The Queen of Sheba’s Hairy Legs

The biblical account of the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon’s court serves the specific, somewhat limited function of giving the audience a glimpse of the royal court and showing them that Solomon was considered impressive even by foreign wealthy contemporaries:^[1]

^{מלכים א י:א} וּמַלְכַּת שְׁבָא שֹׁמַעַת אֶת שֵׁמַע שְׁלֹמֹה לְשֵׁם יְ־הוָה וַתָּבֹא לְנַסֹּתוֹ בְּחִידוֹת.

^{1 Kgs 10:1} The Queen of Sheba heard of Solomon’s fame, through the name of YHWH, and she came to test him with hard questions.^[2]

Her name is not mentioned, nor the location of Sheba, nor any information about her family or political milieu. Instead, we learn about the great train of goods and questions that she brings with her:

‏^{מלכים א י:ב} וַתָּבֹא יְרוּשָׁלְַמָה בְּחַיִל כָּבֵד מְאֹד גְּמַלִּים נֹשְׂאִים בְּשָׂמִים וְזָהָב רַב מְאֹד וְאֶבֶן יְקָרָה וַתָּבֹא אֶל שְׁלֹמֹה וַתְּדַבֵּר אֵלָיו אֵת כָּל אֲשֶׁר הָיָה עִם לְבָבָהּ. ^י:ג וַיַּגֶּד לָהּ שְׁלֹמֹה אֶת כָּל דְּבָרֶיהָ לֹא הָיָה דָּבָר נֶעְלָם מִן הַמֶּלֶךְ אֲשֶׁר לֹא הִגִּיד לָהּ.

^{1 Kgs 10:2} She arrived in Jerusalem with a very large retinue, with camels bearing spices, a great quantity of gold, and precious stones. When she came to Solomon, she asked him all that she had in mind. ^10:3 Solomon had answers for all her questions; there was nothing that the king did not know, [nothing] to which he could not give her an answer.

She witnesses Solomon’s greatness—his wisdom as well as his building projects and wealth:

^{מלכים א י:ה} וּמַאֲכַל שֻׁלְחָנוֹ וּמוֹשַׁב עֲבָדָיו וּמַעֲמַד מְשָׁרְתָו [מְשָׁרְתָיו] וּמַלְבֻּשֵׁיהֶם וּמַשְׁקָיו וְעֹלָתוֹ אֲשֶׁר יַעֲלֶה בֵּית יְ־הוָה וְלֹא הָיָה בָהּ עוֹד רוּחַ.

^{1 Kgs 10:5} And the fare of his table, the seating of his courtiers, the service and attire of his attendants, and his wine service, and the burnt offerings that he offered at the House of YHWH, she was left breathless.

She then notes that what she has seen exceeds the reports she had heard of him (vv. 6–7), and she praises him:

‏^{מלכים א י:ח} אַשְׁרֵי אֲנָשֶׁיךָ אַשְׁרֵי עֲבָדֶיךָ אֵלֶּה הָעֹמְדִים לְפָנֶיךָ תָּמִיד הַשֹּׁמְעִים אֶת חָכְמָתֶךָ. ^י:ט יְהִי יְ־הוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ בָּרוּךְ אֲשֶׁר חָפֵץ בְּךָ לְתִתְּךָ עַל כִּסֵּא יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּאַהֲבַת יְ־הוָה אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל לְעֹלָם וַיְשִׂימְךָ לְמֶלֶךְ לַעֲשׂוֹת מִשְׁפָּט וּצְדָקָה.

^{1 Kgs 10:8} “How fortunate are your men and how fortunate are these your courtiers, who are always in attendance on you and can hear your wisdom! ^10:9 Praised be YHWH your God, who delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel. It is because of YHWH’s everlasting love for Israel that He made you king to administer justice and righteousness.”

The queen then exchanges gifts with Solomon and leaves (vv. 10–13). Aside from the nearly verbatim repetition of this account in 2 Chronicles 9:1–12, the Queen of Sheba never appears again in the Hebrew Bible.^[3]

Josephus: The Wise Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia

The ancient Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (1^st century C.E.) expands upon the narrative, asserting that she was the wise and remarkable queen of Egypt and Ethiopia:

^{Antiquities 8.165–166} Now the woman who at that time ruled as queen of Egypt and Ethiopia was thoroughly trained in wisdom and remarkable in other ways, and, when she heard of Solomon’s virtue and understanding, was led to him by a strong desire to see him which arose from the things told daily about his country.^[4]

Like the biblical account, however, her character serves primarily to buttress arguments about Solomon’s status amongst his peers:

^{Antiquities 8.172–173} I, for my part, did not believe the things reported because of the multitude and greatness of what I heard about them, and yet I have witnessed here things far greater than these.”

New Testament: An Eschatological Judge

In the gospels, Jesus, rebuking the doubters in his audience, identifies her as an eschatological judge:

^{Matt 12:42} The Queen of the South will come in the judgement of this generation and will condemn it; (she) who came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon....^[5]

Origen: The Female Speaker in the Song

Origen of Alexandria (3^rd century C.E.), citing Josephus,^[6] presents her as the queen of Egypt and Ethiopia.^[7] He also identifies her with the Song of Song’s Black and beautiful female lover of King Solomon:

^{שׁיר השׁירים א:ה} שְׁחוֹרָה אֲנִי וְנָאוָה בְּנוֹת יְרוּשָׁלִָם כְּאָהֳלֵי קֵדָר כִּירִיעוֹת שְׁלֹמֹה.

^{Song 1:5} I am Black and beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem—like the tents of Kedar, like the pavilions of Solomon.^[8]

The Talmud: Not the Queen, but the Kingdom of Sheba

Rather than expanding on her character, Palestinian amora Shmuel bar Nahmani (3^rd–early 4^th c. C.E.), in the Talmud’s only mention of the queen, reinterprets the visit by the Queen of Sheba into the kingdom of Sheba (a metonym for representatives of the kingdom):

^{בבלי בבא בתרא טו:} אמר רבי שמואל בר נחמני אמר יונתן כל האומר מלכת שבא אשה היתה אינו אלא טועה מאי מכלת שבא מלכותא דשבא

^{b. Bava Batra 15b} Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahmani says that Rabbi Yonatan said that anyone who says malkat Sheba (cf. 1 Kings 10:1, 2 Chronicles 9:1) is a woman is nothing more than mistaken; what is malkat Sheba? It is malkutaʾ di-Shebaʾ [the kingdom of Sheba].^[9]

Shmuel bar Nahmani is seemingly uncomfortable with the intimate connection between Solomon and the queen or with the depiction of such a powerful woman.^[10]

In these early traditions, the Queen of Sheba remains a minor figure. It is only after the writing and circulation of the Qur’an that we see significant development in Jewish and Christian depictions of her character and of her visit to Solomon’s court.

Qur’anic Narrative

The Qur’an consists of surahs (chapters) of God’s words that, according to Muslim belief, were directly revealed to the prophet Muhammed via the angel Gabriel. In the century following Muhammed’s death (631 C.E.), the surahs were collected, verified among different groups who had contact with Muhammed during his lifetime, and codified into the Qur’an canonical form.^[11]

The relatively long story about Solomon and his meeting with the Queen of Sheba in the Qur’an’s Surah al Naml, “The Ant,” says that Solomon, along with David, had the ability to understand the speech of animals. One day, when mustering his troops (which included birds and other animals), one bird was missing. When it returns, it tells Solomon of a marvelous land called Sheba, where they worship the sun and a woman rules. (The Qur’an neither names her nor calls her a queen.)

^{Qur’an 27:22} ...I bring you a sure report from Sheba. ^27:23 Verily, I found a woman ruling over them, and she has been given of all things, and hers is a mighty throne! ^27:24 I found her and her people prostrating to the sun, apart from God, and Satan has made their actions seem fair to them, and turned them from the way, such that they are not rightly guided.^[12]

The Qur’an is the first known source that shows an interest in how reports of Solomon’s wisdom came to the Queen of Sheba. Solomon sends the bird back to deliver to the woman a letter, which she then describes to her counselors:

^{Qur’an 27:29} She said, “O notables! Truly a noble letter has been delivered unto me.”

She tells them about his demand that she and her people come to him مسلِمینَ [muslimin], an ambivalent gerund form that can mean either “as Muslims” or “in submission”:

^{Qur’an 27:30} “Verily, it is from Solomon and verily it is, ‘In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. ^27:31 Do not exalt yourselves against me, but come to me muslimin.’”^[13]

In context, his demand appears to be a religious request that the Queen of Sheba and her people submit to God (i.e., “as Muslims”). She, however, thinks that he intends to overthrow her kingdom, and after consulting with her advisors, she decides to send him a gift to appease what she assumes to be an avaricious desire for her kingdom (27:34–35). Solomon in turn misunderstands her, assuming that she is attempting to bribe him because she does not understand how much he has been blessed by God:

^{Qur’an 27:36} But when it came to Solomon, he said, “Do you offer me wealth? What God has given me is better than what He has given you. No, but it is you who exult in your gift!”

In anger, he declares that he now intends to conquer her people. He then decides to test her discernment when she visits him. He asks the jinn (supernatural spirits) in his employ if they can bring her throne to his court and disguise it:

^{Qur’an 27:41} He said, “Disguise her throne for her. We shall see if she is rightly guided or if she is among those who are not rightly guided.”

Seemingly not fooled by the jinn’s trickery, the woman says the throne is “as if it were my own” (27:42). At the end of the narrative, however, her discernment fails her. She steps into Solomon’s palace, and mistaking its reflective glass floor for a pool of water, she lifts her skirts to keep them dry:

^{Qur’an 27:44} It was said to her, “Enter the pavilion.” But when she saw it, she supposed it to be an expanse of water and bared her legs.

When Solomon corrects her perception, she realizes she has been mistaken in who she worships, and she commits herself to the worship of God alongside Solomon.

^{Qur’an 27:44} He said, “Verily it is a pavilion paved with crystal.” She said, “My Lord! Surely I have wronged myself, and I submit with Solomon to God, Lord of the worlds.”

The context of this narrative is a broader discussion of how difficult it was for the prophets before Muhammed to convince people to worship God without the benefit of the Qur’an. Moses tried and failed (27:3–12), as did many other figures. What is remarkable about the Queen of Sheba and Solomon is that he is able to persuade her to worship God without the Qur’an. Whether it is divine coincidence (he happens to have a confusing glass floor) or another deliberate ploy, as many later commentators suggest, she is implicitly praised for making the correct decision of which deity to worship.^[14]

This narrative was influential among Muslim writers. What is perhaps surprising is the Qur’an’s influence, especially the use of the motifs of water, conversion, and the queen’s uncovered legs, in Jewish and Christian tradition.

The Queen’s Hairy Legs: Medieval Midrash:

Targum Sheni (ca. 8th century C.E.), an expansive Aramaic translation of the book of Esther, includes a lengthy addition about Solomon and the Queen of Sheba that follows the same basic narrative line as the Qur’an’s Surah al Naml.^[15] The Targum, however, shows no interest in correcting the Queen of Sheba’s practices of worship, but instead builds on the motif of the queen’s uncovered legs to denigrate the queen.^[16]

When she mistakes the glass floor for water and lifts her skirts, we learn that she has hairy legs:

^{תרגום שני אסתר א:ב} חליזית חילוזה דתעיבר וחזא ליה סערא ברגלה.

^{Targum Sheni Esther 1:2} he lifted her garments as if to cross over (the floor she assumed was water) and he (Solomon) saw that she had hair on her legs/feet.

Solomon comments:

שופרך שופרי דנשי וסערך סערא דגברא וסער לגברא שפיר ולאינתתא גניי.

Your beauty is the beauty of women, but your hair is the hair of men, and hair on men is beautiful, but on women it is shameful.^[17]

Alphabet of Ben Sira

The Alphabet of Ben Sira (9^th/10^th century C.E.), a multi-part anthological collection of stories presented under the overarching narrative of the early life of ben Sira, builds on Solomon’s problem with the queen’s body hair.^[18] It begins with the claim that Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylonia who destroyed the First Jerusalem Temple in 586/7 B.C.E., was born to Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.^[19]

Ben Sira tells Nebuchadnezzar the story of his parents’ meeting, comedically asserting that Solomon’s response to the hairiness of the queen was to invent a hair-removal cream:

^{אלפא ביתא דבן סירה} ורצה לבא עליה. ומצאה מלאה שער ובאותו זמן לא היה לאחת מבנות ישראל שער תחת בגדיה. פתח שלמה ואמר לעבדיו הביאו לי סיד (וזרזיר) [הזרניך] ולקחו הסיד ובררו הסיד בנפה ושחקו (הזרזיר)[הזרניך] וערבו ידח ועשו כן שסכה בו אמך ונטהרה כל בשרה וניטף השער ועשה בה כרצונו.

^{Alphabet of Ben Sira} He wanted to have sex with her, and discovered she was exceedingly hairy. At that time there was not among the daughters of Israel hair under their clothing, [so] Solomon began and said to his servants, bring to me a lime (and arsenic) and take the lime and sift the lime in a sieve and grind (the arsenic) and mix it together; and they did thus, she looked at it, and they cleansed all her flesh and wiped off the hair and thus he did to her according to his will.^[20]

Only after removing her hair does Solomon sleep with her, making explicit the vulgarity implied by Targum Sheni.^[21]

Christian Traditions

Beginning in the 11^th century C.E., stories about the Queen of Sheba appear that link her to the Legend of the True Cross^[22]—a broad term for a Christian collection of stories in which the wood that eventually became the cross upon which Jesus was crucified existed from the beginning of the world and was present for a number of significant moments in biblical history. Once such moment, in some traditions, was when the Queen of Sheba visited Solomon at his court.

According to Geoffrey of Viterbo, John of Beleth, and Petrus Comestor, the Queen of Sheba passed through, over, or by a pond of water in which the True Cross was floating.^[23] In these narratives, she recognizes the cosmic significance of the wood, and foreshadows the Gentile acceptance of Christ by prostrating herself before the wood. Beleth, for example, reports:

^{Summa de Ecclisiasticis Oficiis} Later, however, when trees were brought from different parts of the world in the building of the Temple, [the wood of the True Cross] was brought and abandoned as useless. When afterwards it was placed as a kind of fill over certain ditches in the city. When the Queen of Sheba saw it, she refused to pass by but instead adored it. Later, however, it was placed in the Piscina Probatica,^[24] which dried up at the time of Christ’s Passion.^[25]

Kebra Nagast

Notable also during this period is the emergence of the Kebra Nagast, a 14^th-century C.E. chronicle that narrates a world history centered on Ethiopia, with special attention paid to Solomon and the Queen of Sheba because their relationship is the vector by which Ethiopia and Israel became so closely intertwined.^[26] The text constitutes the longest pre-modern engagement with the figure of the Queen of Sheba, devoting over one hundred chapters to her story, her visit to Solomon’s court, her conversion from sun worship, and the eventual fate of their son Menelik I, the founding figure of the Ethiopian royal court.^[27]

In the Kebra Nagast, the queen is a wise and venerated figure who only visits Solomon because of her love of wisdom. Near the end of her visit, they end up having a sexual relationship against her intention. The text is careful to show that she is not promiscuous by portraying her as unwilling, but Solomon uses deception to coerce her into a sexual encounter.

In the narrative, Solomon has promised not to take the queen by force if she promises not to take anything by force from him, a proposition to which she readily agrees. However, when she wakes up in the middle of the night and goes to take drink of water that she has not been explicitly given, Solomon catches her:

^{Kebra Nagast 30} Solomon seized her hand before she could drink the water and said to her, “Why have you broken the oath that you have sworn that you would not take by force anything that is in my house?” And she answered and said to him in fear, “Is the oath broken by my drinking water?” The king said to her, “Is there anything that you have seen under the heavens that is better than water?” And the Queen said, “I have sinned against myself, and you are free from your oath. But let me drink water for my thirst.”

Then Solomon said to her, “Am I perchance free from the oath which you have made me swear?” And the Queen said, “Be free from your oath, only let me drink water.” And he permitted her to drink water, and after she had drunk water he worked his will with her and they slept together.^[28]

Their encounter leads to her becoming pregnant, and their son, Menelik I, is raised solely by the queen. Menelik I eventually becomes a new King David, who, with God’s approval, takes the Ark of the Covenant from Jerusalem to his own city of Aksum.^[29]

The Queen’s Goat-Foot

A shorter Arabic version of the narrative also engages the motif of the queen’s exposed legs and the Legend of the True Cross. When the queen arrives in Jerusalem, Solomon arranges to place his throne next to the courtyard of the Temple (where the wood of Jesus’s cross has been placed) and to have the courtyard flooded with water, so that in order to approach him, she will have to lift her skirts.

In this version of the story, however, the reason for the deception is that Solomon has heard that the queen was born with one human foot and one goat’s foot, and he wants to see it. His ruse works, but her foot is also transformed in the process:

And behold, she stepped into the water in the courtyard, and her foot touched that afore-mentioned piece of wood, and as the foot that was fashioned like the foot of a goat touched the wood, the Might of God made itself manifest, and the goat’s foot became exactly like its fellow foot which was that of a man.^[30]

The Qur’an’s Influence

In these stories, the motifs of water, conversion, and the uncovered legs of the Queen of Sheba reflect the Qur’anic story, rather than anything seen in earlier Jewish and Christian tradition about her. This is not to suggest that medieval European Christians were reading and citing the Qur’an, but that its influence appeared in far-flung places, as visions of the biblical past were shared and contested.

Jews, and later Christians, who lived before the Qur’an left relatively little evidence of engagement with the Queen of Sheba. In the Bible, she functions as evidence of Solomon’s good reputation; in the Christian gospels (Luke 11:31 and Matthew 12:42), she is portrayed as a figure who will judge men at the end of time.

In the Qur’an, however, she is an early convert to Islam who decides to follow the One God after meeting Solomon (Qur’an 27:43). There, she also functions as a witness of Solomon’s greatness, but his power is recast as someone who is able to persuade others to worship God, a task which, according to Muslim tradition, was extremely difficult without the Qur’an.

It is tempting to return to the biblical origins of the Queen of Sheba to explain the diverse iterations of her. While there are subtle potentials of the biblical narrative that are amplified in later sources—such as the intimacy of their meeting, later often understood as a romantic relationship—the Qur’an’s influence on Jewish and Christian tradition reflects the complex history of remembering, re-remembering, and sharing the biblical past between communities and offers a significant lens on some of the ways that Jewish and later Christian and Muslim tradition about the biblical past developed and intertwined over time.