Issue No. 608
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17 - 23 October 2002 Issue No. 608 Culture |
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Tales of Arabia felix
Ancient Yemen and the legendary Queen of Sheba -- the subjects of a British Museum exhibition in London. David Tresilian visited in the exhibition's final days
Queen of Sheba, an exhibition of archaeological finds from pre-Islamic south Arabia, closed last weekend at the end of a four-month run at the British Museum in London following successful outings at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris in 1997 and in Austria, Germany and Italy. Also containing Western and other materials on the after-lives of the legendary Queen of Sheba, Bilqis in Islamic tradition, whose visit to King Solomon is recorded in the Old Testament Book of Kings, the exhibition presents a record of the Sabatean civilisation that flourished in Southern Arabia, in what is now Yemen, from the 9th century BC to 275 AD.
Click to view captionThe Queen of Sheba's Visit to King Solomon (detail), Sir Edward John Poynter, 1882 According to the biblical writers, the Queen of Sheba arrived at Solomon's court bearing great quantities of gold and precious gifts, her curiosity having been piqued by reports of the king's fame reaching her in far-off south Arabia. Later Greek and Roman writers also stressed the wealth and prosperity of the Queen's kingdom of Saba, or Sheba, contributing to the legend of Arabia felix, blessed Arabia, the Roman name for Yemen.
In the Qur'anic account, Queen Bilqis is a potential demon, Solomon tricking her into lifting the hem of her skirt as she crossed the courtyard of his palace to see if she did indeed have the hairy legs of a goat that would have confirmed her demonic status, as the legends about her claimed. It was the hoopoe, a mythical bird, that acted as go-between between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. For the later kings of Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa across the Red Sea, Bilqis was the mother of Menelik, founder of the Ethiopian royal dynasty.
Western visitors to the exhibition are perhaps most likely to be familiar with the image of the Queen of Sheba presented in Hollywood films, the Queen having been played by Gina Lollobrigida in a memorable 1959 epic. Nineteenth-century European orientalist fantasies had a lot to do with this presentation of the queen, eroticising her something in the manner of the Ballet russes and Sheherazade. However, there is also a Western iconographic tradition representing the queen, together with the marvelous music composed by Handel to mark the Queen of Sheba's arrival at Solomon's court for his oratorio Solomon in 1749, and this material, too, feeds into the British Museum exhibition, glamourising the mostly archaeological objects on display.
These objects, as the exhibition catalogue explains, make up virtually all that is known of the legendary queen and of the apparently once fabulously wealthy kingdom of Saba.
The ancient writers agree that the sources of Saba's wealth came from the country's important position on maritime trading routes, as well as from the export of frankinscence and myrrh. Frankinscence, a white gum-like resin exuded from a tree growing wild in south Arabia, and myrrh, a darker Arabian resin, were taken in caravans to the Mediterranean, where, particularly in later Roman times, they were exported to feed the enormous European market. According to the catalogue, the Queen of Sheba's visit to Solomon would have taken place in c. 950 BC, if it took place at all, since, as one contributor sternly notes, "the South Arabian monarchs were invariably male ... [and] the notion that any ruler in South Arabia would have visited Jerusalem ... is almost preposterous."
Such commercial wealth, along with Saba's position on important ancient trading routes, meant that a sophisticated urban civilisation sprang up in south Arabia, centred on the ancient towns of Marib and Shabwa, which developed characteristic forms of art, architecture and technology. The climate of ancient south Arabia, together with its verdant highland and more arid lowland terrain, meant the development of sophisticated agricultural patterns on terraced highland slopes, with complicated irrigation systems and dams to exploit the water running off the higher areas, using it to feed the urban centres and lower-lying regions. It is estimated that Shabwa once had a population of up to 4,000, and Marib as many as twice this number, thanks to these developments in agricultural technology and irrigation.
The remains of these Sabatean towns, excavated from the mid- nineteenth century onwards by French teams, and then again in the 1950s and from the 1970s on by international ones, have yielded further evidence of ancient south Arabia's place on international trading routes, showing patterns of technology transfer and of indigenous arts and crafts production. Some 16,000 inscriptions in ancient south Arabian, a Semitic language written in a quadrangular, monumental script, have been discovered, allowing the basic chronology of Saba to be established and showing that the kingdom, "federated" by its ruler, the mukarrib, or king-federator, sometime in the 9th or 8th century BC, dominated south Arabia until its annexation by the neighbouring kingdom of Himyar in 275 AD.
In the meantime, Saba, though "at the ends of the earth" as far as the biblical writers were concerned, flourished particularly under the rule of Karib'il Watar, "Karib'il the Great", in the 7th century BC, later absorbing first Hellenistic and then Roman influences as these civilisations came to dominate the Mediterranean World to the north. The exhibition contains, for example, various series of ancient Sabatean coins, dating from the 5th century BC onwards, which look for all the world like ancient Athenian drachma, even down to the appearance of the characteristic Athenian owl and the head of the goddess Pallas Athena on the coins' obverse side. The catalogue describes these as "very accurate imitations" of Greek pieces, bearing Greek letters as well as south Arabian ones on Athena's cheeks.
With the passing of Hellenistic influence in the region and the growth of Roman power, particularly following the defeat of Cleopatra and the Egyptian Ptolemies at Actium in 31 BC, south Arabian coins become Roman in style, featuring, in addition to now corrupt Greek lettering and values added in south Arabian script, portrait heads "very similar to that of the Roman emperor Augustus." The Romans invaded south Arabia and Saba in 26 BC, bringing the kingdom firmly into the international trading system that they, following the defeat of the Egyptians, now controlled.
Among the objects on display from Saba's earlier periods, the most intriguing are probably the series of small carved calcite-alabaster figures depicting notable personages and kings from Sabatean society. Squat, almost crouching, with exaggerated forearms, heads and sandaled feet, these are believed to have had a religious or funerary function. One of three 1st-century BC statues of Yasuduq'il Far, king of Awsan, a neighbouring kingdom believed to have been forcibly joined to Saba by Karib'il Watar in the 7th century BC, for example, shows the king with long, flowing hair and detailed facial features, also recording the king's clothing and jewelry.
This may be the closest we will ever get to knowing what the ancient Sabateans may have looked like, at least in their idealised self- representations. It is all a long way from Gina Lollobrigida bathing in asses' milk for King Vidor in the Hollywood epic, but in these statues we have the only accurate record of the people of ancient Saba, or Sheba, whose legendary queen has managed to grow from a few lines in the biblical and Qur'anic texts to occupy a prominent place in Judaeo- Christian and Muslim culture, fortifying the notion of ancient Yemen as an especially blessed land of perfumes, spices and fabulous wealth.
Queen of Sheba: Treasures from Ancient Yemen, British Museum, London. Until 13 October 2002.
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