Abstract
The Queen of Sheba, best known for visiting Solomon at the height of his rule, is commonly understood to be one of the most famous Black queens of the Bible. However, biblical texts record nothing of her family or people, any physical characteristics, nor where, precisely, Sheba is located. How did this association between the Queen of Sheba and Blackness become naturalized? This article answers this question by mapping three first millennium textual moments that racialize the Queen of Sheba through attention to geography, skin color, and lineage in the writings of Origen of Alexandria, Flavius Josephus, and Abu Ja’afar al-Tabari. These themes are transformed in the Ethiopic text the Kebra Nagast, which positively claims the Queen of Sheba as an African monarch in contrast to the Othering that is prominent in earlier texts. The Kebra Nagast has a complex afterlife, one which acts as the ground for the also-complex modern reception of the character of the Queen of Sheba.
Highlights
The Queen of Sheba, best known for visiting Solomon at the height of his rule, is commonly understood to be one of the most famous Black queens of the Bible
This paper offers an account of the most influential moments in our archive of material about the Queen of Sheba which discuss what can be identified as racialized features, how those moments were transformed in later iterations of the narrative of her visit, and how the late antique and medieval sources laid the groundwork for modern understandings of the Queen
The Kebra Nagast is essential for understanding the racialization of the Queen of Sheba in the modern world, and the power of this text is best understood in light of the transformation of earlier ac‐
Summary
This paper uses the term “racialization” to describe the dynamic process by which the. Tributed to environmental or primordial reasons, rather than the biological reasoning that is used as a cover in modern racist discussions.7 She notes that black skin is often described or mentioned in ancient sources, such uses do not map onto racial categories and there is no consistency between different texts. Despite this and “despite the lack of physical description in the text, some biblical characters have become identified as Black or linked with Blackness”.8. Dermal race, and discussions of the lineage of the Queen of Sheba in order to draw out multiple ways that racial attitudes about the Queen of Sheba have been articulated This history has cumulatively become the ground upon which modern understandings of the Queen of Sheba as Black rest.
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