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Anyway, And give it a

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required new subscribers only renew for twelve months

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to lock in savings. Additional taxes, fees, and

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restrictions apply. The Mint. mobile.com. for

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$45 for three months required. And today

1:30

we are tracking all the way back to ancient Yemen.

1:32

Or is it Ethiopia? To learn all about the wealth,

1:34

wisdom and womanly wiles

1:36

of the legendary Queen of Sheba. And

1:39

to help us, we have two very special guests. In

1:42

History Corner, she's a research associate at the Institute

1:44

for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She

1:47

specializes in religious, biblical and Jewish studies, especially

1:49

the literary dynamics of biblical figures.

1:52

And lucky for us, she's especially interested in issues

1:54

of gender and power. This is

1:56

Megan Stinchcombe. Welcome to the show, Jill. Hi, thanks

1:58

for having me on the show, Greg. And

2:00

in comedy corner, she's a stand-up comedian,

2:02

author and broadcaster. You might know her

2:04

from her award-winning podcast, No Country for

2:06

Young Women, or her on any

2:09

number of other podcasts, including the Rhahelestava Book Club

2:11

with Richard Herring. And you might

2:13

have read her incredible memoir, Sex Bomb, all about

2:15

sex and dating as a Muslim woman. It's

2:17

the superb Saadiyah Asmat. Welcome to the show, Saadiyah.

2:20

Hi, thank you for having me. Delighted

2:22

to have you here. Saadiyah, first time on

2:25

the show, I have to ask, do you

2:27

like history? Did you like it at school?

2:29

Yeah, I did. I learned a

2:31

lot about Stalin and Trotsky. I love about

2:33

that. There was a lot of blood.

2:35

It was violent. Yeah, history can

2:38

be violent. Sorry about that. And

2:40

what do you know about the Queen of Sheba? I

2:43

don't know anything about the Queen of Sheba at

2:45

all. Somebody told me

2:47

about a harem or something like that, so I

2:50

wanted to ask about that. But I

2:52

think she's a sexy lady. That's about it.

2:55

Have you heard the name Sheba in any capacity

2:57

as a phrase? Yeah, you know

2:59

when I was younger, there used to be

3:01

all these cat foods called Sheba, all these

3:03

cat food adverts. So I don't have a

3:06

cat, but it looked very sexy too, the

3:08

whole vibe was very dark and she

3:10

looked like she loves the cat. So

3:13

what do you know? This

3:20

is where I have to go at guessing what you,

3:22

our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. Queen

3:25

of Sheba, I think, is a well-known name

3:28

immortalized in the phrase, who do you think you

3:30

are? The Queen of Sheba, famously,

3:32

it was in the Royal Family in a very famous

3:34

episode of that sitcom, that wonderful sitcom. But

3:37

apart from the implication that Sheba might therefore be

3:39

a lavish lady of leisure who doesn't do anything,

3:42

you might not know much else about her

3:44

story. Maybe when I say Sheba, you are like

3:46

Sadia thinking of cat food, but

3:49

maybe you're not thinking ancient queen. You may have seen the

3:51

1959 film Solomon and Sheba, or

3:54

the 1995 film starring Halle Berry,

3:56

which is also called Solomon and

3:58

Sheba. Recently we've

4:00

had, well there's 3000 years of longing, as

4:03

a movie starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton.

4:05

She but has also popped up in Neil

4:07

Gaiman's American Gods. She's a busy lady, but

4:09

who was she? Was she a real lady?

4:12

Is she more fiction than facts? And

4:14

what have animal legs got to

4:16

do with it? Let's find out.

4:18

Alright, Dr. Jill, usually on

4:21

this show we start by asking when

4:23

was our protagonist born, sort of basic

4:25

biography questions. That's going to be tricky

4:27

today, right? Yes, definitely. The

4:30

Queen of Sheba, as we'll discuss, is a figure

4:32

that pops up in a lot of religious and

4:34

literary traditions, but biographical facts are

4:37

pretty thin on the ground. So

4:39

instead we'll be tracing her through different stories told

4:41

about her through history. Sadia, I was going to

4:44

ask, when in history is our first reference to

4:46

the Queen of Sheba? Do you want to guess?

4:49

You know Cleopatra? She used to like around

4:51

that times. I don't know what times

4:53

this is. Well Cleopatra will be about

4:55

2,000 years ago roughly, sort of about 30

4:58

BCE. So you're saying roughly 2,000 years ago?

5:01

Yeah. That's a solid guess. I think

5:03

we could go earlier. I would say that

5:05

he is a really solid guess, but

5:07

most people put the time where she

5:09

would have lived probably 9th or 10th

5:12

century BCE. So Sadia's off

5:14

by close to a thousand years, but considering

5:16

that we're talking in spans of thousands of

5:18

years, you know, only about 33% off. That's

5:20

not my forte. Okay,

5:24

wrong by a thousand years sounds devastating,

5:27

but actually I think Cleopatra was

5:29

a good sensible guess. Historically speaking,

5:33

9th, 10th century BCE is a long time ago.

5:35

So what is our first source, Jill? So the

5:37

first written record of the Queen of Sheba is

5:39

in the Hebrew Bible, known as the

5:41

Old Testament to many Christians, and

5:44

she appears in two passages. First

5:46

King's ton, and the other one is

5:48

Second Chronicles, Chapter 9. And these

5:51

texts probably draw on older materials which

5:53

were written before 600 BCE,

5:57

and both of these describe her as a wealthy

5:59

ruler of a foreign land. land, who makes

6:01

a visit to the court of Solomon, a biblical

6:03

king of Israel. Solomon was

6:05

the son of David, and Solomon

6:07

had requested wisdom from God, which he

6:09

was granted, and after this he became

6:11

really wealthy, powerful, and devout. He

6:14

built the temple and the wall at

6:16

Jerusalem, as well as palaces, towns, and

6:18

cities, using conscripted slaves from conquered

6:20

ethnic minorities. And he

6:23

conquered and settled new territory, built ships, including

6:25

some on the Red Sea coast, bringing even

6:27

more wealth back to him. Because

6:30

of all of this, Solomon became very famous

6:32

in the area, and was so famous that

6:34

the queen of Sheba decided to visit him

6:37

and test him with hard questions. Like is

6:39

he single? He

6:42

actually had many, many wives. So

6:45

not single, but also not opposed to taking on

6:47

a new lady friend at any point. She asked

6:49

him about his income, like where he gets his

6:52

money from. That's a hard question too. What

6:54

is the hardest question you can ask a guy when

6:57

you first meet them? How big is your debt? He

7:03

sounded like he had a big one, let's be honest with all of

7:05

that work going on. He sounded like a real man. He's

7:07

got big temple energy. Did

7:10

they have bigger dicks back then, Gillian? Have they

7:12

gone small? We don't have

7:14

time to get into the valuation of bigger small

7:16

dicks back then. The Greeks thought that having too

7:18

big of a dick made you animalistic actually, and

7:20

they valued having a smaller dick. Oh

7:23

no. What

7:25

could possibly be good about that? They thought

7:27

you were beastly and animal-like if you had

7:29

a big schlong, so smaller was better. I'm

7:31

here for the beast. All

7:36

right. Gill, you

7:38

said Sheba, the

7:41

first reference is like 600 BCE, but she

7:43

may have lived 3,000 years ago.

7:46

So already there's a 400 year gap there, and

7:48

she's visiting the biblical king Solomon,

7:51

asking him hard questions. Is

7:53

our quizzical queen catching him out? Is he able to answer

7:55

them? Do we know? According to the

7:58

Hebrew Bible, the queen of Sheba asked him... all

8:00

that was on her heart and he answered everything

8:02

and didn't hide anything from her. She

8:04

arrived at Solomon's palace with a really

8:06

great caravan of camels carrying spice, gold,

8:08

and precious gems, and she asked her

8:10

questions and he was able to answer

8:13

them in full. She's sort

8:15

of overwhelmed by his wealth and wisdom and

8:17

by the confirmation that the stories about him

8:19

were true. She really gives him a big

8:21

speech full of compliments and praise. And

8:24

after exchanging gifts, the queen left and returned

8:26

to Sheba, and that's about as much as

8:28

we're told. It sounded like she was into

8:30

the Solomon guy. I mean she

8:33

traveled really far with a lot of gifts

8:35

for him. Yeah. She's into him. Let's

8:39

get hyper-specific on the tiny, tiny details we

8:41

do have. So Sadia, the Hebrew Bible tells

8:43

us that Sheba, or the queen of Sheba

8:46

rather, gave Solomon 120

8:48

talents of gold, plus

8:50

the large quantities of spices, many precious

8:52

stones, etc. No cat food, unfortunately. Do

8:55

you know how heavy a

8:57

talent is? 5kg. Good

8:59

guess. Go a little higher. No, don't

9:02

say 10kg. What is this

9:04

woman giving gold for? It's like a game

9:06

show this. Higher still, 35kg.

9:09

Oh my god, this lady

9:11

is loaded. She's proper loaded. What does

9:13

she want from this guy? Well

9:16

she wants to ask him about his wisdom, obviously.

9:18

No one's this wise. I'd keep the gold. She's

9:20

not very wise. So 35kg per talent,

9:22

she's giving him 120 talents. That is about 4 tons of

9:28

gold. So Jill, we really don't find out very

9:30

much about the queen of Sheba from this passage.

9:34

Do we even know where Sheba

9:36

is? We don't know, not precisely,

9:38

where Sheba is. It seems like

9:40

it's probably generally to the south

9:42

of Jerusalem, but the Hebrew

9:44

Bible mentions a place called Sheba 17

9:47

times across the whole corpus, and it never

9:49

really tells us exactly where it is. There

9:52

are some theories many modern scholars

9:54

have noted on linguistic grounds. It could be

9:56

Saba, which is on the Red Sea coast

9:59

and it's in modern-day Yemen because

10:01

Sheba and Saba might be variations on

10:04

the same name. And in antiquity,

10:06

this was a city-state that was controlled

10:08

at different times by the rulers of

10:10

both Yemen and Ethiopia actually, because it's

10:12

just across the Red Sea from Ethiopia.

10:15

You can actually see the other side

10:17

from the coast. So these two countries

10:19

have competing claims to the location of

10:21

Sheba in later centuries. But

10:24

there are also some scriptural references

10:26

to Sheba and Saba as separate

10:29

places. So the identification with Saba

10:31

is just, it's not a hundred percent

10:33

certain. We don't know anything about her. We

10:35

don't know if she's single, as you

10:37

pointed out. Her star sign. Her star sign? I

10:40

mean Jill, I'm starting to worry this episode's in serious

10:42

trouble because so far we know so

10:44

little about this person. Do we think

10:46

the Queen of Sheba was even a

10:48

real person? We have about as much

10:51

direct evidence for her as we do

10:53

of Solomon. Oh. All

10:55

our accounts of Solomon come from hundreds of years

10:57

later, actually, just like the Queen of Sheba. And

11:00

there is historical corroboration for powerful women

11:02

monarchs at this time in the ancient

11:04

Near East, as well as gift-giving between

11:06

rulers. So for what it's worth, Saja,

11:09

she came with all these gifts to give to him, but the

11:11

expectation would have been that Solomon gave her

11:13

equivalent gifts in exchange. So she's not

11:15

totally down and out by, you know, four

11:18

tons of gold. So

11:20

for example, the Amarna archive is a

11:22

cache of letters sent to the Egyptian

11:24

Pharaoh Akhenaten in the 14th century BCE.

11:27

So he got all these letters from

11:29

his regional peers, including at least

11:31

one Queen, often asking about the

11:33

gifts that the Pharaoh will send them in

11:35

return for their own gifts. So gift-giving was

11:37

a really important economy in the ancient Near

11:39

East. But the Queen's literary

11:42

function in the text, I think, is

11:44

probably more important than if she was

11:46

real or not, because she's there to

11:48

demonstrate that Solomon was so wise that

11:50

he received praise and respect from other

11:52

powerful and incredibly wealthy rulers, even

11:54

from exotic faraway lands. Nice save, Jill.

11:56

Podcast rescued, I think is what we're saying

11:59

there. debut in the Hebrew

12:01

Bible, the queen of Sheba then turns

12:03

up 700 years later. This isn't

12:05

the first century CE, so this is

12:08

about 2,000 years ago. It's in

12:10

a book written by a famous Jewish

12:12

writer called Flavius Josephus. His book is

12:15

called Antiquities, and in his

12:17

book Antiquities Josephus does give the queen

12:19

a name. The name we've got is,

12:21

well I guess in modern pronunciation, Nicola,

12:26

spelling a little bit different,

12:28

N-I-K-A-U-L-E, so Nicola perhaps. So

12:30

Josephus is saying she's called

12:33

Nicola, queen of Sheba, and

12:36

he says that she is from Sabah

12:38

in Ethiopia, but he also says she's

12:40

ruler also of Egypt. So

12:42

Jill, why are both

12:44

getting name-shaped? Why both Egypt and

12:46

Ethiopia? Because that feels unnecessary.

12:49

Yes, it is pretty extra, right?

12:51

So Josephus's Antiquities is a history of

12:54

the Jewish people. Josephus was

12:56

a prisoner of war, taken to Rome, and

12:58

so he wrote this history while living in

13:00

Rome, written a few years after

13:02

the Romans had actually destroyed the Second

13:04

Temple in Jerusalem in a sort of

13:06

violent culmination of their occupation of the

13:09

area after the Jewish revolt. Josephus

13:12

was trying to argue for the antiquity

13:14

and the importance of the Jewish people

13:16

in terms that his Roman and Greek

13:18

audience would have understood. Egypt

13:21

was really respected by Roman society as one

13:23

of the oldest civilizations they knew of, and

13:26

in the first century CE it had actually

13:28

become one of the richest provinces of the

13:30

Roman Empire. And Ethiopia also

13:32

appears to have had some mystique in

13:34

Greco-Roman writings. It's often presented as the

13:36

edge of the known world. India and

13:39

Ethiopia are sort of like the edge of

13:41

the map that geographers would describe. So

13:44

by visiting Solomon at his court, the

13:46

Egyptian and Ethiopian queen of Sheba was

13:48

essentially proving his importance through her own

13:51

power and economic status, proving

13:53

to a Roman audience the importance of the Jewish

13:55

people in historical terms. Well, what

13:58

happened to the 700 years, Julian? So

14:00

the thing is, those two texts

14:02

probably take from earlier tradition. We

14:04

get Hebrew prose writing probably eighth

14:06

century, so a century or two after

14:08

they would have lived. What kind of clothes

14:10

was she into? Well,

14:13

I mean, I'm guessing she's wearing the best

14:15

stuff, but do we have anything at all? The

14:18

thing is, is cloth doesn't last very long. Cloth is one

14:20

of the first thing that's going to rot. So

14:22

we do have evidence of cloth also

14:24

being traded over a long distance. The

14:26

really nice linens

14:28

and stuff, things that were weaved well and

14:31

have a fine weave. So honestly,

14:33

when you said that, my first answer was soft. She

14:36

would have been really into soft clothing. Yeah.

14:40

We now get onto our next story.

14:42

And now we're into the Christian age,

14:44

actually. Our next writer is a Christian

14:47

scholar. He's called Origen of Alexandria. He's

14:50

writing in the third century CE, so

14:52

about 1,700 years ago. That's

14:55

Origen's origin story for the queen of

14:58

sheep. I would say he has a slightly

15:00

different take on things. He doesn't have

15:02

to argue for Solomon's importance in the same

15:05

way that Josephus did, for instance. Origen

15:08

wrote lots of commentaries on scriptural texts,

15:10

and one of his most extensive was

15:12

on the Song of Songs. And

15:15

the Song of Songs is a poem from

15:17

the Hebrew Bible in which an unnamed man

15:19

and a woman describe their love for one

15:21

another. And it's surprisingly sexy and

15:23

romantic, actually. Yeah. It's

15:26

a very famous poem. Do you know it, Sadia? No. Am

15:29

I going to get to read it now? You are, yeah. Is

15:31

that my cue? Can I grab it? Ooh.

15:36

So yeah, this is the Song of Songs, and this is the

15:38

opening stanza. So this is the beginning of the poem. Do you

15:40

want to read it for us? Let him kiss me

15:42

with the kisses of his mouth, for your

15:44

love is better than wine. Your

15:46

anointing oils are fragrant. Your

15:49

name is perfume poured out. Therefore

15:51

the maidens love you. For me after

15:53

you, let us make haste. The

15:55

king has brought me into his chambers. We will

15:57

exalt and rejoice in you. We will

15:59

explore your stole your love more than wine, rightly

16:01

do they love you." Oh wow.

16:05

Oh my god. Who

16:07

wrote this? I want this person

16:09

to write something for me too. I don't

16:11

know if they're available anymore, Jill.

16:14

Oh, they do. Do they do freelance

16:16

work, the author of the song I've

16:18

done? Many people say it's Solomon actually, Saja, so maybe

16:20

this is why the Queen of Sheba was so into her.

16:23

Oh my god. I

16:26

like guys who are in touch with their sensitive

16:28

side. He's cool. I like him. Why

16:31

is the Queen of Sheba linked to this poem, Jill? Interpretations

16:34

of the poem vary within and between

16:36

Jewish and Christian traditions. As

16:38

you might imagine, it made some people

16:40

a little uncomfortable that this was so

16:43

incredibly sexy. Actually Origen begins his

16:45

commentary by saying, this isn't actually about sex

16:47

at all. Don't get it twisted. I get

16:49

the same criticism, Jillian. People

16:52

had a variety of interpretations of it. Is

16:54

it a man, a human speaking lovingly

16:57

to God? Is it two lovers speaking

16:59

together? Is it God and the Christian

17:01

church speaking to one another? Basically, is

17:03

this working on a metaphorical level? Is

17:06

it a little bit more literal? If

17:08

it's literal, who's speaking? There were a lot of different

17:10

debates about it. It's

17:13

sometimes said to have been written by King Solomon

17:15

himself. He was said to have written

17:17

a lot of texts, including the text of Proverbs.

17:19

And Origen argued that in some ways, the woman

17:22

in the poem is the Queen of Sheba, with

17:24

much of the poem smoking in her voice. He

17:27

also simultaneously argues for a couple of other

17:29

readings of the text, including as a dialogue

17:31

between the church and God. But that's not important

17:33

for our purposes. What is,

17:35

I think, interesting for our conversation right now

17:38

is that building on Josephus' idea that

17:40

the Queen was Ethiopian, he connects the

17:42

factor for being from Ethiopia to a

17:44

line in the poem where the speaker

17:46

describes herself as black and beautiful. And

17:49

that makes this the first written example of

17:51

the Queen of Sheba being explicitly identified as

17:53

a black woman. And this identity

17:56

is something that has continued to mean a lot

17:58

to some audiences of her story history.

18:01

She appears again in the

18:03

7th century. This is the time

18:05

of Islam. Dr. Jill, how does

18:07

Queen of Sheba's story,

18:09

reputation, her purpose, does

18:12

it shift at all now that Muslim writers

18:14

are starting to talk about her? Yes,

18:16

definitely. The political context

18:18

of the Middle East had really changed

18:21

by that point, five centuries, it's a

18:23

long time, and it seems in these

18:25

new circumstances with different states vying for

18:27

control and Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities

18:29

living alongside each other under the same

18:32

rulers, the Queen of Sheba

18:34

suddenly became very meaningful to writers

18:36

from different faith traditions in different

18:38

ways, because she's not really needed as a

18:41

witness to Solomon's greatness anymore. Instead, they're

18:43

using her to think about difference and

18:45

power. And we really get a flourishing

18:47

of new, imaginative descriptions of the

18:49

Queen of Sheba. You've mentioned imaginative

18:51

depictions. We're talking now magical

18:54

spirits, talking animals,

18:56

body horror, and a bit more sexy stuff

18:59

as well. Do you know any

19:01

of these traditions of talking animals

19:03

in that part of history? Dr.

19:05

Dilett all. Isn't

19:09

that right? Yeah, a bit later. What

19:11

was the other thing you said, talking

19:13

animals and what? Magical spirits, body

19:17

horror. Do you know Jin? Yes, yeah,

19:19

yeah, yeah. So Jin is basically like,

19:22

you can have good Jin and bad

19:24

Jin. They're basically spirits. And so I

19:27

know that there are some tales

19:29

that say, you know, after mugrib, which is

19:31

sunset, you shouldn't really go out because that's

19:34

when the Jin is usually out in the

19:36

night. And then sometimes it says if the

19:38

dogs are barking, like it's because they've seen

19:40

a Jin stuff. Okay.

19:43

So negative and positive. They can

19:45

be. Yes. You got to be

19:47

careful. Yeah, I'm very careful all the time,

19:50

though. I don't know any Jin. The

19:54

Jin is starting to come into stories, but

19:56

there's another Jewish text as well, Jill, called

19:58

the Tagam Shenya. I think it's

20:00

a rewriting of the book of Esther I

20:03

think and it's um once again the queen

20:05

of Sheba has Turned

20:07

up to meet Solomon. So that's the same

20:09

but I feel like the CGI budget has

20:11

gone up more going on So what's happening

20:13

now Jill? So and these

20:15

texts Solomon is the

20:17

doctor do little figures He can

20:20

command and talk to birds animals

20:22

demons and other spirits and

20:24

the queen in these the text emphasizes

20:26

that she's an idol letter who worships

20:28

the Sun or the sea and Solomon

20:31

writes a letter to her demanding that she

20:33

showed deference to him and she decides

20:35

to visit and this text in

20:38

Targum She needs Esther actually pretty closely parallels

20:40

a Narrative that's also

20:42

in the Quran's through a normal

20:44

through a 27 and so in

20:46

the Quran Solomon also sends a jinn

20:48

to steal her throne and bring it back

20:50

to his court and then

20:52

he actually tests her By disguising her

20:54

throne with magic and she

20:57

sort of sees through the trick in

20:59

the Targum in contrast She tests him

21:01

with series of riddles She

21:03

gives very cryptic descriptions of

21:05

objects which Solomon correctly guesses

21:07

that the objects are a makeup box

21:10

the flammable compound napsa and linen

21:12

for making clothes and After

21:15

really easily answering the riddles the Queen

21:17

of Sheba in the Targum declares that

21:19

Solomon is indeed very wise All

21:21

right. I have two questions First of

21:24

all, why she keep going to see him and

21:26

he's not going to see her She's

21:28

making all the effort in this really I don't like

21:30

it He couldn't even send a car for her or

21:33

something. Did they have a car back then? I don't

21:35

know But she's doing a lot of the legwork and

21:37

I feel badly for her on that and

21:39

then the other thing I wanted to say is Like

21:42

their relationship seems to shift because before it was

21:44

she was just like, you know Praising him all

21:47

the time and now they're playing games with each

21:49

other Hmm There's

21:51

another element the story is different as well. So do

21:54

you want to guess what's interesting? Architecturally

21:56

about Solomon's palace when the Queen of

21:58

Sheba shows up Is it

22:01

floating? Oh, that's a guess. I

22:03

do like that guess. Yeah, if Saja wrote that

22:05

on an exam She would definitely get partial credit

22:07

from me In

22:09

both the Quran and the Targum Shaddai to

22:12

Esther This is one of the interesting parallels

22:14

to them Solomon's palace is described as having

22:16

a room with glass floors With

22:18

the Queen of Sheba mistakes for water She

22:21

sees this room with glass shiny floors and

22:23

she lifts up her skirts to avoid the

22:26

water and then Solomon explains That it's

22:28

just glass And in

22:30

the Quran she sort of realizes her

22:32

mistake with the glass floor and

22:35

it's very abrupt But then she says I've

22:38

been mistaken about my religious practice

22:40

And so she rejects her son worship

22:42

in the Quran to convert to Worshiping

22:44

God alongside Solomon which you could

22:46

phrase as converting to Islam, but since

22:49

it's before Muhammad we might just say converts

22:52

to the worship of the one true God

22:54

Do you mean like a glass bottom boat

22:56

which is see-through or is it like this

22:58

polished glass that ripples like water? Maybe I

23:00

would say very very polished glass.

23:02

So there's actually a really fascinating

23:05

story about Crusaders coming to the

23:07

Hagia Sophia in Istanbul in the

23:09

14th century and some of these

23:11

kind of country bumpkin European

23:14

peasant soldiers falling on the floor because

23:16

they think it's water and they get

23:18

so scared of it so this might

23:20

actually be a dig at the Queen

23:22

of Sheba of like she's not as

23:24

worldly as and sophisticated as she seems

23:26

and That the Targum actually

23:28

really makes a dig at her because in

23:31

that text when she lifts up her skirts

23:33

she reveals that she has really hairy legs

23:35

and Solomon says that she's beautiful

23:37

for a woman but hairy like a man and

23:40

hair is shameful on a woman I

23:42

didn't shave my legs today Me

23:44

neither And

23:47

what did they used to shave their legs back then

23:49

Jillian? I bet they didn't have like the razors that

23:51

we've got all did they I don't know did they

23:53

use wax? Did they use gold? What do they do?

23:55

Oh? They had a

23:57

range of more or less horrifying options

24:00

They had straight razor options. There's some

24:02

old Greek plays that refer to women

24:04

trimming their pubic hair using candles. So

24:07

like fire. Can

24:09

we try that? I want to do that.

24:11

No, no. Health and safety. Sorry, I'll come on

24:14

now. The BBC would be sued. Oh,

24:16

gosh. I will sign a waiver.

24:21

I mean, I applaud your bravery, but I don't

24:24

think anyone should be putting a lit candle anywhere

24:26

near their genitals. Let's just, let's all agree. Bad

24:28

idea. The hairy legs, Joel,

24:30

are starting to be critical of

24:33

the Queen of Sheba. Up to this

24:35

point, she's been almost uniformly positive and

24:37

noble and worthy. And now suddenly there's

24:39

an element. She's a foreigner. She

24:41

worships the wrong God. She's got hairy legs.

24:44

Is that also appearing in later versions as well? Or is

24:46

this a one off? No, this is

24:49

something that keeps appearing. For

24:51

example, in the ninth century, alphabet of

24:53

Ben Sira, which is an anthology of

24:55

tales. It's a Jewish text,

24:57

very parodic, very humorous. And in this

24:59

particular text, Ben Sira is called to

25:01

the court of Nebuchadnezzar, who is a

25:04

biblical king of Babylon. And

25:06

Nebuchadnezzar asks Ben Sira a series of 24

25:08

questions, most of which

25:10

are about animals and are also pretty crude

25:13

and rude. These questions include things

25:15

like, why does a donkey pee

25:17

where other donkeys have peed? And why do

25:19

crows copulate through oral sex? Huh? What?

25:22

What? What? How the could you

25:24

repeat that one for me? I was thinking

25:26

about the donkeys picking. Sorry. Why

25:29

do crows copulate through oral sex? And

25:32

this seems to be basically like

25:34

folklore tales that are probably

25:37

known ninth century Baghdad when this was

25:39

written. And so they just get put

25:41

in the rudest and most abrupt possible

25:43

way for shock value in the text.

25:45

Very good question, though. Why does a donkey

25:47

pee where some other donkeys peed? I

25:49

want to know that. Yeah, me too. I did not

25:52

know that crows give crow jobs.

25:56

I think that's a silly question because why

25:59

wouldn't a crow? give a crow

26:01

job. Sure, I'm in

26:03

different podcasts maybe, I feel out of

26:05

my depth here as a historian, I

26:07

don't feel I know much about bird

26:10

sexuality but... Shout out to the

26:12

crows, shout out to the crows.

26:14

Okay, so the

26:16

question's being asked there, why do donkeys pee, why

26:18

do crows copulate? These are funny questions Jill as

26:21

you say, so it's parodic, it's humorous, it's a

26:23

little bit cheeky, but Ben Sira

26:25

does answer the question of the hairy

26:28

legs doesn't he? He does, so

26:30

one question that Nebuchadnezzar had was how

26:32

to shave the head of a rabbit

26:35

and Ben Sira answers with a story

26:37

of the Queen of Sheba and

26:39

in the story found in the alphabet of Ben

26:42

Sira, after seeing her hairy

26:44

legs Solomon invents a paste of depilatory

26:46

cream which removes her body hair and

26:49

Solomon then promptly sleeps with her,

26:52

no concern about her consent in

26:54

one way or another is listed in the

26:56

text. Oh my god. And then Ben Sira

26:59

does this big reveal and says that this

27:01

actually, this encounter between the Queen of Sheba

27:03

and Solomon was how Nebuchadnezzar was conceived and

27:06

just to note Solomon and Nebuchadnezzar lived

27:08

centuries apart from one another, this is

27:10

really not meant as a history but

27:12

a parody making fun of everybody involved. Yeah,

27:14

so she's now apparently she's now the mum

27:16

of Nebuchadnezzar and the inventor of wheat hair

27:19

removal cream or Solomon

27:21

is I guess maybe. So Sadia you

27:23

asked us about what sort of clothes might the

27:25

Queen of Sheba have worn, we

27:27

have ruffled up three images for you to

27:30

see if you can compare and contrast see

27:32

what you like that we don't like. So

27:34

first image is a medieval one, it's from

27:36

a manuscript called the Belifortis, it's a military

27:38

manual, it's a war manual, it's from 600

27:40

years ago, this is the Queen of Sheba, do you want

27:42

to describe her for us? It's beautiful, they've

27:45

made her very black, just

27:47

for the people which is great but it's

27:50

like very you know it's very stands out

27:52

and a

27:54

lot of bling, she's I

27:56

think it's a beautiful dress, it's a really

27:58

nice green. She's quite

28:01

thin, she looks really fashionable,

28:03

very trendy, very classy, elegant

28:05

is the word. She

28:07

has a huge crown with loads of jewels,

28:10

she's holding some kind of stuff in

28:12

her hands. That means that she's a queen, so

28:14

the orb of power, the sceptre. Oh, I thought

28:16

it was a perfume thingy. It

28:19

looks like a hand grenade, it's weirdly, it looks like a sort

28:21

of a... But no, that's the orb

28:23

of power. She's got very blonde hair,

28:25

which is quite interesting. Yeah, I didn't

28:27

really spot that one, but she's beautiful, she looks

28:30

really beautiful, she's got nice red lipstick. She's

28:32

kind of dainty in her shape. Let's

28:35

have a look at Pic 2, this

28:37

is from the 1890s, so this is

28:39

how the English artist Edward Pointer painted

28:41

her in 1890. This is her visiting

28:43

Solomon. You might notice, she

28:45

is topless. Yeah, she's gone white now

28:47

all of a sudden, I thought the

28:49

other picture was she was very black and now

28:52

she's like completely white. That's

28:54

weird. That's a big chlorine for you. So,

28:59

she's wearing a cute skirt, she's

29:02

wearing a nice headdress, but you can still

29:04

see her hair, so it's not quite the

29:06

headscarf. A bit desperate with no

29:08

top on, I don't know, because it would be also

29:11

covered, like, you know, I don't know. Because

29:13

he's holding his hand up and he's

29:15

like, I don't know, that doesn't

29:17

look like a hello to me, it's like a, where's your top?

29:22

It's kind of like the Marilyn Monroe thing, isn't

29:24

it, where he was like, oh no, my wife's

29:26

there and she's trying to sing and seduce him.

29:29

You know how girls get, we kind of, when we're

29:31

into someone, we just go all in. There's

29:33

a lot of wives behind him, actually. I can see one, two,

29:35

three, four, five, six, seven, eight. I can

29:38

see 11 women who are looking

29:40

on quite angrily. All

29:42

right, shall we look at Pic 3? So, Pic

29:44

3, this is Betty Blythe, the actress playing the

29:46

Queen of Sheba in 1921. Oh,

29:50

that doesn't look like what I thought, did

29:52

you say 20s yet? Yeah, 1920s, yeah. Yeah,

29:55

yeah, she looks way too modern for the

29:57

Queen of Sheba that we're kind of talking

29:59

about. But she still looks

30:01

very sexy. Not much queen, she's more of a

30:03

dancer here. We can still see her

30:06

tits. Did I

30:08

say that? They're nice. Just for the people

30:10

who can't see, she has nice tits. But

30:13

yeah, that's how the 1920s portrayed her. So

30:16

that's three very different interpretive stars. What's your

30:18

favourite? I am a huge fan of the

30:20

Belo Fortis Manuscript. I think it's

30:22

beautiful. I think it probably

30:24

is considering the Queen of Sheba to be

30:27

the speaker of the poem of the Song

30:29

of Songs, who's black and beautiful, because

30:31

it uses this really dark ink to

30:34

show her black skin. And she

30:36

is portrayed as incredibly beautiful. And

30:38

it's really fascinating because it's a

30:41

military manuscript. And so the

30:43

part where the Queen of Sheba is put on there,

30:45

it seems that the author of

30:48

the manuscript is considered part

30:50

of Solomon's wisdom to be

30:52

his knowledge of scientific, magical

30:54

military matters. And that's why

30:56

she's included in this

30:58

manuscript of military knowledge. It's

31:00

not obvious when you read about the Belo Fortis Manuscript,

31:02

why she would be in there. It feels a little

31:04

bit random. Let's get back to

31:06

the legacy. Let's talk about a writer

31:09

called Al-Tabari, who in the

31:11

10th century, he's giving us an even more

31:13

wild version of the story. So we've already

31:15

heard about, you know, supposedly she's having Nebuchadnezzar

31:17

has her son and there's some very

31:20

magical things happening. But now Al-Tabari

31:23

has renamed the Queen of Sheba. She's no

31:25

longer a Nicola or Nicola.

31:27

She's now called Bilkis and

31:30

she comes from Yemen. Bilkis is

31:32

a nice name. That's my auntie's name. Is

31:34

it? She died. Oh, I'm sorry. Well,

31:36

a nice name, though. It's a beautiful name, isn't it? Bilkis.

31:38

So Al-Tabari has renamed

31:40

her. He's relocated her to Yemen.

31:43

He also claims that she has murdered her tyrant

31:45

husband in order to take his throne. And

31:48

one of the jinns under Solomon's control

31:50

has heard a rumor about her appearance.

31:52

Do you want to guess what the

31:54

rumor is, Sadia? Well, her

31:57

tits. She's had the boobs off. Not

31:59

necessarily. go bottom half of the body.

32:01

Ooh, she's

32:05

pregnant. Oh good guess, but no it's the

32:07

legs again. Oh, she's going

32:09

to hair back? Yeah more than that,

32:11

she's got donkey legs. Jill,

32:15

explain please. Yes, so

32:18

in Tabari's version of the story, the jinn

32:20

under Solomon's control are really nervous that if

32:22

Solomon falls in love with the Queen of

32:24

Sheba, they'll have a child and the mad

32:26

child will be able to rule them forever

32:28

and the jinn don't want that. They want

32:30

their servitude to end with Solomon's stuff

32:32

and be done. So they

32:34

tell Solomon that actually underneath her skirts,

32:37

the Queen of Sheba is hiding donkey

32:39

legs and so then Tabari says that

32:41

the class four wasn't, you

32:43

know, a coincidence. It was actually another trick

32:45

set up by Solomon to get her to

32:47

lift her let her skirts and show off

32:50

whether or not she has donkey legs. It

32:52

turns out luckily maybe that she just has

32:54

hairy legs. What's the problem with donkey legs

32:56

by the way? I mean it's basically meant

32:59

to indicate that she's a demon. So in

33:01

an earlier sort of fourth century text, there's

33:03

a description of Solomon engaging with

33:05

a variety of demons and one of them

33:08

is a female demon who has a beautiful

33:10

woman on her top half but donkey legs

33:12

on her bottom half. I think they're

33:14

not good jinn because they're like troublemaking. Yeah,

33:16

they're trying to trick Solomon into

33:18

not meeting her, is that right?

33:20

Into at least not falling in love with her

33:23

and not having a child with her. I mean

33:25

can't really blame them for self-preservation in some ways

33:27

but they are definitely being very tricky. I

33:30

mean the word jinn gives us genie doesn't it?

33:32

I mean we tend to think of sort of

33:34

Robin Williams in Aladdin. It's all hilarious and fun

33:36

but actually, you know, as Sadia says, I think

33:39

the jinn is a slightly more trickster-y vibe in

33:42

tradition. So we hear that the

33:44

jinn goes up to the heaven and the

33:46

lowest part of the heaven and then they

33:48

start like hearing the angels who are like

33:50

who know what's going to happen. So that's

33:52

where the rumors come from because they don't

33:54

hear all of it and then they kind

33:57

of mix the truth into it. So someone

33:59

said if you You know all those fortune tellers

34:01

and stuff. Somehow they can tell

34:03

you something factual about you, but it's like

34:05

there's one truth mixed in 100 lies, but

34:08

then they're not great people, so they mess

34:10

it up as well. Ah,

34:13

well don't trust the gin then. All

34:15

right, so Jill, we've... Ryan

34:20

Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, it's hard

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apply. mintmobile.com. We

35:22

now have a queen of Sheba who is murdering her

35:24

husband, not with donkey legs per

35:27

se, but has been described as maybe having

35:29

donkey legs by people who want to break

35:31

apart any sexual relationship between her and Solomon.

35:33

But it feels like the dynamic is shifting

35:35

a little bit again that the story of

35:37

Queen of Sheba keeps mutating, doesn't it? Definitely.

35:40

There is a clear power imbalance between

35:43

the queen and Solomon in these versions.

35:45

Arguably, you could say the story is becoming

35:48

more gendered. She's a joke for not fitting

35:50

stereotypical gender norms, but she's forced to conform

35:52

by the end of the story where it

35:54

says that Solomon gives her a cream to

35:56

make her legs smooth and feminine

35:58

again. Other factors might also

36:01

be important, especially the queen's idolatry.

36:03

Her function now seems to be

36:05

to show Solomon's superiority over unbelievers

36:08

in both Muslim and Jewish traditions.

36:11

And the uncertainty around Solomon and

36:13

the Queen of Sheba as rulers might also

36:15

be related to conflicts in the Arabian Peninsula

36:18

around the time these texts were produced. But

36:21

the queen is just really hard to pigeonhole. She

36:24

recognizes Solomon's greatness in the Bible and

36:26

God's superiority in the Quran. And

36:29

perhaps related to that, she

36:31

is consistently portrayed as beautiful

36:33

and desirable despite unconventional appearance

36:35

and behavior. And in

36:37

a contemporary commentary by Mukatil,

36:39

when Solomon criticizes her hairy legs,

36:41

the queen gives this really wonderful

36:43

comeback. Surely, you don't know

36:45

what a pomegranate is until you taste it.

36:49

Oh, good comeback, Sadiya. I know,

36:51

I love it. But question, we seem

36:53

to care more about her hairy legs than the

36:55

fact that she murdered her husband. Details,

36:59

details, Sadiya. You know, whatever. He was

37:01

a tyrant, he was a bad guy.

37:03

It's fine. Yeah, that's a fair point.

37:05

That's so strange. It's

37:08

pulling on a longer tradition, actually. There's

37:11

an ancient Arabian queen named Zenobia. She

37:13

fought against the Romans. And

37:15

in Muslim tradition, someone basically steals the

37:17

throne from her father. And

37:19

then she pretends to marry him or gets ready

37:21

to marry him and then murders him on their

37:24

wedding bed, essentially. But then how do they

37:26

think we're all repressed when we're out here

37:28

killing our husband? Extraordinary

37:31

circumstances, right? The exception that kind of proves

37:33

the rule. Yeah. What do

37:35

you make of this, the Queen of Sheba

37:37

story so far in terms of her reputation?

37:40

I want to know if she's getting any, you know,

37:42

because at the moment, all I know is she's getting

37:44

it from Solomon here and there. I

37:46

just think she's going to a lot of effort. And

37:49

it's very sexual and beastly type of thing. There's

37:51

not a lot of love and emotions in this.

37:53

We were very fixated with love and all of

37:55

those kind of eerie things. It doesn't seem to

37:57

be a lot of that in that world. That's

38:00

interesting. I mean, the song of songs that you read

38:02

out so beautifully, that's the one bit of eroticism we

38:04

have had. And I feel like she's quite

38:06

strong as a character, like almost what we

38:09

would think of as a masculine strength. So

38:11

she seems to be as strong

38:13

as a man and a woman, basically. She's very tough.

38:15

So she's not needy. She's not like me. I will

38:17

be texting him every day. Come

38:20

on, Solomon, leave your wives, all of them. Just

38:22

let it be me and you. Jill,

38:25

we're not done with the sexy chat. Well,

38:27

sexy is probably not the word because the

38:29

next thing in my script is simply the

38:31

word male genitals? How

38:33

do we get dicks in the story? A

38:36

couple of different ways, depending on the story

38:38

you're reading. But for example, in the Jewish

38:40

Midrash Mishleh, which is dated to roughly the

38:42

ninth century, we get a different report

38:44

of the riddles between the Queen of Sheeda and

38:46

Solomon. The Queen in this text

38:48

is Solomon's basically equal in

38:50

wisdom. And at one point, when praising

38:52

his answer, she even calls him sort

38:55

of my son, Beni. That

38:57

said, many of the riddles are concerned in

38:59

some way with genitals. And

39:02

in one, the Queen presents Solomon with

39:04

several men who are the same height

39:06

and wearing the same clothing. And

39:08

the Queen of Sheeda asked Solomon, how can

39:10

you tell which one of these men are

39:12

circumcised? And to answer,

39:14

Solomon opens the Ark of the Covenant, at

39:17

which point the circumcised men,

39:19

i.e. the Jewish men bow to

39:21

half their height and their faces are filled

39:23

with radiance, whereas the uncircumcised men collapse to

39:25

the floor. I'm confused. Why?

39:28

What? So

39:30

basically, the Jewish men, they know the

39:32

proper response to the Ark of the

39:34

Covenant, and it's a blessing that fills

39:36

their faces with radiance, whereas it's actually

39:38

just overwhelming to the non-Jewish men. Why

39:41

are we worried about whether they're circumcised or not? Well,

39:43

I don't mind either one, if you're listening, I don't

39:46

mind. In this case, I

39:48

think it's actually a way of saying, look at all these

39:50

people who look exactly the same. Solomon, do you

39:52

have the ability to discern what's hidden, in this

39:54

case, behind their clothing? Couldn't they

39:57

just have done like the full Monty type of thing? But

40:01

then it wouldn't have been hidden and so Solomon wouldn't have

40:03

been proving his wisdom with it. That's it, right.

40:05

So it's not Naked Attraction, they're not all coming

40:07

out. It's not a Channel

40:09

4 dating show. It's about his ability

40:11

to discern. I can guess too, Greg. It's

40:14

a dangerous game, but okay. I'll

40:17

go to the Covenant for listeners who are thinking,

40:19

hang on, I've heard of that. That's what we

40:21

see in Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost

40:23

Ark, where all the Nazis melt, but in this

40:26

story, people are overpowered by the holy relic.

40:29

So the 10th century, now the

40:31

story reaches into Western Christian Europe.

40:34

So this is a Catholic culture. And

40:37

how do you think the story changes now, Sadia? What

40:39

are they going to do to... I mean, I think we're going

40:41

to have to have more of her, like, sleeping

40:44

with men. That's what I think we're going to

40:46

have. Okay. So you think she's going to get some

40:48

more guys. Not just Solomon. She's

40:50

going to pick up some more dick. Okay. Well,

40:53

I think what we're doing here is we're swapping out

40:55

the donkey legs for duck feet. Is that fair Jill?

40:58

Oh my God. Or goose feet. Yeah.

41:00

So webbed toes, is that the new donkey leg analogy?

41:04

Getting used in medieval Europe. So the

41:06

animal limbs thing just isn't done. In

41:09

Senegal, there's a tradition where she has

41:11

cow hooves. In one Ethiopian

41:13

version, it's a goat instead of a

41:15

donkey, because the Queen's mother had looked

41:17

at a handsome looking goat with greedy

41:19

desire. But in medieval Catholic

41:21

Europe, the Queen of Sheba began to be

41:23

shown with a webbed foot that was then

41:25

healed somehow by the wood of the true

41:27

cross, the cross that Jesus was crucified on.

41:30

Some people understand that to be a coded signal

41:32

that she had leprosy on her legs. But

41:35

in these stories, the Queen crosses a

41:37

bridge over a pond in Solomon's court, and

41:39

she recognizes that the wood it is built from

41:41

will one day be used to make the wood

41:44

of the true cross. In some

41:46

versions of it, she steps into a pool of

41:48

water in which the wood of the true cross

41:50

is floating in order to worship it. And

41:52

then her foot is cured. So

41:55

her otherness as a foreign queen,

41:57

and here a prophetess who recognizes

41:59

the significance significance of the wood

42:01

is positive. And the webbed

42:03

foot becomes a symbol commonly associated with

42:05

the Queen of Sheba in medieval European

42:07

art. So she's now got the

42:09

power to see the future, because she's

42:11

now predicting the future crucifixion of Christ.

42:14

We're into now medieval Ethiopia, which

42:16

is a Christian culture, isn't it,

42:18

Jill, that becomes Christianized? So where

42:20

are we now with our history

42:22

of Queen of Sheba in Ethiopia?

42:25

Ethiopia is actually one of the earliest

42:27

political entities that has mass conversion

42:29

over to Christianity. Very, very old

42:31

Christian history, but our manuscript tradition

42:33

for them starts around the

42:36

13th century. And in this period,

42:38

we start to get this text called the Cebernagast, which

42:41

is a selective history of Ethiopia,

42:43

which justifies the rule of the

42:45

Christian dynasty that came to power in

42:47

the 13th century. And the

42:49

Cebernagast states that the Queen of Sheba

42:51

had ruled over Ethiopia, and it gives

42:53

her a different name. This one

42:55

is Makeda. And this history

42:57

portrays her and you know, it's national epic

43:00

really portrays her as a wise, capable, and

43:02

moral. And maybe the reason they emphasize these

43:04

qualities so much is because for one of

43:06

the first times it's written by a community

43:08

who claimed her as their own, the Queen

43:11

of Sheba in the beginning of the story

43:13

worships the sun. But when she learns of

43:15

the wisdom of Solomon, she's persuaded to worship

43:17

the God of Israel. She

43:19

visits Solomon and they have a philosophical discussion.

43:22

But on the last night of her visit,

43:24

he sort of tricks her into having sex.

43:27

Another text which shows no concern for consent.

43:29

Although in this case, the literary value of

43:31

that is that it shows that she's not

43:33

sexually promiscuous, despite having a child outside

43:35

of wedlock. So as

43:38

a result of this encounter, the Queen

43:40

gives birth to a son, Menelik. And

43:42

Menelik, the first, is claimed as the

43:44

ancestor of the ruling dynasty of

43:47

Ethiopia, known as the Solomonic dynasty.

43:49

And that dynasty rolled right up until the 20th century

43:52

and included Haile Selassie, the last emperor

43:54

of Ethiopia, who's worshiped as a prophet

43:56

or a messiah by those of the

43:59

Rastafari faith. And his claims

44:01

of descent from both Solomon and the Queen of Sheba

44:03

were written into the Ethiopian constitution of 1955.

44:07

Wow. That's a lot to

44:09

take in there, Saria. So she's got a new

44:11

name, Makada. Yes. So this is her third

44:13

name now. Because it was Bilkis before, wasn't it?

44:16

It was, and before that was Nicola. So

44:18

third name, and now the

44:20

mother of Menelik I, who

44:22

is the founder of the Sonomaniac dynasty. Is

44:25

that the substitute for Nabokanaza or not?

44:28

I mean, that's a good point, Jill. She's the

44:30

mother of Nebuchadnezzar in another tradition, but now she's

44:32

the mother of Menelik in this

44:34

tradition. Do they have

44:36

both or replace...? I

44:39

would call the alphabet of Ben Sira the equivalent

44:41

of a medieval shitpost. Okay.

44:44

It's meant as a joke. It's meant to make

44:47

everyone laugh. Nebuchadnezzar actually destroyed the temple that Solomon

44:49

built. That's what makes that joke kind of like

44:51

punchy and funny. Right? Okay. They lived

44:53

centuries apart, and Nebuchadnezzar is known for

44:56

destroying one of Solomon's greatest achievements. I

44:58

guess you had to be there. But

45:01

the Kepra Nagast is, you know, it's written

45:03

as, you know, meant to be

45:05

as sort of historically true as possible in

45:07

this case. So I would wait these two

45:09

accounts differently is what I would say.

45:11

So the Kepra Nagast is our Ethiopian

45:13

text. That really interesting point that

45:15

this is a community claiming her the first time

45:17

the Queen of Sheba is no longer a foreigner

45:19

coming into court. Sheba is now actually one of

45:22

us. And the story is

45:24

that Menelik at one point visits his father

45:26

in Jerusalem, Solomon throws him a big old

45:28

party. And when Menelik leaves,

45:30

he gets to take home the

45:33

Ark of the Covenant, which is nice. Can you

45:35

tell me what that is? What is the Ark

45:37

of the Covenant? Why is that? So the Ark

45:39

of the Covenant is the location where God

45:42

could exist, did exist basically on

45:44

Earth. In the ancient Near

45:46

East, you know, God's had various homes,

45:48

essentially, usually in temples. The

45:51

Israelites were a people that didn't have a land

45:53

for a long time. And so

45:55

they carried around the Ark of the Covenant,

45:57

you know, as sort of like God's seat

45:59

chair, essentially. And then eventually the Ark

46:01

of the Covenant gets put in the central

46:03

sacred shrine of the Temple at Jerusalem

46:05

and it was only viewed once a

46:08

year by the high priest. So

46:10

the Ark of the Covenant is essentially one of the holiest

46:12

relics that has ever existed in the history

46:14

of Israel. Oh wow, so it's like a

46:16

map, yeah? More like a big box,

46:18

I'd say. Okay, so now

46:20

the sun gets it, yeah? The sun gets dark.

46:23

Yeah. Okay, cool. That's

46:25

it. So Menelik's got it. He

46:27

gets to take it home with him. It's not

46:29

just known in Ethiopia because it also then has

46:31

an influence on how the Queen of Sheba story

46:33

is understood further west. Definitely. So

46:36

some of the claims from the Cebernagast

46:38

appear in European texts from as early

46:40

as the 1400s and parts

46:42

are translated into French and Portuguese through

46:44

the late 16th century and into English

46:46

between 1682. The

46:49

Emperor's proclaimed descent from the Queen of

46:51

Sheba is mentioned in US newspapers from 1704

46:55

and she became really popular in the

46:57

19th century as a symbol of African-American

46:59

pride appearing in newspapers and novels. Sheba

47:02

became a popular first name and

47:05

an African-American philanthropic organization was named

47:07

the Masonic Sheba Lodge. She

47:09

becomes, I suppose, an international figurehead for

47:12

African-Americans, for people of African heritage.

47:15

But then we see another take in

47:18

the 19th to 20th centuries and this is where

47:20

we got the paintings, Zadia, that late 1890s painting.

47:24

There's operas as well, Jill. There's a circus,

47:26

isn't there, Jill? Yes.

47:28

The Queen appears on stage, on screen,

47:31

canvas and in print all over Europe

47:33

and North America. There are

47:35

paintings including the one Zadja saw, John

47:37

Pointer's The Visit of the Queen of

47:39

Sheba to King Solomon. There

47:42

are operas like Chalko No's 1862 La Caindesada. There's

47:46

poetry by Yates and others and

47:48

there's the circus show by the Ringling

47:51

Brothers called Solomon and the Queen

47:53

of Sheba which featured more than a thousand

47:55

employees, 335 horses, 26

47:58

elephants, 16 camels and

48:01

other assorted animals that

48:03

travelled on 92 rail cars. These

48:06

versions generally played on stereotypes, focusing on

48:08

the Queen of Sheeda as a wealthy

48:10

but sexualised figure, and it was

48:12

usually portrayed by a white performer. This

48:15

version got into cinema portrayals in the 20th

48:17

century, and despite her adoption as

48:19

a black role model, it wasn't until 1995

48:23

that the Queen was portrayed on screen by

48:25

a black actor, in this case Halle Berry.

48:27

So it's been quite the journey, Sadia. We've

48:30

dragged you around several countries,

48:33

many centuries. She's had three different names.

48:36

How do you feel about the Queen of Sheeda now? I

48:38

think she's pretty cool. I think she's not

48:40

what you normally think of as a typical

48:45

figure of history, and it's nice to

48:47

have a very rounded explanation of her

48:50

because somebody told me that she's very

48:52

sexualised, and it doesn't seem that that's

48:54

the case from what we've

48:56

discussed. Not that there's bad if

48:58

it is, but all this animal stuff, it feels

49:01

like there was a bit of haters going on

49:03

with her, so I'm on her side, there's a

49:05

bit of haters trying to say

49:07

she's got these bad feet. I think

49:09

you're right. It's interesting, the sexualisation seems

49:12

to be sometimes used to attack her

49:14

credibility, but you're right, there's nothing... She does

49:17

murder her husband, but yeah, he's a tyrant.

49:19

He was a dickhead, innit? The

49:22

new ones, window! This

49:29

is the part of the show where Sadia and

49:31

I relax in the golden thrones of our glass-flawed

49:33

podcast palace, while Dr Gill teaches us something we

49:35

need to know about the Queen of Sheeda. So

49:38

my stopwatch is ready, you have two minutes. Gill,

49:40

please take it away. So we don't

49:42

have access to the historical figure of the Queen

49:44

of Sheeda. We don't have evidence

49:46

of anything she wrote, nor are there any

49:48

historical accounts from the period she lived which

49:50

describe her. And instead, we

49:52

have inherited historical evidence that emerged no less

49:55

than a couple of centuries after she would

49:57

have lived, and then a wide variety of

49:59

oral traditions. I sometimes meet people who

50:01

are disappointed that we don't have access to the

50:03

real Queen of Sheba. But what I

50:05

find most fascinating about the figure is the

50:08

way she functions as a cipher to a

50:10

storyteller's values. And what I

50:12

mean by this is by paying close attention to

50:14

how one or another story of

50:16

her visit is told, we can see concerns

50:18

about difference in power emerge. The

50:21

Queen of Sheba and Solomon are different

50:23

genders, have different religious practices, and are

50:25

of different nationalities, ethnicities, or races, depending

50:28

on how the story is told. And

50:31

those factors are all always present,

50:33

but they're emphasized differently in different

50:35

narrations. The Bible has virtually nothing

50:38

to say about her gender, for instance,

50:40

which is somewhat surprising in light of

50:42

how central femininity is to modern retellings.

50:45

In another historical shift, the Queen of

50:47

Sheba isn't presented as a foreigner, an

50:49

Ethiopian, and Yemeni stories about her, but

50:51

rather as an ancestor. She's claimed

50:53

as an us rather than a them. These

50:56

stories are used as evidence in debates, like

50:58

whether or not women could be good rulers,

51:00

or debates over who is the political and

51:02

religious inheritor of Solomon's authority. So

51:05

while we might not have access to the real Queen

51:07

of Sheba, the figure does have real effects in

51:09

the world. And perhaps more

51:12

importantly, the lack of direct evidence really

51:14

sharpens debates that are always at play in the

51:16

writing of history. The quality

51:18

and nature of evidence always matters, but

51:20

so does the narrative crafted through that

51:22

evidence. And the Queen of Sheba really

51:24

forces us to ask if our story is a good one, and

51:27

if so, good for what? Thank

51:29

you so much. You did then talk about a

51:31

crows giving the blowjobs because I was waiting for that bit.

51:35

We only had two minutes. I need so much more to get into

51:37

that. Thank

51:40

you, Jill. That was fascinating. And I love

51:42

the idea of a story good for what? That's interesting.

51:45

The purpose of stories is really interesting because sometimes

51:47

we assume they're just, you know, stories into stories,

51:49

but they sometimes have a genuine

51:52

function. So what do you know now? And

52:00

it's time now for the Sabodiano now. This

52:02

is our quickfire quiz for Sadia to see

52:04

how much she has learned. Sadia,

52:06

are you feeling confident? Because we have bounced around

52:09

all over the place. If

52:11

it's about crows, yes. I'm

52:15

not sure the crows are in these questions, so we might

52:17

be asking you some trickier ones. Let's see how we do,

52:19

shall we? Question one. What

52:22

religious written text does the Queen

52:24

of Sheba first appear in? Oh,

52:28

it's a Bible. Hebrew Bible,

52:30

well done. Question two. In

52:32

the Hebrew Bible, why does the

52:34

Queen of Sheba journey to visit

52:37

Solomon? I think she wants to figure

52:39

out his wisdom. Yeah, asking

52:42

some hard questions. Question three.

52:44

Saba is sometimes associated with

52:46

Sheba in which modern country

52:49

is Saba found? Yemen. It

52:51

is Yemen, well done, very good. Question four.

52:53

Which sexy biblical poem that you read

52:56

out beautifully? This Oregon of Alexandria, I

52:58

think, was about the Queen of Sheba.

53:01

What was the name of the poem? It didn't have even a name.

53:03

No, I don't know.

53:06

Okay, it was called the Song of Songs.

53:10

That's cheeky, isn't it? All right, I

53:13

lost that one. Okay, question five. In

53:15

later Jewish and Quranic traditions, Sheba lifts

53:17

her skirt because she mistakenly thinks a

53:20

glass floor is water. In the Jewish

53:22

Targum text, what is Solomon's shock to

53:24

see under her skirts? She got

53:26

some hairy legs. She has got some hairy

53:29

old legs. Question six. In

53:31

the ninth century Jewish text, the

53:33

Midrash Mishleh, what genital-based

53:35

riddle does the Queen of Sheba

53:37

set for Solomon involving men? About

53:40

the circumcision. She wants to know

53:42

how much foreskin they've got or

53:44

not. That's right. Okay, question

53:46

seven. According to the tenth century Muslim

53:48

writer, Al-Tabari, what magical being

53:50

under Solomon's control told him that

53:53

the Queen had donkey legs? It

53:57

was gin. Very good. Question eight.

53:59

What body part? became a symbol

54:01

for the Queen of Sheba in

54:03

medieval Western European art. It wasn't

54:05

her legs, it was... Her feet.

54:07

Webbed feet. It was

54:09

webbed feet. Very good. Question nine.

54:11

Which sacred Jewish artefact does the 13th

54:13

century text, the Kebir Nagast, claim was

54:15

brought back to Ethiopia by Sheba and

54:17

Solomon's son Menelik? Is this the Ark

54:20

of the Covenant? It is the Ark

54:22

of the Covenant. OK, and this for

54:24

nine out of ten, a very strong

54:26

score. Question ten. Who was the first

54:28

ever black actress to portray Sheba on

54:30

Queen? There we go.

54:33

Nine out of ten. Very well done.

54:35

Where's the crow's question? Do we get a buzz? And

54:38

question the level. How does a crow...? All

54:42

right, well, you did very well, Sadia. Well

54:44

done. We absolutely hurled so much history at

54:47

you there. That was very difficult. It was

54:49

so interesting. It was fascinating. And thank you,

54:51

Dr. Jill, for your knowledge and sharing that

54:53

with us. So, listen, after today's

54:55

episode, if you want to learn about another

54:57

legendary location, we've got our episode on Atlantis,

54:59

of course, for more African queens. Why not

55:02

listen to our episodes on Hatshepsut or Injhinga

55:04

of Indongo and Matamba? And remember,

55:06

if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review, share

55:08

the show with friends, subscribe to Your Dead To Me

55:10

On BBC Sound so you never miss an episode. But

55:13

I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In

55:16

history corner, we have the delightful Dr

55:18

Gillian Stinchcombe from the Institute for Advanced

55:20

Study. Thank you, Jill. Thank you so much

55:22

for having me, Greg. For the lovely

55:24

time. And in comedy corner, we have the

55:26

sensational Sadia Asmat. Thank you, Sadia. I

55:29

love so much. Thanks, guys. And

55:31

to you lovely listener, join me next time as

55:33

we hitch up our skirts to reveal another historical

55:35

mystery. But for now, I'm off to go

55:37

and shave my legs because Solomon has given me a complex

55:39

bite. This

55:46

Episode of Your Dead To Me was researched by

55:48

John Mason. It was written by John Mason, Emmy

55:50

Rose Price, Good Fellow M and The Goose, and

55:52

me, the audio producer, Steve Hankey, and our production

55:54

coordinator was Caitlin Hobbs. It was produced by Emmy

55:56

Rose Price, Good Fellow M and The Goose, and

55:59

me, executive editor. With Krishna jailed. Hello,

56:12

it's on Fan Telecom Here I'm I'm back

56:15

with my twin brother Chris as me in

56:17

the third series about Radio for podcast a

56:19

thorough examination. Are we going to be talking

56:21

about exercise now? I really love it and

56:23

this has been really annoying for me. In

56:25

fact, he's gone beyond annoying. It's more like

56:27

you join some sort of cult The But

56:30

I think Chris need to do more. In

56:32

fact, I think everyone needs to do more.

56:34

There is a general crisis have an activity

56:36

in the Uk that we should all be

56:38

worried about. So.

56:40

In this series we weigh up with

56:42

exercise really is the miracle cure for

56:45

all that ails us or weather's been

56:47

oversold and actually lounging around is just.

56:50

Listen To Us resulting the argument

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I'm Failing Johnson and I'm Leah Smoke

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