and Solomon. The “citystates” of the Old Testament proved to be little more than small market centers with populations numbering only a few thousand at most. It is clear that the whole area was never more than a marginal part of any regional political or economic power. The Egyptians occupied the area in the fifteenth century B.C.E. in an effort to create land communications with Mesopotamia and Syria, and undertake mining in Sinai. But the area had a fragile ecology, and the Egyptians, coming from a civilization having reliable water supplies, soon withdrew to the coastal strip. In the time when Joshua is supposed to have invaded and David and Solomon are supposed to have established a large, powerful, and wealthy kingdom, Palestine endured a lengthy period of drought that brought recurrent famine, a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall, and the decline of the neighboring Ugaritic and Mycenaean civilizations. The people of the purported Promised Land certainly did not enjoy a surfeit of milk and honey. Most of them abandoned the interior and moved to the coastal areas, where they established smaller and more sustainable agricultural communities. Pritchard, writing about the reputation of Solomon’s kingdom, the zenith of Israelite political power, stated: “Solomon is mentioned in no Egyptian, Mesopotamian, or Phoenician document. Only from the Bible do we learn he lived.” Pritchard drew attention to “the disparity between the cultural poverty of Palestine in this age and the impression of grandeur and wealth presented by the biblical account.” N. P. Lemche, discussing the lack of evidence to support Joshua’s invasion, criticized ...some archaeologists (who) appear to find it more fascinating to hunt for ‘proof’ of the presence of Israel .... even the most minute changes in architecture, pottery, town lay-out, and so forth, have been taken to show the presence of new (foreign) elements among the existing population at this time. 2 Keith Whitelam was equally damning:
QUEEN OF SHEBA AND BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP 29 There has been an indecent haste to correlate archaeological findings with the biblical traditions, to identify a destruction level with some battle mentioned in the Bible, or to associate the fortification of a site with the building program of some Judaean or Israelite king who is given a few verses in the Deuteronomistic History. 3 In contrast to the pre - 586 B.C.E. record, there is ample uncontroversial archaeological evidence to support the history of Jerusalem from the Greek conquest to the Roman destruction, the era in which the Jews re-established an independent state that had been destroyed and its population not only exiled but scattered. The archaeological evidence is corroborated by contemporary Greek, Roman, and Jewish written accounts. It is extremely odd that archaeologists, unable to correlate the pre – 586 B.C.E. Old Testament record with their findings, questioned neither how the written record was produced nor the motives of those who wrote it. Good history is written from evidence. That evidence can come from a number of sources, including many made possible by recent scientific advances. There is archaeology, anthropology, oral traditions, demography, ethnomusicology, linguistics, satellite imaging, volcanology and DNA testing. Nevertheless, most important of all is the written record. Take, for example, the Rosetta Stone, the cipher to the history of dynastic Egypt, discovered during Napoleon’s military expedition to Egypt. The Rosetta Stone is inscribed with the same passage in three languages - ancient Egyptian, Coptic, and Greek - and therefore provides a means of translating the myriad ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics that describe the exploits of Egypt’s ruling class, their religion, their administrative methods, and other aspects of their existence that, but for the Rosetta stone, would remain a closed subject, perhaps forever. Other cultures, the Etruscans and people of Nilotic Meroe for example, have left behind inscriptions and other writings, but without a cipher very little can be read. Some insights may possibly be gained in Etruscan by investigating Albanian. In the case of Meroitic, all that scholars can surmise from comparing letter frequency is that it seems to be more closely related to languages to its west than to anywhere else; but that supposition has so far not made its meaning any clearer. The case of biblical history is very special if not unique. A highly detailed record exists covering about 2000 years. The life of Joseph and Moses, the Exodus, Joshua’s capture of the Promised Land, the story of Ruth, David’s battle with Goliath, Solomon’s building of the First Temple,
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CHAPTER SIX Western Arabia and the
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MAP 8 Arabic Dialects of Western Ar
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Sheba

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