Sheba

56
THE QUEEN OF SHEBA
Makeda (the place of the Queen of Sheba). The present city of Aksum was
established in the fourth century A.D. on former swampland below Beta
Giyorgis.
The most recent major archaeological report on the western and
southern slopes of Beta Giyorgis reveals that, in the Pre-Aksumite Phase I
archaeological stratum (ca. late 2nd – early 1st millennium B.C.E.), a more
sophisticated culture was emerging that included foot washing basins and
large high necked jars. 1
The early Semitic-speaking Ethiopians left inscriptions. Semitic
speakers include Hebrew, Sabaeans, Arabs, Akkadians, and Arameans,
none of whom wrote with vowels until the Christian era. The Ge’ez
speakers of Ethiopia were the first Semitic people to write with vowels, but
the surviving inscriptions of this era (ca. 1000 - 500 B.C.E.) were written
only with consonants. The first major state is therefore known to us only as
D’mt, its capital most likely Yeha. The inscriptions are from that area.
Archaeology at Yeha (Level II) has uncovered the same red-orange
pottery found at Gobedra (Level II) and Shurab el Gash. Today Yeha is a
scrubby little village next to a wide well-watered plain where cattle graze.
It is a respected center of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the priests
there will show visitors illuminated Bibles as well as crowns worn by the
late emperor Haile Selaisse (1930-1974). Dotted through the village among
the cacti, where parrots flutter, are the remains of substantial ancient
buildings; and although some of the huge building blocks have been
removed for other purposes, a very large edifice remains, accepted by most
as a temple dating back to ca. 500 B.C.E. The temple at Yeha is composed
of large, smooth stone blocks, most likely built without mortar. The stones
are put together in such a way as to channel rain away from the seams. The
temple is twenty meters long, fifteen meters wide and twelve meters high.
A later Christian ruler increased the height of the walls with inferior
brickwork and left a frame outside marking his own great height. Christians,
however, were not responsible for the temple’s large baptistery, which
Christian churches later imitated. The Orthodox churches of the Horn of
Africa are noteworthy for their prominent baptisteries, which are set aside
from the main part of the church and consist, as at the Yeha temple, of steps
descending to an oval pool. It is interesting to see that the Yeha temple,
with links to the Sabaeans of southern Arabia, represents a pagan culture
that inspired later Christian ecclesiastical architecture.
The Sabaeans are better known outside Arabia and Ethiopia by their
other name – Shebans. The southern Arabians shared close ethnic and