The ancient kingdom of Saba ruled over
the
lands of southern Arabia, centered in
modern
day Yemen. Saba is perhaps better
known
as
Sheba, the Hebrew word for the
kingdom,
whose
famous Queen was recounted as having
visited
Solomon in the pages of the Old
Testament.
Biblical accounts speak of the wealth
of this
ancient civilization of traders and
merchants,
and
modern archaeological excavations
confirm
these
reports. Ruins of fortresses and
walled towns
are
evident and remnants of their
extensive
irrigation system that turned the
desert into a
paradise still cover the land.
Although gold
and
silver deposits were present, the
chief source
of
their vast wealth was derived from
their
veritable
monopoly of two of the most coveted
materials
in ancient times: frankincense and
myrrh,
resinous gums obtained from certain
trees
that
only grow in Southern Arabia and were
literally
worth their weight in gold. There was
not a
temple or wealthy house in the ancient
world,
from Babylon to Rome, where one would
not
smell the fragrant scents of these
incenses.
In
addition, a trade route that connected
India
to
Egypt that passed through their
capital of
Marib
was another major source of wealth. In
the
1st
Century A.D., the Ptolemaic Greeks
discovered a
sea route from India directly to the
port of
Alexandria, eliminating Saba from her
lucrative
trade and ushering in the decline of
Sabean
prosperity.
This magnificent stone funerary plaque
is a
stunning example of the sophistication
of
Sabean
art. The following is a transcription
of the
analysis kindly provided by Professor
Kitchen
(University of Liverpool).
‘This ‘headpiece’ was originally
inserted into
a
matching rectangular recess, cut into
a tall
stela
(like a narrow quadrangular pillar),
to form a
tombstone plus ‘formal’ portrait.
For intact
examples, cf. St. John Simpson (ed.),
‘Queen
of
Sheba, Treasures from Ancient Yemen,’
(London,
British Museum, 2002), p. 198, nos.
277-278.
Facial tombstone in high relief and
with a
slightly
less conventional face than most.
Here, the
ears
are more lozenge-shaped with sharp,
not
smoothly curved, angles. A stronger
hairline
also
has a central quiff pointing onto the
brow.
Other
features (brows, eyes, nose) are
standard but
a
small slit mouth is encased all round
by
prominent, rounded lips.
The 3-letter name, S l m, is a simple
Salim, a
very common Arabic name at any time
(cf. R.
L.
Cleveland, ‘An Ancient South-Arabian
Necropolis
…Timna Cemetary,’ (Baltimore, 1965),
p.
325,
but more common up north as in
Safaitic,
with
some examples in Minean and Sabean.
Again,
three-letters are a precarious dating-
base
but
probably somewhere broadly within the
4th-
1st
centuries BC.’
