We have assumed the identity of the Arabic Seba with Sheba (XDd). The plur. form D'^NSw! corre- sponds with tlie Gr. Srt/3«7o( and the Lat. Sabni. Ge- senius compares the Hel). with Ethiop. .SV/;«,"man." The Hebrew Shin is, in by far the greater number of instances, Sin in Arabic [see Gesen.] ; and the historical, ethno- logical, and geographical circumstances of the case all require the identification.
in the Bible the Joktanite Sheba, mentioned genea- logically in (ien. x, 28, recurs as a kingdom, in the ac- count of the visit of the queen of Sheba to king Solo- mon, when she heard of his fame concerning the name of the Lord, and came to prove him with hard questions (1 Kings X, 1): "And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much golii, and precious stones" (ver. 2). Again, " She gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices verv great store, and precious stones : there came no more such abundance of spices as these which the queen of Sheba gave to king Solomon" (ver. 10). She was attracted by the fame of Solomon's wisdom, which she had heard in her own land ; but the dedica-
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tion of the Temple had recently been solemnized, and, no doiilit, the people of Arabia were desinms to see this fa- mous liouse. That the queen was of Sheba in Arabia, and not of Seba the Cusiiite kintidom of Etliiopia, is unquestionable. Josephus and some of tlie Kabbinieal writers perversely, as usual, refer her to the latter; and the ICthiopian (or Abyssinian) Church has a convenient tradition to tlie same effect (comp. Josephus, Ant. viii, 6, 5 ; Ludolf, //isf. yElhhqi. ii, 3 ; Harris. .1 hyssiida, ii, 105). Al)en-Kzra (o« Dan. xi, 6), however, remariis that the tpieen of Sheba came from the Yemen, for she spoke an Ishmaelitic, or rather a Shemitic, lanjj;uage. The Arabs call lier Rilkis (or Yelkamah or Balkamah; Il)n-Khal- dfin), a (jueen of the later Himyerites, who, if M. Caus- sin's chronological adjustments of the early history of the Yemen be correct, reigned in the 1st century of our lera {Kssai, i, 75, etc.) ; and an edifice at Ma-rib (Maria- ba) still bears her name, while M. Fresnel read the name of "Alinacah" or "Balmacah" in many of the Himyer- itic inscriptions. The Arab story of this queen is, in the present state of our knowledge, altogether unhistor- ical and unworthy of credit; but the attempt to make her Solomon's queen of Sheba probably arose, as M. Caus- sin conjectures, from the latter being mentioned in the Koran without any name, and the commentators adopt- ing Bilkis as the most ancient queen of Sheba in the lists of the Yemen. The Koran, as usual, contains a very poor version of the Biblical narrative, diluted with nonsense and encumbered with fables (xxvii, 24, etc.).
The other'passages in the Bible which seem to refer to the .loktanite Sheba occur in Isa. Ix, G, where we read "All they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense," in conjunction with iMidian, Ephah, Kedar, and Nebaioth. Here reference is made to the commerce that took the road from Sheba along the western borders of Arabia (unless, as is possible, the Cushite or Keturahite Sheba be meant); and again in Jer. vi,20, it is written " To what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country?" (but comp. Ezek. xxvii, 22, 23, and see below). On the other hand, in Psa. Ixii, 10, the Joktan- ite Sheba is undoubtedly meant; for the kingdoms of Sheba and Seba are named together, and in ver. 15 the gold of Sheba is mentioned. In Job i, 15; vi, 19, the predatory habits of the Keturahite Saba3ans have been thought to be referred to, but these were later than our date of that book. We prefer to assign that passage, as well as Joel iii,8, which speaks of their kidnapping pro- pensities, to the .Joktanite trilje, with which the other seems to have coalesced. The fact of the chief and best- ascertained settlement of the Sheba tribe being in the extreme south of the Arabian peninsula sufficiently ex- plains the language used of the queen who came from thence to hear the wisdom of Solomon, that she was a queen of "the south," and "came from the uttermost parts of the earth," i. e. from the extremities of the then known world (Matt, xii, 42; Luke xi, 31). The distance in a straight line could scarcely be under a thousand miles. On the other hand, the fact that this was a queen seems to point to the Cushite Saba, or IMeroe, the sovereigns of which are well known to have been chiefly or exclusively females. Later essays on the rjueen of Sheba's merits have been written by Host (i$autz. 1782), Zeibich (Viteb. 1774), Schultens (Lugd. 1740), Norberg (Lond. and (ioth. 1797). See Candace.
The kingdom of Sheba embraced the greater part of the Yemen, or Arabia Felix. Its chief cities, and prob- al)ly successive capitals, were Seba, San'i'i (Uzal), and Zafar (Sephar). Seba was probably the name of the city, and generally of the country and nation; but the statements of tlie Arabian writers are conflicting on this ])oiut, and they are not made clearer iiy the ac- counts of the classical geographers. Ma-rib was an- other nameof the city, or of the fortress or royal palace ill it: "Seba is a city known by the name of Ma-rib. three nights' journey from San'ii" (Ez-Zejjaj, in the Taj-el- A run JIS.). Again, " Seba was the city of Ma-