What is the capital of the kingdom of sheba?

Answer 1

Answer

Marib, central Yemen, its old dam and palaces are in and around old Marib

Answer

The above answer is based on two shaky assumptions. Firstly, it is assumed that the Hebrew of I Kings 10:1 refers to "sheba" as a place. Secondly, the places known as Seba or Sabea, and in one place the Bible refers to both "Seba and Sheba" (Psalm 72:10), are also assumed to be where the queen supposedly came from. "Seba-Sabea" is usually thought to be Yemen and probably quite correctly. Unfortunately, there is no evidence of much civilisation there until about 700 BC, 150 years after Solomon, when the Assyrian Empire seems to have primarily been responsible for the development of this place to the extent of building temples, roads etc (since excavated).

Long before 700 BC, Yemen-Sabea-Seba acted as a staging posts for merchants by land and sea. They ferried or caravaned goods from India and the Indian ocean to markets in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. But the archaeological evidence is that no one invested seriously enough in Yemen-Sabea to warrant a queen or king ruling there to be significant enough to warrant several verses in the Book of Kings. Especially when the Bible says "all the kings of the world came to see Solomon". Does it seem likely that the scribes spent 13 verses on this one visit? A sensible mind, or a spiritual mind would say "no".

In regard to the word "sheba" in I Kings 10:1, it can easily mean "rule" or "administer" and usually does mean that throughout the Tanaach ('Old Testament'). King David had a chief administrator named Yo-Sheba-dech. Lot, when he was a judge at Sodom "sat" or "sheba'd" outside the gate of Sodom. King Hezekiah's great, greedy and proud treasurer was named Shebna. In I Kings 10:1, "Sheba" really is a verb not a noun. Thus I Kings 10:1 should read, "And the Queen ruling ...". Biblical Hebrew accounts are constructed in ways rather different to modern 'official English'. The word "and" that begins I Kings 10:1 is known as a "vav conjunctive". As such it tells the reader to conjoin the previous verse with verse 1 of chapter 10, i.e, in I Kings 9:28 which reads "And they came to Ophir". That refers to Solomon's sailors sailing with the Phoenicians (Hiram's Tyrians) to "Ophir" written in Hebrew as Aleph, Vav, Pe, Yod, Resh, He or properly transliterated into English: Auphirah, Aufirah, Afriha = Africa. Of course this means that the Queen of Africa or "Ophir" came to visit Solomon. That's why the Bible does record this particular visit because it was like the President of the United States coming to pay homage to Solomon. No wonder the account is there. The only possible candidate, from the known data, for that claim would be Hatshepsut of Egypt and Ethiopia and the capital would have been Thebes!

Some people believe "Ophir" is India. No doubt Africans settled Southern India as the skin colour of modern Indians in the South attests. The trade winds made shipping and commerce quite easy as the winds blew first in one direction for half the year then reversed in the second half. Africans trading with Europe and the Middle East sailed to India for products and back to Africa, the Red Sea and so on. When Solomon's sailors joined the Phoenicians to sail to "Ophir" they could just as easily have been sailing around Africa starting from Eilat as I Kings 9:26 explains, sailing down to the Cape of Good Hope, then up the Atlantic to Gibraltar (Gebal-Tariq = Byblos-Tyre) and across the Mediterranean (Medi Tyrrennian Sea) back to Jaffa or Tyre, Byblos and Sidon. In those days, Memphis in Egypt may well have been much closer to the coast, or at least easily accessible up one of the mouths of the Nile so they could disembark there too. Memphis was the capital of Egypt from time to time but if Hatshepsut is Sheba, then the capital would most likely have been Thebes which phonetically could be read Sebeth or Sebes/Shebes. However, it is probably better to assume sheba in I Kings 10:1 is the verb to rule or administer.

Whatever the assumptions, Thebes has the best chance of being the Capital and modern Ethiopians [Abyssinians or dwellers of Abyss (Ssyba = Sheba)] are quite correct to claim her as their great queen, ruler of the Nile. Hatshepsut's fellow heretic Akhenaten had a capital at Tel el Amarna but we can easily dispose that as being "The Capital of the Kingdom of Sheba".