The History of the Queen of Sheba

[cormac mac airt]

You remember how Wegener's theory about continental drift was received?

And I actually read Salibi's book.

I will bet I am the only one here who did, lol.

.

Abe, you're one of the few people here who reads Dutch so that's not much of a bet.

BTW, is the Dutch version you have online?

cormac

[Abramelin]

Abe, you're one of the few people here who reads Dutch so that's not much of a bet.

BTW, is the Dutch version you have online?

cormac

No, it isn't as far as I know.

I am even thinking of copying the whole book to a pdf and then upload it to UM.

280 pages...... I'll be busy for many hours with my lousy scanner.

But then still you (and most others) can't read it.

Or can you?

And please don't say you will use an online translator, because it will make the text look like gibberish.

I use Google Translator a lot, but only for speed of translation: I have translated from French, Spanish, Dutch, and German, using Google Translator, but I corrected the Google mess using my knowledge of these languages.

I am Dutch, you know, and my country is just a pinprick on the globe. So we learn many languages.

We are surrounded by: the English, the Germans, the Belgians and the French. We just have to learn all these foreign languages if we want to trade.

And Spanish I learned during my half year stay in Peru, and by following a course here in the Netherlands..

.

Edited February 5, 2013 by Abramelin

[cormac mac airt]

No, it isn't as far as I know.

I am even thinking of copying the whole book to a pdf and then upload it to UM.

280 pages...... I'll be busy for many hours with my lousy scanner.

But then still you (and most others) can't read it.

Or can you?

And please don't say you will use an online translator, because it will make the text look like gibberish.

I use Google Translator a lot, but only for speed of translation: I have translated from French, Spanish, Dutch, and German, using Google Translator, but I corrected the Google mess using my knowledge of these languages.

I am Dutch, you know, and my country is just a pinprick on the globe. So we learn many languages.

We are surrounded by: the English, the Germans, the Belgians and the French. We just have to learn all these foreign languages if we want to trade.

And Spanish I learned during my half year stay in Peru, and by following a course here in the Netherlands..

.

That's okay, don't put yourself out on my account. While English is my native language I spoke German until I was 5, have taken both Spanish and Latin and get the gist of most 'romance' languages I come across even though I may not be fluent. I was just interested in having a copy to peruse if there was one.

cormac

[Abramelin]

But can you read Dutch?

Just say YES, and will do my best to put the Dutch edition online.

.

Edited February 5, 2013 by Abramelin

[cormac mac airt]

But can you read Dutch?

Just say YES, and will do my best to put the Dutch edition online.

.

I have no training in Dutch, so no. And it's not necessary for you to go through the trouble since I'm not sure it would be of much use to most English speaking peoples anyway. While I'm certainly not the norm as far as languages, many never learn anything more than English and sometimes I have to wonder about that. But I do appreciate the offer.

cormac

[TheSearcher]

But can you read Dutch?

Just say YES, and will do my best to put the Dutch edition online.

.

YES .....

[Abramelin]

YES .....

Gawd..

[TheSearcher]

Gawd..

Well you did offer........

[Abramelin]

I know.

OK, but it will take a lot of time.

[TheSearcher]

I know.

OK, but it will take a lot of time.

Dude, I'm just joking, don't worry. Just gimme the exact title of the book, I'll find it

[Abramelin]

"HET WARE LAND VAN ABRAHAM - Een nieuwe theorie over de oorsprong van het volk van Israel".

By Kamal Salibi.

MCMLXXXV

Elsevier - Amsterdam/Brussel.

.

Edited February 6, 2013 by Abramelin

[TheSearcher]

"HET WARE LAND VAN ABRAHAM - Een nieuwe theorie over de oorsprong van het volk van Israel".

By Kamal Salibi.

MCMLXXXV

Elsevier - Amsterdam/Brussel.

thanks my dear chap, this I can find easily.

[kmt_sesh]

No, it isn't as far as I know.

I am even thinking of copying the whole book to a pdf and then upload it to UM.

280 pages...... I'll be busy for many hours with my lousy scanner.

...

Aside from the tremendous and tedious amount of work this would entail for you, beware of copyright issues. If you see any sort of copyright disclaimers or symbols anywhere, refrain from putting it on UM.

[kmt_sesh]

This discussion got awfully quiet all of a sudden. I hope my preceding post from yesterday isn't at fault for that. It wasn't intended to do so.

In any case I've been wanting to join in the discussion for several days but have been too busy to do so, but time permits me to to join in this evening. There are some points of debate I'd like to contribute, beginning with the example of the Megiddo ivory from the OP:

This was one of many ivories excavated from Megiddo strata nearly a century ago by the Oriental Institute, although unfortunately this one does not seem to have ended up in the collection of the O.I. (which has a beautiful collection of Megiddo ivories on display). It ended up in the collection of the Rockefeller Museum in Israel. Riaan identifies the figure on the throne as a Canaanite king, which does seem to be the consensus in historical circles (although some sources describe him as a prince, suggesting the ruler of a Levantine city-state in the Bronze Age). However, the figure standing before the Canaanite certainly isn't Nefertiti.

The figure is at best ambiguous and the sex is difficult to determine, although it is quite possibly a woman. The cap she wears is, however, only superficially similar to the crown for which Nefertiti is famous. The sash descending from the back of the head marks this headgear as something else, and is not in keeping with the crowns sported by Egyptian queens. More tellingly, the garment the figure wears is decidedly not Egyptian.

Moreover, Egyptian royals were not in the habit of visiting foreign potentates. This is especially true of queens. Always full of themselves, Egyptian royals expected foreign potentates to come to them (or at least to send envoys, which the Egyptians themselves would do). One of the few instances in which a pharaoh would leave Egypt was on military campaigns, to lead his army into battle, and it's questionable how many pharaohs actually dared to do so (with notable exceptions such as Tuthmosis I, Tuthmosis III, and Ramesses II). Canaanites were low on the totem pole as far as ancient Near Eastern politics were concerned, and you can be sure no Egyptian king or queen would ever approach the throne of some Canaanite prince. The opposite would be expected.

In full, there is nothing on this ivory to associate it in definitive terms with anything Egyptian. The harpist is equally ambiguous, although in Egypt this instrument was typically played by men. All of the other figures are decidedly male, and all sport beards typical of Levantine peoples (that is, Asiatics or Canaanites). Egyptians did not favor beards. The garments worn by the male figures are not of an Egyptian style, either. I am not dismissing a possible Egyptian context entirely because many examples of Megiddo ivory and other items of Megiddo material culture do bear clear Egyptian motifs, but this one is sketchy. Only the winged sun disk seems truly Egyptian, but that symbol was used in Canaan and even appears in contexts of the Northern Kingdom of the monarchic period of Israel, in the Early Iron Age.

On to other matters. I'm well familiar with David Rohl, and his associations between Labayu and Saul do not survive scrutiny. There's a reason Rohl's revisionist timeline has not affected professional scholarship. Rohl's a first-rate writer but his overall premise is deeply flawed. A careful reading of the Amarna Letters, such as from William Moran's excellent translations (The Amarna Letters, 1987, Johns Hopkins University Press), shows only the most tenuous similarities between the Canaanite Labayu and the biblical Saul. Biblical scholars themselves have noted this slight similarity, but only for the sake of comparison and none suggesting the two figures were the same. Rohl has gone too far.

On the subject of viziers, Joseph is always a popular figure. I field a lot of questions about him in my museum work. However, not only is there no evidence that the biblical Joseph was ever real, but using the clues of the Old Testament to nail him down to some realistic time period, we are left with the fact that Joseph would've been in Egypt around the mid-seventeenth century BCE (almost 300 years before the Amarna Period). Interestingly, this places the biblical Joseph in the time of the Hyksos in the Second Intermediate Period, but even though the Hyksos were mostly Canaanites, no connection to ancient Hebrews is possible.

Yuya was not a vizier. The prime ministers of Amunhotep III are very well attested, and Yuya was not among them. It's clear Yuya was very highly placed in the court of Amunhotep III, and was someone whom this king regarded with great affection, but the truth is, Yuya was not a powerful governmental official. Most of the titles he possessed were strictly ranking titles, which denoted affiliations with the king on some personal level but entailed no real job description. On a governmental level Yuya's most notable title was "master of the horse, lieutenant of the king for the chariots," which reflects a prestigious military position. Yuya's titles also reflect high rank in the cult of the god Min, which makes sense given the fact that Yuya came from the city of Akhmim, ancient Ipu, where Min's chief cult center was located. But the salient point is, Yuya did not exercise significant control in the government of Amunhotep III. Obviously his most direct contribution to this king was as the father of his great queen, Tiye.

I cannot think of any evidence that Yuya fell out of favor. Quite the opposite is clearly true. After all, Yuya and his wife, Tjuya, were permitted burial in their own private tomb (KV46) in the Valley of the Kings, which only the most highly respected individuals of a king were allowed to do.

Archaeology of the Holy Land has painted a rather clear picture of the emergence of the Hebrews. They did not come onto the world stage until the very end of the Bronze Age. Aside from the victory stela of Merneptah, nothing certain of them can even be attested until the tenth century BCE, although there is heated debated even on this. In all likelihood, the United Monarchy, whatever it might have been, could not have gone into full swing until the early ninth century BCE. Israel Finkelstein has even made a very plausible case that an actual United Monarchy was focused on the Northern Kingdom and its Omride dynasty, which was significantly more powerful than Judah until the Assyrians came on the scene and wiped out the north. What I'm saying is, be it Rohl's revised timeline or Riaan's, neither can stand in the face of historical inquiry. It would require us simply to ignore decades of archaeology, countless C14 dates, analyses of material culture and its development, and mountains of evidence that exists historically to show what transpired in Egypt and in the Holy Land between the fourteenth century BCE and the Early Iron Age.

That will do it for now. I hope the discussion continues.

[+DieChecker]

Informitive as always Kmt_sesh. It felt like the arguement was riding on the edge of the Fringe to me. Plus trying to put David, Joseph and Moses all within 3 generations just did not seem likely to me.

[kmt_sesh]

Informitive as always Kmt_sesh. It felt like the arguement was riding on the edge of the Fringe to me. Plus trying to put David, Joseph and Moses all within 3 generations just did not seem likely to me.

No, that definitely would not wash. For the most part all we can go by is the Old Testament with its clues and hints, and I already mentioned Joseph and how he would be placed in the seventeenth century BCE. Moses is more ambiguous as descriptions in the Old Testament clearly stand at odds with historical and archaeological facts. The mention of Pi-Ramesses in the Moses story is the most helpful because this was a real city in the Delta of Egypt and the purpose-built capital of Ramesses II, so we can toy with a date in the very late thirteenth century BCE for Moses. But it must be stressed there is no evidence for either Joseph or Moses outside the pages of the Old Testament.

David is a bit more interesting. The Tell Dan stela from northern Israel specifically mentions byt-dwd, "House of David." This stela dates to the late eighth century BCE and was most likely erected by Hazael, ruler of Aram-Damascus, who invaded northern and southern Israel at that time. Here, in the least, we have extra-biblical evidence: a foreign invader recognized the existence of a Davidic dynasty, whatever the historical realities behind that dynasty might have been.

[Riaan]

This was one of many ivories excavated from Megiddo strata nearly a century ago by the Oriental Institute, although unfortunately this one does not seem to have ended up in the collection of the O.I. (which has a beautiful collection of Megiddo ivories on display). It ended up in the collection of the Rockefeller Museum in Israel. Riaan identifies the figure on the throne as a Canaanite king, which does seem to be the consensus in historical circles (although some sources describe him as a prince, suggesting the ruler of a Levantine city-state in the Bronze Age). However, the figure standing before the Canaanite certainly isn't Nefertiti. The figure is at best ambiguous and the sex is difficult to determine, although it is quite possibly a woman. The cap she wears is, however, only superficially similar to the crown for which Nefertiti is famous. The sash descending from the back of the head marks this headgear as something else, and is not in keeping with the crowns sported by Egyptian queens. More tellingly, the garment the figure wears is decidedly not Egyptian.

Moreover, Egyptian royals were not in the habit of visiting foreign potentates. In full, there is nothing on this ivory to associate it in definitive terms with anything Egyptian. The harpist is equally ambiguous], although in Egypt this instrument was typically played by men.

In my book I point out several other aspects of the Megiddo Ivory scene. The fact that the queen is wearing a sash and not Nefertiti’s famous see-through clothing (which I also discuss) more likely suggests that this was her travel outfit. It is true that Egyptian royalty did not make habit of visiting their lowly subjects. This occurrence is unique and it occurred in a time of chaos and civil war in Egypt. Moses, as Crown Prince Tuthmosis, had risen against his father and sent messengers to the Hyksos kings in Jerusalem (according to Manetho), requesting them to come to Egypt and join him in his fight against Amenhotep. The incident is also recorded in the El Arish text – Geb, the son of King Shu, sends messengers to the Asiatics and foreigners in their land, summoning them to him. All the legends about the queen of Sheba visiting Solomon relate that messengers were sent back and forth between the two rulers (Solomon and the Queen), before she eventually came.

Another unique aspect of the Megiddo ivory is the queen offering the king flowers and wine. In my book I show that this was a gesture of devotion particular to Nefertiti. In the History of the Queen of Sheba mention is made of her favourite musicians. In my book I refer to evidence of female Hittite musicians found in some Amarna rooms:

“It will be noticed that the women in the upper room of both houses have a peculiar mode of wearing the hair, by dividing it into one or more tresses curling at the ends. Nor is this mere négligé, for the women in the rooms below wear the hair in an ordinary Egyptian mode. This lock or tress is quite un-Egyptian, but is familiar to us in men (and women) of Hittite race...”

The musician on the Megiddo ivory wears her hair in tresses.

All of the other figures are decidedly male, and all sport beards typical of Levantine peoples (that is, Asiatics or Canaanites). Egyptians did not favor beards. The garments worn by the male figures are not of an Egyptian style, either. I am not dismissing a possible Egyptian context entirely because many examples of Megiddo ivory and other items of Megiddo material culture do bear clear Egyptian motifs, but this one is sketchy. Only the winged sun disk seems truly Egyptian, but that symbol was used in Canaan and even appears in contexts of the Northern Kingdom of the monarchic period of Israel, in the Early Iron Age.

You will note that the captives on the Megiddo ivory scene all have beards, as does the Canaanite king. In other words, they most likely represent the captured Hyksos kings being returned to Solomon, the Hyksos king in Jerusalem. As for the bearded soldiers, Akhenaten is known to have had Asiatics in his personal guard. It is very likely that Nefertiti would have insisted on them accompanying her and not native Egyptians.

On to other matters. I'm well familiar with David Rohl, and his associations between Labayu and Saul do not survive scrutiny. There's a reason Rohl's revisionist timeline has not affected professional scholarship. Rohl's a first-rate writer but his overall premise is deeply flawed. A careful reading of the Amarna Letters, such as from William Moran's excellent translations (The Amarna Letters, 1987, Johns Hopkins University Press), shows only the most tenuous similarities between the Canaanite Labayu and the biblical Saul. Biblical scholars themselves have noted this slight similarity, but only for the sake of comparison and none suggesting the two figures were the same. Rohl has gone too far.

I do not at all agree with Rohl’s revised chronology. I only point out that he should have used his identification of Saul as Labayu to move the United Monarchy earlier in time, to match the Amarna era. Apart from the fact that Rohl’s identification makes a lot of sense (yes, I know, many academics will fight tooth and nail to dismiss this), there are other circumstances that corroborate this dating of the United Monarchy. Most notably is Solomon’s fabled wealth and world-wide (region-wide) recognition. One of the reason why many scholars doubt the existence of Solomon may very well be that Israel had never enjoyed such an elevated position in relation to Egypt. The only viable explanation is offered by Manetho: that Solomon and his army joined Tuthmosis (Moses) and plundered Egypt of its wealth. They were in fact called ‘robbers of temples’. When the Egyptian army returned from Ethiopia and regained its strength, it attacked Jerusalem and retrieved much of the loot taken from Egypt (Shishak simply means ‘The Destroyer, most likely Ai or Horemheb).

On the subject of viziers, Joseph is always a popular figure. I field a lot of questions about him in my museum work. However, not only is there no evidence that the biblical Joseph was ever real, but using the clues of the Old Testament to nail him down to some realistic time period, we are left with the fact that Joseph would've been in Egypt around the mid-seventeenth century BCE (almost 300 years before the Amarna Period). Interestingly, this places the biblical Joseph in the time of the Hyksos in the Second Intermediate Period, but even though the Hyksos were mostly Canaanites, no connection to ancient Hebrews is possible.

Yuya was not a vizier. The prime ministers of Amunhotep III are very well attested, and Yuya was not among them. It's clear Yuya was very highly placed in the court of Amunhotep III, and was someone whom this king regarded with great affection, but the truth is, Yuya was not a powerful governmental official. Most of the titles he possessed were strictly ranking titles, which denoted affiliations with the king on some personal level but entailed no real job description. On a governmental level Yuya's most notable title was "master of the horse, lieutenant of the king for the chariots," which reflects a prestigious military position. Yuya's titles also reflect high rank in the cult of the god Min, which makes sense given the fact that Yuya came from the city of Akhmim, ancient Ipu, where Min's chief cult center was located. But the salient point is, Yuya did not exercise significant control in the government of Amunhotep III. Obviously his most direct contribution to this king was as the father of his great queen, Tiye.

Whether Yuya actually was a vizier or was deemed by the Israelites to have held that post is irrelevant. One of the main objections to Osman’s theory is that Jewish legend would certainly have remembered that a daughter of Joseph had become a queen of Egypt. Yuya’s daughter Tiye was the principal wife of Amenhotep III. In my book I point out that there is indeed a legend that provides this link – the so-called Story of Joseph and Asenath, which states that they ruled Egypt as king and queen for 48 years. The legend was incorrectly transmitted in the sense that it was Amenhotep III and his wife Tiye who ruled Egypt for more or less that period of time, taking into account the years Amehotep III spent in Ethiopia.

I cannot think of any evidence that Yuya fell out of favor. Quite the opposite is clearly true.

As far as I am aware, there is no evidence at all that tells us anything about Yuya’s early life, only when he rose to prominence. I am unfortunately not familiar with the ‘mountain of evidence’ that exists regarding what transpired between Egypt and Israel, but what I do know is that there is no view on it that has been universally accepted. Whether the United Monarchy existed at all is still in dispute, etc.

I cannot list everything that I wrote and argue in my book here. For instance, I cite several references to the floods of Ogyges and Deacalion that are linked to Moses and the Exodus, etc. One can certainly dispute individual scraps of evidence one by one, but when they all point to the same conclusion, it is worth considering, don’t you think?

[Riaan]

It would appear that most scholars reject Josephus' identification of Solomon's Queen of Sheba as the Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia. I have just come across a good argument by Elliott Green that there are no grounds for doubting Josephus' information. The most important aspect of Josephus' identification is that she was first and foremost a queen of Egypt. As I argue in my book Thera and the Exodus, with Rohl's identification of Saul and David (and therefore Solomon) being Amarna contemporaries, that leaves only one candidate for this queen, Nefertiti (see summary here).

Edited July 2, 2016 by Riaan

[Kenemet]

17 hours ago, Riaan said:

It would appear that most scholars reject Josephus' identification of Solomon's Queen of Sheba as the Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia. I have just come across a good argument by Elliott Green that there are no grounds for doubting Josephus' information. The most important aspect of Josephus' identification is that she was first and foremost a queen of Egypt. As I argue in my book Thera and the Exodus, with Rohl's identification of Saul and David (and therefore Solomon) being Amarna contemporaries, that leaves only one candidate for this queen, Nefertiti (see summary here).

Nefertiti is not a candidate for the Queen of Sheba.   In the first place, the law of the land at that time was that no queen or princess would be given in marriage or have affairs with a foreign born.  She would have been executed and all trace of her erased by Amenhotep himself-- we have his declaration on this.  Furthermore, Amenhotep was very stingy with his gold and didn't readily send it around, as attested by almost all the letters he received at Amarna.  And his boundary stele (multiple) make it clear that neither he nor Nefertiti were going to leave Amarna... if people wanted to interact with them,then they would have to come to Amarna.  Josephus repeats that he's heard that the queen of Sheba came from Meroe -- but it was called Medwi or Bedwi, according to Merotic texts, and there's no evidence that Nefertiti came from there.  Her sister's name (Mutbenret) is more typical of Lower Egypt than of Nubia.

Secondly, it sounds like Josephus is trying to connect a much earlier queen, Nitocris, with the Exodus.  Josephus was working from older documents (including Herodotus) and Jewish tradition where this legendary queen is mentioned -- he did not interview  pharaohs and he didn't read hieroglyphs so his sources were at best third hand and possibly more distant than that.

Biblical scholars identify her with a possible Arabian queen...there were quite a few that could fit the bill.

[kmt_sesh]

2 hours ago, Kenemet said:

Nefertiti is not a candidate for the Queen of Sheba.   In the first place, the law of the land at that time was that no queen or princess would be given in marriage or have affairs with a foreign born.  She would have been executed and all trace of her erased by Amenhotep himself-- we have his declaration on this.  Furthermore, Amenhotep was very stingy with his gold and didn't readily send it around, as attested by almost all the letters he received at Amarna.  And his boundary stele (multiple) make it clear that neither he nor Nefertiti were going to leave Amarna... if people wanted to interact with them,then they would have to come to Amarna.  Josephus repeats that he's heard that the queen of Sheba came from Meroe -- but it was called Medwi or Bedwi, according to Merotic texts, and there's no evidence that Nefertiti came from there.  Her sister's name (Mutbenret) is more typical of Lower Egypt than of Nubia.

Secondly, it sounds like Josephus is trying to connect a much earlier queen, Nitocris, with the Exodus.  Josephus was working from older documents (including Herodotus) and Jewish tradition where this legendary queen is mentioned -- he did not interview  pharaohs and he didn't read hieroglyphs so his sources were at best third hand and possibly more distant than that.

Biblical scholars identify her with a possible Arabian queen...there were quite a few that could fit the bill.

I would agree. There is really no possibility that we can mash Nefertiti and Sheba into the same person. We can't be absolutely sure of Nefertiti's parentage but there is the long-standing theory that she was the daughter of Ay—all in all, a solid, Egyptian-born noblewoman who became one of Egypt's most notable queens. Reiterating what you said, there is little to suggest that once Akhenaten moved into his capital at Amarna, either he or Nefertiti left it again. However, there is the theory based on the old coregency argument that Akhenaten and Nefertiti left their city only for the funeral of his father, Amunhotep III. As is clear from the Amarna Letters, Akhenaten had little interest in foreign policy, and engaged in little action with the traditional vassal states, which is why Egypt's hegemony slipped so noticeably during his reign.

As for Nitocris, as I recall she exists only in the pages of much-later writers from antiquity. I can't think of any independent archaeological or textual evidence from the Egyptian perspective that she even existed.

Part of the problem is relying on Rohl for developing one's historical argument. I'll be the first to admit that he's a smart guy and a decent writer, but he's not really an historian. He's an historical revisionist. He crams centuries of history together like a trash compactor and basically ignores huge swaths of real history. His work is considered neither credible or tenable in academia.

Edited July 3, 2016 by kmt_sesh
Spelling

[back to earth]

Interesting topic though.   From an early age - probably little back to earth's first visit to an art gallery -  it has always fired my imagination.

 

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

It's clear to me that "Sheba" is one of those historical misremembering/mistranslation and her name was "Xena".

[Riaan]

10 hours ago, Kenemet said:

Nefertiti is not a candidate for the Queen of Sheba.   In the first place, the law of the land at that time was that no queen or princess would be given in marriage or have affairs with a foreign born.  She would have been executed and all trace of her erased by Amenhotep himself-- we have his declaration on this.  Furthermore, Amenhotep was very stingy with his gold and didn't readily send it around, as attested by almost all the letters he received at Amarna.  And his boundary stele (multiple) make it clear that neither he nor Nefertiti were going to leave Amarna... if people wanted to interact with them,then they would have to come to Amarna.  Josephus repeats that he's heard that the queen of Sheba came from Meroe -- but it was called Medwi or Bedwi, according to Merotic texts, and there's no evidence that Nefertiti came from there.  Her sister's name (Mutbenret) is more typical of Lower Egypt than of Nubia.

Secondly, it sounds like Josephus is trying to connect a much earlier queen, Nitocris, with the Exodus.  Josephus was working from older documents (including Herodotus) and Jewish tradition where this legendary queen is mentioned -- he did not interview  pharaohs and he didn't read hieroglyphs so his sources were at best third hand and possibly more distant than that.

Biblical scholars identify her with a possible Arabian queen...there were quite a few that could fit the bill.

You actually have to read the rest of my theory to fully understand the background   Remember the Zannanza Affair (Section 13.4 in my book) - Reeves makes a strong argument that this queen was, in fact, Nefertiti. In my book I expand his theory and suggest a reason why she would have approached the king of the Hittites, of all people, for a husband - her father most likely was Uriah, the Hittite, husband of Bathsheba (see below). If Manetho is to be believed, Moses had by that time led a successful revolution against Amenhotep III, and he and his court had retreated to Nubia, leaving Akhenaten and Nefertiti remaining more or less isolated in Akhetaten. According to Manetho it was Moses who had sent messengers to the rulers, summoning them to come to his assistance in his war against Amenhotep. As discussed before, this incident is also referred to in the El Arish Shrine Text, where it was the king's son who had sent the messengers, and in The Story of Joseph and Asenath, where it was the king's eldest son who sent the messengers (i.e. Crown Prince Tuthmosis). And yes, I know we have discussed the before, but Artapanus' description of Moses' involvement in the burial of the first Apis bull closely matches Tuthmosis' role in the same event - why has nobody picked this up before?

In The History of the Queen of Sheba you'll find several links to to Amarna era and Neferiti, as well as the so-called Megiddo ivory, which depicts an Amarna queen visiting a Semite ruler. The messengers sent by the queen of Sheba to Solomon would, therefore, most likely have been the same as the messengers sent by Moses (Prince Tuthmosis). 

As for kmt_sesh's comment about Rohl, I think he did a great job in identifying Labayu with Saul, but was hopelessly wrong in trying to move the well-established Amarna era to 1000 BCE. Had he rather moved the Saul's era earlier in time to the Amarna era, as I argue in my book, many of the pieces fall into place. For example, Solomon never ruled the ancient Middle East as claimed in the Old Testament. However, if he was the ruler in Jerusalem who had assisted Tuthmosis/Moses in the revolution, he would have shared in the spoils, hence his wealth.

As for the description Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia, Ethiopia was still effectively being occupied by Amenhotep III, his court and his army. To the outside world he would have been the king of Egypt and Ethiopia, and Nefertiti would likewise have been known as the Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia. The Koran also states that the sun was worshipped in her country (i.e. in Sheba), while the worship of the sun (the Aten) was only prominent in Egypt during the Amarna era. 

Whence then the name 'Sheba'? In my book I argue that she was the daughter of Bathsheba, Bathsheba meaning "Daughter of Sheba". Sheba was David's fiercest opponent and was hunted down and killed. The Queen of Sheba should then rather be interpreted as Sheba's Queen, the baby Bathsheba sent to Joseph for protection against David, and who became Egypt's Nefertiti. I paint a more complete picture in the book, but unfortunately can't repeat it all here.

 

[questionmark]

7 hours ago, Sir Wearer of Hats said:

It's clear to me that "Sheba" is one of those historical misremembering/mistranslation and her name was "Xena".

or her last name was Xenos (meaning "stranger" in Greek).

 

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

Except, and I'm struggling here, Moses didn't fight any Pharoah, he asked Pharoah nicely nine times to free the Jews and begged him once, once Y-W-H decided "so much for being polite, here comes the Angel of Death". 

 

Furyhermore, "Sheba's Queen" like "the Queen of Sheba" suggest "Sheba" is a place, wherein she is Queen, not a name.