Black History Month continues with this gorgeous Medieval illustration of the Queen of Sheba, painted circa 1405. The queen’s dark skin contrasts with her flowing golden hair. Her willowy figure is accentuated by the drapes of her gown. Her beauty is both sensuous and regal, and in her hands she holds a scepter to indicate her secular authority and the orb with a crucifix to show her association with Christianity.
By the 1400s, Medieval Europeans imagined the Queen of Sheba to have been an important black Jewish African ruler from the time of King Solomon. But she actually acquired many of these characteristics over time. She is barely mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (only in Kings 10:1-12 and 2 Chronicles 9:1-13), in an account where she visits the court of Solomon from Sheba (originally thought to have been a place in modern Yemen in the Arabian Peninsula) and is astonished at his wealth.
It wasn’t until the writings of Josephus in the first century CE during the Roman period that the Queen of Sheba’s place of origin was switched to Africa, when the author claimed that she had reigned over Egypt and Ethiopia, which would have made her wealthy and powerful indeed.
No mention of the Queen of Sheba’s skin color appears until the third century CE, when the Christian apologist Origin, in a commentary he wrote about the Hebrew Biblical text Song of Songs, equated the Queen of Sheba with the beloved bride in the poem. She identifies herself as “Black and beautiful.”
Fascinating scholarship by Jillian Stinchcomb has shown that the Ethiopian text called the Kebra Nagast (originally this might have dated from 6th c but the oldest extant copy is from the 1200s) added another element to the Queen of Sheba’s story. In that account, the Queen goes to Solomon’s court and ends up having a sexual relationship with Solomon that results in a baby. The child, named Menelik I, eventually converts to Judaism and even takes the Ark of the Covenant back with him to Sheba.
The Queen of Sheba’s great beauty and goodness alongside her dark skin provides a welcome counter to some other Medieval writers and artists who equated dark-skinned people with sin.
Source(s): Brandeis University, The Jewish Experience, “How did the Queen of Sheba Come to Be Seen as Black?” interview with Jillian Stinchcomb, Dec 10, 2021, Lawrence Goodman. MS 2 Cod. Philos MS 63.
