THE QUEEN OF SHEBA'S PALACE?

Archaeologists find Queen of Sheba's palace at Axum, Ethiopia
07.05.08 23:38 (TREND Information, Azerbaijan)

Archaeologists believe they have found the Queen of Sheba's palace at Axum, Ethiopia and an altar which held the most precious treasure of ancient Judaism, the Ark of the Covenant, the University of Hamburg said Wednesday, the dpa reported.

Scientists from the German city made the startling find during their spring excavation of the site over the past three months.

The Ethiopian queen was the bride of King Solomon of Israel in the 10th century before the Christian era. The royal match is among the memorable events in the Bible.

Ethiopian tradition claims the Ark, which allegedly contained Moses' stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were written, was smuggled to Ethiopia by their son Menelek and is still in that country.

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Whatever is going on here sounds garbled to me. I take it that a German team of archaeologists has found a tenth-century BCE palace in Axum and speculates that it might have belonged to the Queen of Sheba. This sounds at least possible. But the Bible does not say that Solomon married the Queen of Sheba. That, the stuff about the Ark, and the name Menelek all come from the medieval compilation of Ethiopian legends in the Kebra Negast. (See the links at the bottom of this post for background.) The original story of the Queen of Sheba is found in the Bible in 1 Kings 10:1-13.

This may be an important find, but we'll have to see. Watch this space.

UPDATE (10 May): Todd Bolen has some useful observations at the BiblePlaces blog.