Queen of Sheba. The Queen of Sheba is a figure first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. In the original story, she brings a caravan of valuable gifts for the Israelite King Solomon. This tale has undergone extensive Jewish, Islamic, and Ethiopian elaborations, and has become the subject of one of the most widespread and fertile cycles of legends in the Orient. Modern historians identify Sheba with the South Arabian kingdom of Saba in present-day Yemen. The queen's existence is disputed among historians The Queen of Sheba came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold, and precious stones. Never again came such an abundance of spices as those she gave to Solomon. She came to prove him with hard questions, which Solomon answered to her satisfaction. They exchanged gifts, after which she returned to her land.C., indicates a late origin for the text. Since there is no mention of the fall of Babylon in 539 BC, Martin Noth has held that the Book of Kings received a definitive redaction around 550 BC. Virtually all modern scholars agree that Sheba was the South Arabian kingdom of Saba, centered around the oasis of Marib, in present-day Yemen. Sheba was quite well known in the classical world, and its country was called Arabia Felix. Around the middle of the first millennium B.C., there were Sabaeans also in the Horn of Africa, in the area that later became the realm of Aksum. There are five places in the Bible where the writer distinguishes Sheba, i.e. the Yemenite Sabaeans, from Seba, i.e. the African Sabaeans. In Ps. 72:10 they are mentioned together: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. This spelling differentiation, however, may be purely factitious; the indigenous inscriptions make no such difference, and both Yemenite and African Sabaeans are there spelt in exactly the same way. The alphabetic inscriptions from South Arabia furnish no evidence for women rulers, but Assyrian inscriptions repeatedly mention Arab queens in the north. Queens are well attested in Arabia, though according to Kitchen, not after 690 B.C. Furthermore, Sabaean tribes knew the title of mqtwyt. Makada or Makueda, the personal name of the queen in Ethiopian legend, might be interpreted as a popular rendering of the title of mqtwyt. This title may be derived from Ancient Egyptian m'kit protectress, housewife. The queen's visit could have been a trade mission. Early South Arabian trade with Mesopotamia involving wood and spices transported by camels is attested in the early ninth century B.C. and may have begun as early as the tenth. Another Sabean temple, the Barran Temple, is also known as the 'Arash Bilqis, which like the nearby Awam Temple was also dedicated to the god Almaqah, but the connection between the Barran Temple and Sheba has not been established archaeologically either. Bible stories of the Queen of Sheba and the ships of Ophir served as a basis for legends about the Israelites traveling in the Queen of Sheba's entourage when she returned to her country to bring up her child by Solomon. Christian scriptures mention a queen of the South, who came from the uttermost parts of the earth, i.e. from the extremities of the then known world, to hear the wisdom of Solomon.