Sheba

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56 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA Makeda (the place of the Queen of <strong>Sheba</strong>). 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 – <strong>Sheba</strong>ns. The southern Arabians shared close ethnic and
QUEEN OF SHEBA AND BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP 57 linguistic traits with the peoples of the Ethiopian plateau. Sabaeans were found on both sides of the Red Sea in the first millennium B.C.E. but eventually lost their separate identity in Ethiopia. Across the northern Ethiopian border lies the state of Eritrea, which shares much of Ethiopia’s culture and history. From 1890 until the Second World War, Eritrea was an Italian colony with a large socially diverse Italian population. Eritrea in the 1940s was Africa’s second most industrialized country and was hopeful of attaining freedom under a democratic parliamentary system. In 1952, it became, under controversial circumstances, a federation with feudal, autocratic Ethiopia. The Ethiopians abolished the Eritrean assembly, turned the country into a province in 1962, and incited a vicious thirty-year war of independence. Since 1993, Eritrea has been an independent country but deeply scarred by the war’s destruction, and subsequent conflict. Its capital is Asmara, one of the most beautiful and well-organized cities in Africa. Asmara has boulevards, villas, houses, a magnificent opera house, parks, squares, government buildings, a university, a cafe society, and an Italian style Catholic cathedral. Most Asmarans over fifty still understand and speak Italian. In Asmara, there is a fertile strip of land that begins below the Italianbuilt University of Asmara. This strip follows an ancient watercourse, Mai Bela. Even in the recent past the area was forested and well watered, but during the late 1980s the Ethiopian army stripped the area bare of trees for cooking fuel. Consequently, the Mai Bela stream of today is rarely a river, remaining for most of the year a series of pools that merge only when there is a downpour. The old riverbed winds northeast, away from the city, across a wide often wind-swept plain. Twelve kilometers from the city it passes two kilometers below the ancient settlement of Tsa’edakristyan, which means White Christian in Tigrinya, the local language. Here the stream contains more water than elsewhere, and it seems that in the past, where the stream curves, there must have been a wide pool. The water at this point is still relatively deep, and there are thick reeds on the far bank where weaverbirds have made their nests. On the riverbank facing the distant village there is a rocky outcrop, and here you will find a vandalized memorial. A single obelisk in the ancient Aksumite style stands about six meters tall in the middle of a small semicircular wall. There used to be a plaque at its base, but this has been wrenched off and destroyed. As an added indignity, a bicycle tire has been tossed over the top of the obelisk, becoming wedged a meter from its pinnacle. Unless you look around this
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Queen of Sheba and Biblical Scholar
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QUEEN OF SHEBA AND BIBLICAL SCHOLAR
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CHAPTER ONE Sheba, Zionism, and the
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Page 37 and 38: CHAPTER TWO The Search for Evidence
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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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