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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 passing through the 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.
Portrait of a bearded man, featuring
long
incised
slightly arched eyebrows, elongated
eyes,
straight vertical nose and small
serrated lips,
the
beard contouring the face ear to ear,
the
ears,
small and perfectly alligned shaped as
a
semi-
circle. The beard is similar to the
piece TC
2043
from the Heid bin-Aqil cemetery of
Qatabanian
Timna. On the chest surface below the
beard
runs a brief five-letter inscription,
presumably
a
personal name, that (despite the poor
lettering)
could be translated as Sha'wum. As a
name,
this
is attested once in Safaitic, North-
Arabian,
though South-Arabian are yet to be
found.
The style of some of the letters would
place
its
dating to the 4th-3rd centuries BC.
For a comparable example see
R.L.Cleveland, An
Ancient South Arabian Necropolis,
1965:
pl.21.
For a discussion on the name cf.,
Harding
G.L.,
Index and Concordance of Pre-Islamic
Arabian
Names and Inscriptions, Toronto, 1971:
p.337.
[Translation and attribution kindly
provided
by
Prof. Kenneth A. Kitchen, University
of
Liverpool]
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