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Summary

Three thousand years ago, a dusky queen swept into the court of King Solomon, and from that time to the present day, her tale has been told and retold. Who was this queen? Did she really exist? In a quixotic odyssey that takes him to Ethiopia, Arabia, Israel, and even a village in France, Nicholas Clapp seeks the underlying truth behind the multifaceted myth of the queen of Sheba. It's an eventful journey. In Israel, he learns of a living queen of Sheba -- a pilgrim suffering from "Jerusalem Syndrome" -- and in Syria he tracks down the queen's tomb, as described in the Arabian Nights. Clapp investigates the Ethiopian shrine where Menelik, said to be the son of Solomon and the mysterious queen, may have hidden the Ark of the Covenant. Then the "worst train in the world" (according to the conductor) takes Clapp to the Red Sea, where he sets sail for Yemen in an ancient dhow and comes perilously close to being shipwrecked. As in his search for the lost city of Ubar, Clapp uses satellite images, this time to track an ancient caravan route that leads to the queen's winter capital in present-day Yemen. The quest is bolstered by new carbon-14 datings and by the discovery of an Arabian Stonehenge in the sands of the Rub' al-Khali. Finally, at the romantic and haunting ruins of Sirwah, the pieces of the queen of Sheba puzzle fall into place.

Author Biography

Nicholas Clapp, a noted documentary filmmaker, has lectured on Ubar at Brown University, the University of California at Los Angeles, California Institute of Technology, the National Georgraphic Society, and the Goddard Space Center. Clapp currently lives in Los Angeles, California.

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Prologue

(4)

PART I: IN WHICH THE QUEEN OF SHEBA APPEARS AND HER LEGEND UNFOLDS

In the Monasteries of the East

(13)

I Kings 10

(2)

Songs of Sheba

(9)

The Desert Queen

(18)

With Eyes Shining As Stars

(13)

Touched By the Queen

(19)

PART II: IN WHICH WE SEEK SOLOMON AND SHEBA IN THE HOLY LAND

O Jerusalem!

(11)

Looking for Solomon

(19)

Zabibi and Samsi

109

(18)

PART III: IN A DESERT OASIS, AN UNEXPECTED SHEBA

Further Suspects

127

(3)

The Caliph's Command

130

(13)

PART IV: IN WHICH WE VENTURE TO A LAND OF INCESE AND SPICES

To Far Arabia

143

(18)

A Trail of Ruins

161

(19)

City of Divine and Mysterious Pleasure

180

(22)

Chiseled in Stone

202

(8)

A Secret of the Sands

210

(11)

PART V: A JOURNEY REVEALS THE POWER AND DOMINION OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA

The Glory of Kings

221

(9)

The Holy City of Aksum

230

(12)

By Dhow from Djibouti

242

(9)

The Road to Sirwah

251

(7)

In the House of the South Wind

258

(14)

Sheba and Solomon

272

(16)

Epilogue: Sheba's Tomb

288

(9)

Appendix 1: The Names of Sheba

297

(2)

Appendix 2: Chronology of the Sabean (Sheban) State

299

(3)

Appendix 3: Demon Sheba

302

(7)

Appendix 4: Alchemical Sheba

309

(5)

Notes

314

(23)

Bibliography

337

(20)

Acknowledgments

357

(3)

Illustration Credits

360

(1)

Index

361

Supplemental Materials

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Excerpts

Prologue On a sleet-streaked november afternoon I ducked into the New York Public Library, collapsed my umbrella--broken-spoked on the dash from the subway--sloshed up a grand marble staircase, and turned down a dark hallway leading to the Oriental Division. ("Oriental," in the nineteenth centurys world-view, meant anything to the east of Greece, as in "We Three Kings of Orient Are...") In the hallway, the divisions recent titles could be accessed on two computer terminals glowing green on a table to the right. To the left, shelves of black volumes recorded older entries, typed on antique machines and even handwritten. Both sources had pages of entries beginning: "Queen of..." Queen of Bubbles, Queen of Frogs. Queens of Sorrows, Spies, the Swamp, Tears, Tomorrow, the Universe, Rage, and Ruin. But on this damp day, one entry shone, the one I was looking for: the Queen of Sheba. Further crosschecking would pull up hundreds of entries bearing on her life--if she did ever live--and times. I had no way of knowing it at the time, but the pursuit of the queen of Sheba would take me from Canterbury Cathedral to a Czech alchemists tower. I would venture to the Orient of old and to Jerusalem, the city where Sheba appeared before King Solomon, a city so at the crux of Western religion that it was long held to be the center of the world. Curiosity, that old cat-killer, would prod and beckon me on, through the cobbled streets of ancient caravansaries, through grassy green African highlands, across a stormy Strait of Tears, and into the trackless red sands of the Rub al-Khali, the Empty Quarter of Arabia. The desert, Ive found, is a good place for the curious, for even on a short walk you can expect the unexpected, a glimpse of something youve never seen before, be it an oddly striped caterpillar, a rare ghost flower or, as I once found in Californias Mojave, a barely tarnished fighter plane abandoned since World War II. This really doesnt make sense. One imagines the surprises of the world of nature and of man to be hidden in remote alpine canyons and mist-shrouded jungles. And certainly such places have their share of the unexpected. But its in the desert--open, apparently lifeless, with few places to conceal anything--where secrets, perhaps the best secrets, are to be found. Or may still lie buried. On again, off again, for a decade and more, I would seek Sheba in lands (like her?) exotic, sensuous, even sinister. Would the mists of her myth dissolve, and a real queen of a real country step forth? Or, upon investigation, might she prove to be Sheba, Queen of Illusion? I had no idea. But on a winters day in New York, I scanned volume after worn volume and was warmed by the promise of adventure offered by Alexander Kinglake, a Victorian "traveling gent": There comes a time for not dancing quadrilles, not sitting in pews... and now my eyes would see the Splendor and Havoc of the East. May, 2000Copyright 2001 by Nicholas Clapp

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