Summary: A seven-letter inscription found on a clay jar in Jerusalem offers archeological evidence for the biblical account of the Queen of Sheba visiting King Solomon.
“What use to me is frankincense that comes from Sheba,
or sweet cane from a distant land?” – Jeremiah 6:20 (ESV)
King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba
The biblical account of the arrival of the Queen of Sheba bearing gifts for King Solomon in 1 Kings 10 is one of the more intriguing narratives of Solomon’s reign. Yet scholars have questioned the account’s reliability because of a lack of archaeological or historical evidence for early trade or political connections between ancient Judah and South Arabia, where Sheba was located.
Now, a study published in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology suggests that a seven-letter inscription found on a clay jar during excavations at the Ophel site in Jerusalem may provide just such evidence!
The new study of the jar’s inscription suggests that one of the eleven ingredients used for incense in the Jerusalem Temple was introduced to Jerusalem by the Queen of Sheba. The jar was one of seven jars first discovered in 2012 during Eilat Mazar’s Jerusalem excavations adjacent to the southern Temple Mount in a context dated to the 10th century BC.
Since then over a dozen interpretations have been offered for the inscription by various epigraphers and archaeologists but the only consensus reached thus far is that the text was written in Canaanite or early Hebrew script.
In the new study by scientists at the Hebrew University, Dr. Daniel Vainstub argues that the inscription is not Canaanite but was engraved in the Ancient South Arabian script (ASA) of the Sabaean language spoken during the First Temple period in the Kingdom of Sheba, located about 1,250 miles south of Jerusalem in the region now known as Yemen.
The Inscription’s Translation
According to Vainstub, the partial inscription, [ ]šy ldn 5, contains three separate words written in ASA. The second word “ldn” is of greatest interest and consists of three letters that spell out the word “labdanum,” a type of resin. Using the Talmud and other ancient sources, Vainstub identified labdanum with onycha, one of the ingredients used to create the particular incense burned at the tabernacle.
The Lord said to Moses, “Take fragrant spices – gum resin, onycha, and galbanum – and pure frankincense, all in equal amounts. – Exodus 30:34 (NIV)
The large Judahite-style storage jar where the inscription was found originally held around 30 gallons, or 5 ephahs, a standard volume measure in ancient Judah. The first word of the inscription is similar to the Hebrew letter het, and according to Vainstub, signifies the number 5 indicating the amount of resin that was held by the jar. The last word on the jar has three other letters with an inconclusive meaning.
The jar was made in Israel and was typical of the time having a folded rim instead of a neck. The inscription was carved in the wet clay below the rim before the jar was fired, evidence that the script itself is as ancient as the jar suggesting “that a Sabaean functionary entrusted with aromatic components of incense was active in Jerusalem by the time of King Solomon” and that there was a strong trade between the First Temple Israel and ancient Sheba, said Vainstub.
“The inscription testifies not merely to commercial ties but to close relations between the two kingdoms,” according to Vainstub. “This concurs with other information given by the historian Josephus Flavius. According to Josephus (A.J. 8.174), “the first opobalsamum plants came to Israel from the Kingdom of Sheba during Solomon’s reign as a gift to the king, and from this time onward, they were cultivated locally in two places geographically and climatically similar to Sheba: En Gedi and Jericho.”
Why the Deciphering Difficulty?
In an interview with the Times of Israel, Dr. Vainstub explained the reason for the difficulty of deciphering the inscription over the ten years since it was found. “Everyone thought it was Canaanite because it had been found in Jerusalem,” he said. “The script used by everyone at the time in Israel was ancient Canaanite and Hebrew. Nobody so much as dreamed [the inscription] might be something else.”
“Although the scripts have the same distant ancestor, those who deal with Canaanite inscriptions today are not familiar with Ancient South Arabian script (ASA),” Vainstub said. “And those who work with ASA are not familiar with Canaanite scripts.”
The new study points to increasing awareness of “the ASA script and the languages spoken and written by the civilizations that developed in the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula as of the end of the second millennium BCE,” explained Vainstub.
This knowledge has “expanded enormously in recent decades,” he said, due to three factors: increased inscription finds during scientific excavations of the area, new databases that chart the inscriptions, and the use of radiocarbon dating for palm leaf stalks and wooden sticks engraved with ASA inscriptions, which supplements epigraphers’ paleographic analysis.
Recently, Vainstub used his familiarity with the ASA script to decipher an inscription on an ancient ivory lice comb which arguably holds the earliest Canaanite/Hebrew sentence to be found in Canaan. We reported on this finding in a previous Thinker Article titled First “Canaanite” Sentence Ever Discovered – and It’s About Lice.
Queen of Sheba’s Visit to Jerusalem
The Ophel inscription impacts the age-old debate surrounding the historicity of the visit of the Queen of Sheba bearing gifts for King Solomon as described in the Bible’s books of Kings and Chronicles.
When the queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon and his relationship to the Lord, she came to test Solomon with hard questions. Arriving at Jerusalem with a very great caravan—with camels carrying spices, large quantities of gold, and precious stones—she came to Solomon and talked with him about all that she had on her mind.
And she gave the king 120 talents of gold, large quantities of spices, and precious stones. Never again were so many spices brought in as those the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.
King Solomon gave the queen of Sheba all she desired and asked for, besides what he had given her out of his royal bounty. Then she left and returned with her retinue to her own country. – 1 Kings 10:1-2,10,13 (ESV)
Conclusion
According to the Bible, trade routes ran from different parts of the Arabian Peninsula to Israel and through the Negev and now there is additional archeological evidence demonstrating just that. If Vainstub’s theory is correct, the Ophel inscription would be the earliest Ancient South Arabian inscription found to date in the Land of Israel.
“Deciphering the inscription on this jar teaches us not only about the presence of a speaker of Sabaean in Israel during the time of King Solomon, but also about the geopolitical relations system in our region at that time – especially in light of the place where the jar was discovered, an area known for also being the administrative center during the days of King Solomon,” said Vainstub.
“This is another testament to the extensive trade and cultural ties that existed between Israel under King Solomon and the Kingdom of Sheba.”
Keep Thinking!
TOP PHOTO: The sherd with the ancient South Arabian script called Sabaean written on it. (credit: Dr. Daniel Vainstub, Hebrew University)
