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The throned ecclesiastical figure is the fabulous Trester John, whose
realm jias held by many medicvval writers to be in Ethiopia, and the walled
capital he guards is Christian tAxum. Courtesy of the Huntington library

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA SETTING OUT FROM AXUM
THE QUEEN OF SHEBA ARRIVING AT JERUSALEM
From fifteenth century paintings by Sano di Pictro di Menico, 1406-1481.
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

THE GOLDEN LEGEND
OF ETHIOPIA
The Love - Story of Mdqedd,
Virgin Queen of Axum
e$ Sheba, S Solomon
the Great King
by
POST WHEELER, Litt.D.
ILLUSTRATED
D. APPLETON-CENTURY COMPANY
INCORPORATED
NEW YORK 1936 LONDON

Copyright, 1936, by
POST WHEELER
All rights reserved. This book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any
form without permission of the publisher.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

FOR MY WIFE
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
TO THE ONE GOD
CHAPTER
I. OF THE QUEEN OF THE SOUTH
II. HOW MAQEDA LEARNED OF THE GREAT
KING
III. OF THE QUEEN'S DEPARTURE
IV. OF HER ARRIVAL AT SHEBA AND HER SET-
TING OUT FOR YERUSHALAYIM
V. OF THE SUFFERING BY THE WAY
VI. HOW NEWS OF HER CAME TO THE GREAT
KING
VII. OF THE QUEEN'S FIRST SIGHT OF SOLO-
MON
VIII. HOW A MIRACLE BEFELL MAQEDA
IX. OF THE TREE OF EDEN
X. HOW MAQEDA SAW SOLOMON'S GLORY
xi. of Solomon's song
XII. OF THEIR RAPTURE OF THE NIGHT
XIII. OF THEIR PARTING
XIV. OF THE SON THAT WAS BORN TO HER
XV. HOW SHE SENT WALDA-TABBIB TO HIS
FATHER
[V]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PACE
XVI. OF THE CRYING OF SHIMEI 132
XVII. HOW WALDA-TABBiB CAME TO SOLOMON 138
XVIII. HOW WALDA-TABBIB WAS DECLARED EM-
PEROR OF THE jETHIOPS 144
XIX. OF THE RAPE OF THE ARK 151
XX. OF THE FLIGHT FROM YERUSHALAYIM 159
XXI. HOW THE GREAT KING PURSUED WALDA-
TABBIB 163
XXII. OF WALDA-TABBIB'S HOME-COMING TO
AXUM 168
XXIII. HOW TAMRIN, THE FLEET MASTER,
WENT SAILING 176
AMEN. AND AMEN 182
AFTERWORD 184
[Vi]
OF ETHIOPIA
THE GOLDEN LEGEND
1
FOREWORD
This is the story of Maqeda, the Virgin Queen
of Axum and Sheba (by which name Saba of the
Sabaeans was known to the peoples below the Sea
of Eritrea, called Red), of how she journeyed to
the Land of Israel, whose capital was Jerusalem,
and came again home bearing in her flower-body
the seed of its young King, Solomon the Wise. Of
how her son, Menyelek the First, was born and
of how when he became a youth she sent him to
his father, and of what occurred between those
two. And afterward.
Fragments of the tale are to be found in many
an old parchment of Syria, Armenia and Palestine,
of Egypt and Arabia Felix, and more especially of
Ethiopia, wherein was his mother's Kingdom of
Axum.
Three thousand years have played upon her
name: To the folk of Tigray she was Eteye of
Azeb, which is to say the Queen of the South, and
in St. Matthew's gospel Jesus so refers to her. The
southern Arabs called her Bilqis, the folk of Yemen
Balkama and the Koran Balkis. Because Herodotus
of Halicarnassus called the Queen-Widows of
[3]
THE GOLDEN LEGEND OF ETHIOPIA
Egypt so, Father Lobo, the Portuguese, called her
Nicaula.
But in Ethiopia she is Maqeda the Beautiful, the
Panther-in-the-Blossom, revered Ancestress of its
Imperial Line, who for the sake of her people,
buried her love in her heart that the gates of her
Kingdom might be opened to the worship of the
true God.
To The One God—
Fashioner and Upholder of the Universe, God of
God, Light of Light, He who is under the Pro-
founds of the Abysses and over the Altitudes of the
Seven Heavens, the Listener, the Feeder, the
Refuge—Praise/
For when Israel had provoked Him to wrath, He~
made the holy Ark of the Tabernacle of His Cove-
nant, which is called the Heavenly Zion, to depart
from it. To which end He called Mdqedd, Queen
of this Land of Ethiopia, to Yerushaldyim, where
love of her, sweet and terrible as an earthquake,
leaped upon King Solomon like a Nubian lion and
rent the coffer of his continence, and in the fulness
of time it was by the son of their love, Bayna-
Lehkem, otherwise Menyelek the First, that the
Ark was brought to our holy city, Axum, where it
shall rest till the end of the world. Amen.
Is not this, with many other matters, writ in the
Coptic character in our Book of the Glory of the
Kings? This was set down in the Arab tongue by
AbiCL-lzz and Abu'L-Faraj in the reign of 'Amda
Seyon (of the Line of the Usurpers) who is called
Ldlibald, when Abbd George, the Good, was Patri-
[5]
arch in Alexandria; and from the Arabic into our
Mthiopic speech by the monk Isaac the Venerable
and his companions Yambarana-Ab, Hezba-Kres-
tos, Philip, Andrus and Mabdri-Ab.
So that it is a tale worthy of all credence, to be
writ in ink of black amber and dust-of-gold. For
it redounds to the glory of Ethiopia, the Uncon-
quered, the Unconquerable, Throne of the Regent
of Arum and Shebd and Himyar and Raidhan and
Habashat1 and Salhe and Tsyamo and Kas and
Bega, King of Kings, Lion of Judah, Emperor of
the Fifty Tribes.
Listen!
1 It is from this word that the name Abyssinia is derived.

Also, for all her youth she had a mind questioning
hidden things and inquisitive of philosophy.2 She
knew the rubrics of the Priests and the rituals of the
Temples wherein were spread adoration and obla-
tion to the Sun the Sky-Father, the Moon his
spouse, the Stars their offspring, and to Almaquh,
the Unknown Mystery. She knew the art of writ-
ing, the stone-talk, the graven marks that meant
words, that her light-skinned, hawk-faced race had
brought, two centuries before, from Yemen, across
the Straits now called of men Bab-al-Mandab.
As traders they had come, to seize the whip of
power, calling themselves Agaziyan, the "Free."8
A proud race, whose nobles wore white cotton
chamma gossamer-fine, edged with red, over vests
rich-embroidered, with girdles of black leopard-
skin purfled in gold or silver, and went abroad on
horseback with gorgeous saddle-cloths, while run-
ning slaves held over them parasols of plaited grass
strung with agate buttons.
On the roof-terrace of her Palace, girdled with
gardens whereover green butterflies swirled and
hovered, on a day blue and burning, in the Season
of Little-Rain, Queen Maqeda lay on her resting-
couch musing on this.
2 Josephus, the historian, has embalmed this saying of her.
8 The tongue they spoke was Gheze [Ethiopic], from which
derives the modern Tigrina, the language of the Province of
Tigray in which Axum is situated. It has been supplanted by
the Amharic, but remains, as Latin remained so long in Europe,
the sacred tongue.
[8]
OF THE QUEEN OF THE SOUTH
Oh, an excellent land, this ./Ethiopia! It had gold
and silver in plenty. There were in it cotton and
cane, fruits and the four grains, sweet-water and
hot springs. Three hundred years ago it had sent an
Embassy of gold and ships to the monarch of
Egypt, Tut-Ankh-Amen. It gave laws to the whole
northern coast. Its merchant-mariners trafficked
even with further India and the Nameless Islands.
The district of Sheba which it had annexed over-
seas was synonym for riches and luxury. Oh, an
excellent land! So she lay, skimming the circles of
her thought.
A girl of raptures. Her couch was matted with
matting blanched by wood-smoke, its pillow a
wooden bar, curved like a sickle-moon for that
lovely neck-nape, set on a foot richly carved and
coloured. O lithe young body, with legs in silver
socketted! O billowing trouser, narrowing in from
calf to small ankle-bone! O tiny golden buttons
demurely fastening! Her loose shirt reached below
the dimpled knee-hinge, its sleeve close-fitting from
trim wrist to elbow. It was dyed the color of deep
water and broidered in sun-flushed apricots.
At one side of the terrace was set a round table
of ebony, holding a glass jug as large as a melon
and fresh figs and pomegranates in a wrought gold
* In some prehistoric time this had no doubt been borrowed
from Egypt; witness the one found in 1922 in the tomb of
Tutankhamen. Egypt, of course, got it from the Orient.
[9]
bowl. Near-by, on an ivory perch, a preening grey
pigeon.
And lo, from the courtyard below the sound of
the Royal Numidian lions in their iron-barred pits,
roaring. And the hot, palpitating voices said:
Urrr-Ueiyarrrafff!!!
O Queen Mdqedd! Amber-face! We hunger! Our
tongues are thick!
What comes to us to-day? A shrieking goat-
stealer, wrapped in his square of cotton-sheeting
dipped in melted butter against the lice? A naked
black slave of the Country of the Baboons, daubed
with yellow clay?
The panting thunder-voices filled all the slug-
gish air, and a comely woman of middle age, who
sat by the parapet on a blue cushion, rose and came
to the couch.
She was Maqeda's favorite, a "battle slave" taken
in war with a western people, a splendid milky
creature, of fair birth in her own country, her mis-
tress' companion, to whom she spoke freely of
things great and small. Her name was Aftsi.
"The lions trouble your rest," she said. "Shall
they be fed?"
And Maqeda answered, "No, it is not yet the
hour. Let them wait."
[to]
Strangely the sullen beasts fell silent.
The Queen lifted herself on her elbow and sent
her gaze down to the Square on which fronted the
Palace, with its walls of veined marble and its doors
covered with plates of beaten gold. Look with her.
Let Axum fill your eyes!
Herders with bands of buffalo and pied swine.
Potters flogging lean mules laden with sun-baked
jars stenciled in black and white. Peasants with
tufted woolen caps and half-tanned sheep-skins
over their shoulders, the women with coarse petti-
coats and bracelets of brass and copper. Tall, stalk-
ing Chieftains from the southern plateau, belted
with knives, and lean-faced, turbulent tribesmen
swathed in a single cotton garment, like dark clouds
moving in a dazzle of white. Black men of the
Country of the Swarthy-Faces, elephant-hunters,
with ornate head-dresses and barbed spears. Men of
the ultimate wastes, with stone weapons in their
girdles, eaters of hippopotamus-flesh, bestial, mo-
rose, worshiping demon-gods, frog-faced monstrosi-
ties with the wings of bats. Beggars in a flutter of
filthy rags. Frowsy-headed slaves, with metal tags
in their ears, leading long-haired, reddish-coated
dogs that, trod on, snapped with jaws that sheared
to the bone.
On the Square's selvedge booths, with bulging
fronts, like harlots with forward breasts, and slim,
earth-coloured, heavy-lipped girls with bangled ear-
[»]
rings, waving horsehair fly-brushes above piled
fruits or pans of roasting nuts. Curtained shops,
holding bars of salt, ostrich-plumes and flamingo-
feathers, spices, musk and amber, skins of black
leopard and zebra, quills of gold-dust and trays of
precious stones—topaz and cats'-eyes and chrysolite.
And with these the mingled freightage of an hun-
dred ships: rich-woven dyed stuffs, brocades of
Sur and Sheba and Hadramaut, bronze weapons,
ornaments wrought in silver from the Land of the
Nile and regions across the far Arabian deserts.
Beyond the shops, marching to the city-wall,
rough-stone huddles of the poor with walls mud-
splashed with chika and thatched roofs hazed with
acrid smoke from their fires of camel-dung. Man-
sions of the nobles, of quarried stone with carven
doorways and upper verandahs half-hidden in their
tamarisk trees. The shining, lofty Temples of the
land's gods, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, and Al-
maquh, the Veiled, the Silent One.
Further—past the city's battlemented wall where
the soldiers barracked—the chequered fields of dura-
corn and taff,5 dried up river-beds stippled with
tumbled boulders and many-pronged euphorbia,
further forests of blue-gum trees and prickly mi-
mosa whose yellow plumes blurred the foothills,
and beyond all, the savage sinople mountains.
In their shade a wedge of purple shadow marked
6 The dwarf-millet of Ethiopia.
[»]
the pass through which wound the snake-like cara-
vans from the south.
"O Aftsi," said Maqeda, "what think you is be-
yond the mountains there?"
"Why," the woman answered, "there lies the
Land of the Swarthy-Faces, and after, the Country
of the Cannibals. Still beyond, say the caravan men,
is the abode of the Pygmies."
"Yes," said the Queen, "but beyond the Little-
Men?"
"Who knows?"
"I would like to know," sighed Maqeda. "I am
restless, I think. Lately this Axum smothers me."
The older woman smiled. "Next moon is the
Great Festival of Almaquh," she said, "when all
the stone bells ring. When you will sit on your
golden Throne and the Priests will beat before
you the sacred silver kettle-drums, and the soldiers
will shout your seven Royal names. A great and
splendid thunder of sound! Your breast will not be
straitened then!"
Her mistress' eyes withdrew from the distance
and her gaze fell to her right foot. Aftsi, seeing,
veiled her eyes with their lashes and sealed her
frightened hps with sudden silence.
The foot was not twin of its lovely fellow, shod
in its velvet sandal with the jewelled thongs, with
blue veins that made more white its marble and
small nails flushed with delicate rosy tinting. It was
[13]
hid from sight, laced in a boot of silk-soft leather,
tight-fitted, a mockery of symmetry, the one shriv-
elled petal on the rose-tree of sixty blooms, to blot
the beauty of the world for Maqeda.
She sprang up suddenly and faced the other.
"Think you such things are compensation?" she
cried, quivering. "By the ancient law of the Realm
the rule is vested in the female line, and its Queen
must be, and must remain, a virgin. If I had been
born with two straight-arched feet, think you I
would have chose my empty Throne? But what
man could desire me with such a mark? Oh, I know
what the people call me! 'Goat's-foot!' they whis-
per when my Utter passes."
She laughed—a bitter laughter. "Because my
mother, when she was carrying me, looked from
her window and saw a goat with gilded horns and
little prancing hoofs—I was born... so! Thus,
when the succession passed to me, I chose the
Throne. But my heart does not rejoice!"
Aftsi, tongue-tied, dared not speak at once.
"Fulness of Light!" she faltered at length. "Your
words grieve me! Surely the god will one day send
a great master-of-magic to heal your affliction—
which, indeed, beside your loveliness, is as the eye
of a humming-bird beside the ear of an elephant."
The blood ebbed slowly from the young Queen's
face, and a deep breath lifted her breasts.
"Would he might!" she said, dully. "I have
[14]
prayed much and am grown sick with waiting. For
that miracle, Aftsi, Almaquh might take my
Throne, the clashing spears and golden trumpets,
the silver kettle-drums, the Temple's incensed cere-
monial and cloth-of-pearls, these Palace gardens of
a million flowers—all, all, and leave me well con-
tent."
Aftsi did not reply, for the Square was throb-
bing to a sudden tumult. She turned to the para-
pet, leaning with bosom against the coping:
"It is Tamrin, the Fleet-Master!" she said. "I
know the jerkins of his ship-men. The Guard are
beating back the rabble with their staves so they
can pass the gate."
"He is quick," said Maqeda. "The fleet came to
port but five days ago and only yesterday the run-
ners brought the news. Good Tamrin! His tale will
be welcome. Go and tell them I will receive him
in an hour."
Song of Tamrin's Men
TAMRIN, HOYRA!
He is not to be despised in songs, this Fleet-Master!
His father is no slave, nor his mother a serf.
He is the offspring of Eagles!
No Lynx or Hytena is he, but a black-shouldered Lion,
Able to hold a Buffalo by the horn.
An angered Camel, whose nose is not to be pierced.
A strong, high-humped Camel, wildly snorting!
TAMRIN, HOYRA!
He is the Distance-Spanner, the Pilot of Oared-Ships,
Knowing the trick of the wind caught in the slant sail!
His sharp eyes are Hawk's eyes.
Before their stare the Whale flees to the sea-bottom!
Sea-salt is on his eyelashes.
Silver and gold he brings, snatched from the tempest,
Gems dug from the eyeballs of the deep!
TAMRIN, HOYRA!
O Watcher-of-the-Moon, beware darkness—and
Tdmrin!
With him against us our blood would turn to bones!
His sword is named Marrow-Eater,
But not fastidious is it in the choice of its food.
Revenge is hid in his belt.
His foes are become like rain-water in a sandy place.
May his enemies drink leeches and go coughing!
[16]
n
HOW MAQEDA LEARNED OF THE
GREAT KING
JMaQEDA, robed and scented, sat in her tall
silver chair on the dais of her audience-room, her
Ministers with great and plenteous beards behind
her. Her favored Aftsi sat at her feet—that always
in audience she covered with a sheeny cloth-of-
pearls. Slaves waited right and left.
She cried to her Door-Opener, "Conduct Tam-
rin, my Fleet-Master!"
So the man Tamrin came before her, well-
thewed, with the rime of two score years silvering
his temples. His skin was bronzed, his eyes nut-
coloured, his black hair was wound in a knot beside
each ear. His nose was narrow, his cheek-bones
high-set.
He was of wealth and estate in Axum, owning
three hundred and seventy oared-ships and above
five hundred blooded camels. First of /Ethiopia's
merchants and commander of her trading-fleet, he
sent cargoes to lands many and various across the
Sea, trafficking for gold and silver, and his cara-
vans were known in Nubia and Asuan and through-
out the four directions.
[17]
And Maqeda said to him, "O Father of Mar-
iners! You whom I sent a year ago with merchan-
dise for the ports and Kings of the north. Say me
your say, whether of gain in somnolent harbours,
or of calamity of wind-wrath and ship-wrack."
And Tamrin replied, "I have but good to tell,
Dawn-Upon-the-Land! I have lost on evil shoals
only seven ships, and in exchange I bring you great
gain—no less than twenty kikarim of gold—with
an hundred ship-loads of rarest produce from which
you shall have as much again—dyed silks of Marah
and woven carpets of Oman, with gold work of
Iraq, and from the land of Judah gems and gulf-
pearls and ambergris, and more things else than
can be told."
She clapped her hands at that, for it was her
ambition that her Capital of Axum should grow as
rich as her seat of Sheba across the sea-wastes,
which, though she had ruled six years, she had not
yet seen.
"O propitious!" she cried, and she ordered that
costly sacrifices be made at Axum's Temples, and
that Tamrin henceforth should receive salute as of
the highest rank of the Court nobility. Then she
dismissed her Ministers, and threw off her cloth-
of-pearls, and bidding cool melon-juice and sweet-
meats be brought, sent the slaves away and made
him seat himself.
[18]
OF THE GREAT KING
Said she, "Tell me of the travel of the long year
and of what your eyes especially remarked and
your mind wondered at."
So then he began to tell of things that had befallen
him on the long route, with its high perils and ad-
ventures and golden rewards. Of her Sheba, with
its glades of frankincense, myrrh and cinnamon,
which so filled the air with delectable odours that
its folk burned bitumen and goats'-beards lest their
spirits cloy from sweetness and they become as the
eaters of the lotus.
Till at length he paused, when asked she, "Of all
the lands your voyage has seen what is the most
noteworthy?"
He replied, "That land called Judah, which lay
at the far reach of my faring, even as I have held
the tale of it to the last of my telling."
She said, "My ears are unfolded."
He then said, "When I cleared our port we
skirted the coasts of the Arabias to the northward
of the Sea Al-Ahmar. Wherever we touched ran
the same rumour—that in this Judah, which lies
seven camel-days beyond the sea's limit, the King of
the people of Israel was building a great Temple to
his god, and would have foreign merchant-traders
bring him soft red gold, and ivory and black ebony
that the worms would not eat.
"So I sailed my ships northward to the sea's very
[i9l
tip, and harbouring them at Eloth,1 loaded eight
hundred camels and set out to the Judah border,
to a Province named Gaza, from whence I sent
messages to that King, who is named Solomon.
"His steward came to me there and we struck a
bargain for my whole caravan, together with all I
carried of precious stones—sapphires and jacinths
—for the Temple's decoration. The Capital is called
Yerushalayim. The King sent two thousand spear-
men to guard the transport, and by his invitation I
spent a moon in Yerushalayim as his Royal guest."
"Is it a great city?" Maqeda asked. "As great as
this?"
"O Joy-of-the-Earth," answered Tamrin's hon-
est tongue, "all of this Axum might be set down
within the inner wall of its Fortress!"
The young Queen frowned. "By Almaquh!" she
cried. "I had not thought our Capital so small be-
side others! A rich and powerful people, this Israel,
then!"
"The shadow of its power crosses the horizons.
Gold there is common as bronze, silver as lead,
and iron is as plenty as the dead papyrus reeds of
our deserts. Its husbandmen own sheep and cattle
by the myriad and its merchants have spacious
houses and sumptuous apparel, with camels and
slaves in abundance. Its nobles' mansions are of
!The Egyptian port in which Solomon built his ships.
Fourteenth-century Aelana. Later Berenice.
[20]
OF THE GREAT KING
white stone with doors of silver, and the Palace
of its King Solomon, when it is completed and
adorned, will not have its like for beauty in the
whole world."
"Say you so!" exclaimed Maqeda. "And the
Temple he builds—is it of like wonder?"
"Its greatness expands the soul as its beauty en-
chants the eye, beggaring all tales of it. In its build-
ing he employs three thousand and six hundred
inspectors, seven hundred carpenters, eight hundred
squarers of stone, one score and ten thousand
labourers and three score and ten thousand burden-
bearers. It will have courts and apartments in-
numerable, with walls and floors of beaten gold
and doors of cedar-wood curtained with weaves of
blue and purple and scarlet, and of softest linen
with curious flowers wrought upon them. And
these will be furnished with gorgeous utensils and
appurtenances, and decorated with prodigious
quantities of precious stones. Never has the earth
seen the like for costliness and magnificence! Not
only is the Realm rich beyond compare, but all
nations round about, which are its allies or tribu-
taries, have poured out their wealth without stint
upon it."
"And to what deity is this great fane raised?
Our Sun-God under other name, like Ra of the
land of Egypt?"
"No. His name is Jahweh. They count Him the
[21]
creator of Sun, Moon, and Stars, who has lived
forever, Lord of the Heavens. The Temple will
have an inner room, which will hold a golden box
they call the Ark, in which He dwells."
Maqeda mused, elbow on knee and chin cupped
in her hand. "What manner of man is this King
called Solomon?" she asked at length.
Tamrin replied, speaking slowly:
"In their annals it is recorded that his great an-
cestor, called Moses, was of old-time King of this
very land of ours.2 As for Solomon, his wisdom is
plenteous as sand, subtle as quicksilver. When he
was a stripling, they say Jahweh bade him ask
what he most desired; he asked not fame or riches
or victory over his enemies, but only wisdom,
which Jahweh gave him, and the rest in addition.
I saw him hearing causes and giving judgements,
ruling his household and administration. The ex-
cellence of his speech is such that a scribe (so
they call their men who know the art of writing)
is always in attendance upon him to record his
sayings. Also he is a harpist and a composer of
songs. In the work of the Temple he is wiser than
his most expert overseers, showing the metal-worker
how to handle drill and chisel, and the stone-mason
the decreed angle and surface. A great King, in-
deed! Perfect in composure, pleasant in gracious-
ness, and wise in understanding!"
2Rappoport gives this legend in its elaborated Jewish form.
[«]
OF THE GREAT KING
He ceased to speak, and for a space she too was
silent. Then she said, "Our thanks to you, Tamrin,"
and so dismissed him.
After he had gone out she sat in her silver chair,
neither smiling nor frowning.
A sage, this Solomon! A seer, no doubt, of great
and sacred beard, of mind ripe with the wisdom of
hoary years! If he but knew magic, now! The liv-
ing power of the Word, the efficient spell. The
Priests of Almaquh had their incantations, against
drought, or hail, or locusts, muttered over the en-
trails of slain oxen on a fortunate day. She needed
not such tricks, half monkey-cunning and half
childishness. She had need of great magic, wise
magic, the mother of miracles. Perhaps...
She clapped her hands, and the heavy door swung
to the hand of the Opener.
"Fetch him back! Bring to me again the Fleet-
Master! Haste, by the life of your head!"
And echoing down the polished corridors went
on swift feet the cry of "Tamrin!" He came.
"One question, Piercer-of-Distances. This King
of Israel. He has so great wisdom, you say. Does
he know magic?"
"Who can doubt it?"
"Did you see it with your eyes?"
"No, my Queen. But it was told me that he
knows the language of the beasts, the birds and the
fishes, and conjurations which rule all who walk,
[23]
or crawl, swim, or fly. Moreover, he can cast out
evil spirits."
For a space there was no more sound there than
the whispering in a hollow sea-shell. Maqeda's
antelope-eyes, long and shaped like a melon-seed,
were on her foot, laced in its boot of soft leather,
and the mystery of her thought was walled in
silence.
That night she lay open-eyed and unwinking in
her golden bed, in her sleeping chamber that was
hung with stuffs of purple, listening to the stealthy
sounds of the night, the howl of a hyaena from
beyond the wall and the recurrent muffled roars
of the Royal Hons in the courtyard-pits, tossed
back from the bucklers of stone.
Sighs were all about her, and the dark was
peopled with winged murmurings. O Mighty King,
Communer with the Viewless Essences! Who com-
pelled the very demons to do his will!
Suddenly she was up, her night-robe dragging
at her ankles. The slave-woman on her pallet in the
corridor awoke with a gasp at the clutch of tense
fingers on her arm.
"Aftsi! Aftsi! Could he do it, think you—that
King of Israel?"
The woman pushed back her hair from sleep-
weighted eyelids. "Joy of my Joy, do what?"
"Ah-h! Sleep has no friendship! Could King
[24]
OF THE GREAT KING
Solomon make straight my foot, do you think?" A
thick sob lifted the young Queen's breasts. "O
Aftsi—if he might!"
She was on her knees now, her eyes' lotus sor-
cery dimmed with tears. Sobbing.
"Must my soul be forever burned? Of what ac-
count the whiteness of my virgin body, softer than
the gauzes that make a bride's mystery, my mouth
a wedding of pearls and red coral? For I am a very
woman, and woman's want beats furiously in the
heart of me. I am sick of Royalty! I want a lover
whose kisses shall plunder the pomegranate of my
lips, a man-child whose lips shall play with the
ivory haloes of my breasts!"
And Aftsi lifted her, weeping, and carried her
to her sleeping-chamber, to the forsaken golden
bed, and tucked the soft panther-robes about her,
murmuring in her ear:
"O Golden Rose! O Denied too long! Let us in-
deed go to that King! To him who knows the
occult laws of life and the Spirits of the Air, to
mend your hurt must be a little thing!
"Weep not! I who have so long watched you
with kind eyes will go with you—over the sea in
a swift oared-ship, and on the back of a dromedary
soft as duck-down, plodding bahda-bdhda—bahda-
bdhda over the crisping sands in the midst of your
prancing chariots.
"Dry your eyes, those pools of black moon-
[25]
stone, and sleep, for all will be well. I, Aftsi, fore-
see it!"
And while her mistress lay with her cheek on
the tufted cushion, she drew from her sash a tiny
feathered wand, and with a touch soft as the feelers
of a baby spider tickled her ear-lobes and her neck-
nape where the curtain of her hair had its curling
hem, crooning the while a song which said:
"Lying in the dark of the purple shadows,
Fearful, fearful,
Your eyes burn with the brightness
Of the cold stars.
But, O frightened one,
Fear not! Fear not!"
So, comforted by the love in her voice, Maqeda
at length, smiling a little, slept.

in
OF THE QUEEN'S DEPARTURE
From that night the thought of the Land of
Judah and of its King of Israel was never veiled
from Maqeda's mind. She told her purpose for the
time to none but Tamrin, whom she bade prepare
and provision the fleet for the transport across the
sea-way in fitting majesty of herself and her retinue
and servants, this requiring seven hundred ninety
and seven camels, and horses and asses without
number, together with an army of both horse- and
foot-soldiers.
Also she bade the Fleet-Master dispatch one of
his trustiest Admirals in a squadron of ten ships to
the coast of India, to bring fifty elephants, with
their towers and caparisons and mahouts, to her
port in Sheba, where she would break her journey
to Yerushalayim.
Now Maqeda had over her Armies two twin
brothers. A deep affection between them bore wit-
ness to their blood-tie, and never had one a thought
that was not mirrored in the other's mind. Their
names were Seyoum and Nasiba. They were Gen-
erals of loyalty complete, vigilant as owls and
bound to her by a thousand bonds. Nothing of

plot or intrigue was hidden from them, and her
hundred Captains were under their hands and in
their obligation.
When the plan was ripe she summoned these two
and they presented themselves with clear eyes and
open foreheads, saying, "O Queen, Light of Morn-
ing and Rose of Night, give us your commands,
for we know only obedience!"
When she had opened to them her intention, she
appointed one to hold the Realm for her during
her absence, and the other to lead her Army over-
seas and protect her person, and both swore eternal
fealty to her on their mother's breasts.
Then she called together to Council all her
Ministers and chiefest Nobles and Counsellors, and
her slave-masters and Functionaries, and laid bare
her desire to them.
First she opened her small and lovely mouth to
the fame and wisdom of Solomon, the celebrated,
giving her phrases the words of Tamrin the ocean-
spanner, and saying afterward:
"O guardians with me of this Realm! To what
shall the wisdom of this northern King of Israel
be likened? It is a shining light to his eyes, an
urgent speed to his feet, a shield to his breast, and
a belt to his loins. It gives hearing to his ears and
understanding to his heart. It is a more precious
treasure than gold and silver, which none can filch
from him.
[28]
"Sages come to consult him from far lands and
to bow before his excellencies. The thought has
come to me that I too, your Queen of the Royal
lineage, may profit by this wisdom. It is a far jour-
ney, but my ships have gone further and returned
without mishap. I await the counsel of your inner
thought."
Then the Ministers and Counsellors and the rest,
even to her handmaids, each in order of rank,
made answer in varied words but with single
meaning:
"O Lady, she is wise already who seeks more
wisdom! Go if it pleases you. Time is no longer
than a rope, and the gods will stretch our incom-
petence to bridge the gulf of your absence."
Then she asked of them, "What is your thought
as to my Embassy?"
At that her Cabinet bent their brows and for a
space were silent. Till the eldest of them, her Chief-
Adviser, said, "O Queen, youth is in your veins.
But I am past three score. The toils of travel are
beyond my strength."
Said her Treasurer, "I guard the riches of your
Realm for you. I fear to entrust your House-of-
Treasure to hands unadept."
And said a third, her Controller of the Royal
Household, "O Maqeda, I was wedded only a
month ago. My bride is delicate. I pray you, of
your kindness, hold me excused." No other spoke.
[29]
"It is well," she told them. "So you are faithful
in your duties here, I shall be content."
So she dismissed them, and flew to preparation,
assembling a vast number of precious things to take
as gifts to King Solomon. Lastly she chose out
fifty nobles of the Court with their lady wives,
one from each of the listed families, for her en-
tourage.
But when the day neared for her departure,
Seyoum her General came to her and said:
"My Queen, there is under-thought against you
in the Royal House, and a Ras who would breed
confusion from your absence, to set his daughter
in your place. Whispers run about naked-footed
and boastings walk boldly two by two."
Asked Maqeda, "Who is it?" And he named a
name.
She considered for a spell with the blood-hue
in her face deepening its colour to rose, and her
breast shaken with the tumult of her heart. When
she spoke again it was with the voice of the leopard
at the water-hole:
"Cunning devours its master. Here is no profit in
following the snake to its crevice. Take the most
trusted fifty of your Captains and seize all of the
Royal blood to the eighth degree. Spare not even
my own brothers and sisters. Do this without delay.
Gather them into my rock-fortress of Salalieh and
[30]
hold them there till my return.1 Their safety shall
be yours. Is it understood?"
He replied, "It is understood."
She bade him, when this was accomplished, to
seize from Axum's Temple of Almaquh the golden
Throne on which its Queens sat when the offerings
of adoration were made, that was forty cubits broad
and thirty cubits tall and encrusted with jewels of
such costliness that a master of numbers could not
compute its value, and to set it in a certain secret
place where, within a cincture of soldiery, it should
wait her return. And said she, "See you to it!"
He replied, "I go!" and went from her presence
like a chill wind.
So, on the appointed day chosen by the High
Dignitaries of the Temple, Maqeda's caravan set
forth from her Capital to the marge of the Great
Sea, to the harbour where lay gathered fan-wise
Tamrin's fleet of oared-ships. And all the houses
were brave with banners and the streets by which
she went were strewn with flowers of the hibiscus
1 The custom, credited by the legend to Maqeda, by which,
in periods of uncertainty or disorder, the Ruler placed the
members of the Royal Family in confinement, presumably as a
bar to intrigue, was found still in practice at the beginning of
the Christian Era. Queen Judith (or Esther as some call her)
of the Dynasty of the Usurpers, when she seized the Throne
about the middle of the Tenth Century, was thus able to mas-
sacre all of the Royal line but one, and the Moslem invaders
repeated the act in 1546. But the Solomonic line of direct
descent was in each case preserved.
[31]
and nasturtium, eglantine, oleander and the rose
that was sacred to the sun-god.2
First strode her Royal Guard, iron-helmeted,
with scarlet leggings, beating with pulsing spears
on their laced shields of rhinoceros-hide, bossed
with silver and gilt mounting. Next followed a
corps of musicians playing cleverly upon their in-
struments—the lyre and the reed-flute, and the lute
with its hollow wood and sheepskin belly and
strings of goat-gut, and the golden horns and gor-
geous tasselled kettle-drums of silver, booming under
the flat scourging of the open hand—and leading
a company of youths that chanted songs to the
cymballed chiming of sistra.3
After these the Grand Epopt of the Temple of
Almaquh, and two score Priests of the Temples of
the Sun.
Then the Army, which were to accompany her,
marshalled by her General Nasiba, the cavalry on
their snorting coursers and the infantry marching
file and file. In their midst the young Queen, on a
milk-white ass with trappings of red gold and cop-
per, and a double-pommelled saddle, veiled in her
Royal chamma, followed by her entourage, the
men astride neighing chargers and their ladies caged
2 The rosa sancta, anciently used in the religious worship,
has always retained its sacred character. In the early Christian
era the priests mixed its petals with the church incense.
3 One of these was found in Tutankhamen's tomb.
[32]
and curtained on the backs of dromedaries with
gait as soft as butter.
Last the camp-makers and burden-bearers, who
were of the black folk of the southern marshes.
Their bodies were painted with vermilion, they
wore loin-cloths of leopard-skins and in their hair
the ears of zebras. And these were a very great
multitude that shrilled the air with cries like the
howling of jackals.
In this wise the Queen Maqeda, with her slave-
woman Aftsi riding by her side, borne by her
people as a skiff by the spate of a river, traversed
the twisted pass of the northern mountains and
set forth to the seaport.
Arriving there, after she had offered to the
deity Almaquh many sacrifices—fifty stall-fed oxen,
twenty white bulls, a thousand sheep and of ante-
lope and gazelles a number uncountable—she went
aboard her flag-ship and the fleet set forth with
smoking oar-holes and thrumming leathern sails
across the Great Sea.
Now among the gifts which she had chose to
give King Solomon were tanned skins of the dik-
dik and crocodile, elephant-ivories, black amber,
ostrich-plumes and aigrets, and a mantle sewn of
humming-birds' plumage, with apes in silvern cages,
black kudu-leopards on red leashes, peacocks, and
things unique and known only to /Ethiopia, such
[33]
as that rarest gem the mgnadis-phza, of vertegris-
colour, which attracts silver, and the balsam-tree.4
Also she had in her ship twenty kikarim of gold
from her Treasury. But she had said to herself,
"When I come to my seat of Sheba I will take from
there an hundred more."
As she thought on these things, lying 'neath her
purple awning on the high poop, while wind and
oar sent the prows shearing the tumbling waves, a
little scarlet-crested bird with topaz wings, blown
from some island of spices, perched in the whistling
rigging. And to her ear it sang and sang—
"Jupe—jupe—jupe—Judah! . . .
Chtderiq—tiqki, tiqki, tiqki! . . .
Toqoto, toqoto—toqoto! . . .
Judah—jupe-jupe-^jupe—Judah!"
* Josephus records that the balsam thus reached Palestine.

Chant of Queen Maqeda's Priests of the Sun
O Sun!
Inspirer and Quickener of the Seed of Life!
Shining and Lovely Bather in Light!
Spearer of the Leopard-Darkness! Shallower of Hycena-
Shadows!
Comforter of Forests, Nurse of Orchards!
Aureate Father of the Five Grains!
We beseech your benevolence!
Golden Lion of the Firmament,
Waver of the Yellow Mane of Rays Innumerable!
As you set in order your House-of-the-Sky,
So set in order our Earth-House!
O Sun!
Unresting Ruler of the Noon-Horizons!
Welder together of East and West!
The Night is your couch, the Day is under your eye-
lids.
Your smile is dawn-break.
Your footsteps are morning and afternoon.
Accept our Sacrifices!
Admonish the froward turbulence of the Sea!
With your Divine Silence awe the Storm!
Smoother of Hearts! Shine on this voyaging!
Give a safe going and a safe returning!
[35]
IV
OF HER ARRIVAL AT SHEBA AND HER
SETTING OUT FOR YERUSHALAYIM
Day by day and night by night the ships forged
on, the winds urging the slanting sails, the oarsmen
keeping time to the thudding gong of the oar-
master, while dusk trod on the heels of dawn.
Then tempest fell, with prolonged and contrary
winds and waves like churning hills. The world
grew dark before the faces of men. The ships were
scattered like chaff before the fan, and though at
end all saved themselves, many were strained and
a-leak when they gathered again from their refuges
in the bights of the shore.
When Tamrin saw their havoc, he said to Ma-
qeda, "Alas, we cannot dare so great a voyage in
vessels that are now unseaworthy. We must return
to Axum and set our damage right against another
year."
"Never!" she exclaimed. "The fleet can make
Sheba. There we shall well and speedily refit."
He answered, "Your Sabaeans are not by na-
ture sea-minded, nor have they many skilful ship-
wrights. Moreover, their forests may not grow the
kind of wood required."
[36]
OF HER ARRIVAL AT SHEBA
But she would not listen, and as soon as the
wind blew favorable and the sea subsided, she bade
the ships on, till Sheba rose up on the sky-line like
a silver table shining in the sun, and the breezes
brought the pleasant odours of its drowsy orchards.
Said she, then, to Tarnrin, "Outstrip us in your
swiftest ship to the port and tell my Governor and
Functionaries the why of my coming, that they
may not be troubled. Say that their Queen's heart
rejoices in the excellence of this far seat of her
Rule which she has never seen. But that she is as
the sea-swallow, whose nest is in the south, that but
seeks a span of rest from the beating of her wings."
This, accordingly, he did, and when her flag-
ship was warped to the quay, it was with song
and laughter, and the folk bowed themselves before
her, crying, "O Balqis!"—for such was the name by
which the Sabaeans called her—"O Sheba-Balqis!
Our life is with your life! We are your hive of
ocean-bees. Here for you are good welcome, safe
guard and propitious departure!" And she, and all
who came with her, were received and housed with
splendour and dignity.
There in Sheba's walled sea-gate, when she had
rested and refreshed herself for a space of days, and
had considered its Government and conferred titles
of honour upon its Officers, she took stock of the
condition of her fleet, and called to conference such
ship-builders as the Province boasted.
[37]
But these beheld the loosened beams and gaping
seams with perplexed eyes and shook their heads.
"A labour of many months," they told her.
Then Maqeda said, "I cannot wait. If the sea-
way is not quickly possible I will go the land-way."
They answered with one voice:
"O Queen, from this port to the city Yeru-
shalayim is above an hundred camel-days distance.
The path lies through the desert, a land of anguish,
ravening lions, vipers and flying-serpents, and white
bones. We pray you, consider it carefully."
She replied, "I have considered." And without
delay she set about preparing for the journey.
First, as further guest-gift to Solomon, she chose
out five hundred youths with cheeks still unshaded
by the down of manhood, comely and graceful,
and as many girls whose age was at the break of
a melon, demure and exquisite, to serve him as
cup-bearers and serving-maids. She habited them
elegantly, the lads with gold armour chased and
enamelled, and the damsels with bracelets and neck-
laces of jewels.
At her command Sheba's most skilful goldsmiths
wrought a crown of massy gold, bearing all man-
ner of pleasant devices in relievo, and ornamented
with precious stones set in designs intricate and in-
triguing. She gathered also a vast store of essences
and aromatic spices, of which that land was so full
that the air fainted with the perfume of them; these
[38]
she set in an hundred cases of cinnamon-wood and
these in coffers of India ivory inlaid with gold.
And to the twenty kikarim of gold which she
had brought from Axum she added an hundred
more.
So, at length, her squadron having arrived safely
from the Indian coast with her fifty elephants, in
the Season of Least-Heat, daring the toils of the
distance and the burning of the sun and the desert
thirst, her great caravan was assembled.
Then she called her General, Nasiba, to her and
said she:
"O Father-of-Fighting, I take with me of your
troops only so many as may be needed against peril
of wild beasts and bandits. I go in peace and friend-
ship to Judah. But do you wait here, that on my
return I may have safe guardianship in Sheba."
Said he, "My Queen, I pray you take no less
than a thousand spearmen."
She replied, "Five hundred. But give weapons
to as many of my black porters, for they are born
lion-stalkers, fierce and petulant knife-men, who
sucked the lust of battle from their mothers' dugs.
Those will suffice me."
This done she sounded the departing signal, and
the caravan, having farewelled the city, unrolled
its length and ate its slow way northward toward
the Land of Judah.
The marvel and astonishment of its size and the
[39]
splendour of its accoutrements went far and wide.
Never in those parts had such a sight been seen.
The stolid ranks of spearmen and jingling cavalry,
the scouts circling and darting on their Sabaean
barbs, the vast herds of cattle and flocks of sheep—
food for the multitude—driven by their savage
herders, the hundreds of ox-wains heavy with
grain, fodder and water-skins, the tiers of solemn
pacing camels canopied with their curtained
wicker-cages, the endless cavalcade of caparisoned
horses and mules with broidered saddle-cloths, the
swart and naked porters from the country of the
blacks—most of all the monstrous ear-flapping ele-
phants, ponderous as Power, deliberate as Doom,
shuffling and trumpeting under the irons of the
carnaks—all this was a marvel and miracle to the
nomads of the plains. The ascetic Reader-of-the-
Stars broke off his meditation to hear of it; the
Amalekites, the marauders, the wily dogs of the
desert, watched it from afar, or crawled lizard-like
among the sand-dunes to peer through slitted and
desirous eyes at the milk-white dromedary plodding
with its chamma'd rider under the purple awning.
And as the bird flies, so the tale flew on ahead—
to Thamar and Masada—to Bozrah nigh the Salt
Sea—to pass Hebron and at last to flutter in the
streets of Yerushalayim, and so be brought to the
Great King.
[40]
Meanwhile Tamrin, the untiring, rode his lean
dromedary at the caravan's head. Each night he
slept on his leopard-skin before Maqeda's tent. And
often, when the fires of camel-dung domed red,
she would call him to sit beside her, under the
wheeling sky-lamps, and bid him talk to her of the
Land of Israel whither they were bound, and of
King Solomon.
One such a night he told her this:
"When the Great King was a lad of seven he
delighted to sit at the feet of his father, whose name
was David, when he sat to hear causes and give
judgement.
"And there came before the Throne two men.
"Said one, 'O King David, of this man with me
I bought an olive orchard, and digging about the
roots of a tree therein I found a hoard of gold.
Then I went to him and said, "Come and take your
treasure, for I did not buy it with the orchard."
He answered me, "I know nothing of any gold.
I sold you the land with all that was in it." Declare
to us, O King, what is right to do in this matter.'
"King David turned to the other, and said: 'Why
will you not take the treasure?'
"He answered, 'It is not mine. And I know not
to whom to give it. He from whom I had the or-
chard is dead these many years, leaving no heir of
his body.'
[41]
"Said King David then, to them both, 'Divide it
between you.'
"But both replied, 'How may we do that when
it belongs to neither?'
"Now the Hall of Justice was crowded and all
waited, silent as silence, to hear the King's judge-
ment. Then David cast his eyes down to where the
lad sat at his feet, and said he, 'My son, if you
were sitting in my place, what would be your de-
cision?'
"The little Solomon looked at the two men, and
he asked the first, 'Have you a son?'
"The man said, 'No, Lord. I have only a daugh-
ter.'
"The lad asked the second, 'Have you a son?'
"He answered, 'Yes, Lord.'
"Then Solomon said to his father, 'Why should
they not marry the son to the daughter and let
those two enjoy the treasure together?'
"And so it was done."
"O Tamrin, tell me more!"
And to the pelting of Maqeda's questions the
Fleet-Master told how Solomon blended justice and
mercy, how he ordered his table and made great
feasts, and directed his myriad servants, and gov-
erned his affairs public and personal. Of how
in his Kingdom no man defrauded another or pur-
loined his property; and how in all the Realm there
[42]
was no thief or robber, but all men lived in peace,
tinctured with fear of the King.
When he ended his tale she sat some while silent,
saying at last:
"All honour to that great King! If such wisdom is
indeed gift of his god, I am wishful to learn more
of that Jahweh, Tamrin."

Song of Maqeda's Camel-Driver
A Princess of the Herds
Is my dromedary.
Her name is Beth-Syena of the Tents.
It is writ in scarlet in all the lists,
Her descent ten times certified.
By Ilbarim-the-Bearded out of Evening-Star,
Her dam a daughter of Korah the Eleventh,
Emperor of all dromedaries.
Her gait is soft as carded lamWs-wool,
Her neck sweetly arched, her legs firm-socketted,
Her flank well rounded,
Her eyes limpid as moonlight.
When she hears my call
The parasangs reel behind her like drunken dancers.
She drinks the sunset.
She is for no fat man without a god,
Whose belly precedes him,
Though his girdle sags with gold!
No, nor for the lithe Sheik of the Desert,
Of a long line of noble Sheiks,
Sons of Kings!
She is for the Queen Mdqedd,
Wearer of the Crown of the South.
She is hers for nothing,
As I am!
V
OF THE SUFFERING BY THE WAY
Now as the shuttling days opened their new
horizons—since the transport of such an host de-
mands vast store of food—the grain dwindled, the
flocks and herds melted like butter in the sun.
Moreover, the denizens of the desert, having small
use for gold and silver, drove their animals from
the way and there was none to barter with.
So that Tamrin bade cut the throats of a moiety
of the bearing-camels and of the oxen that had
drawn the wagons of provender—these being by
then depleted—and they were consumed; and af-
terward an half of the dromedaries, those who had
ridden them pressing forward on the mules and
asses, and at end (as these were devoured by the
black porters and camp-makers) on the strength
of their feet.
At length—because the water-holes were few
and they so great a number—the water-skins were
empty and the terror of thirst stretched its sable
wings above them. The scouts circled further and
more wide, but found no spring or water-course,
so that Tamrin cried, "Would that I had the wings
[45]
of the bare-necked vulture, to soar the top skeins
of the air!"
And oftentimes (for in that region devils torture
the traveler with illusions) there uplifted in the
opalesque distance soaring domes and cloud-brush-
ing towers as of some wide-skirted and populous
Capital, and they shouted for joy, thinking they
neared the city of Yerushalayim; but presently
these frayed and faded and there was only the pale
hills of treacherous drift heaped up like tombs, the
grey wind ghosting over the hot, gold waste.
There were times, too, when under the brazen
sky the parching wind rose, howling, whirling the
white, whistling sand in stifling eddies, till the host,
camels on their knees and oxen lowing in fear,
huddled together, breathless, sightless, and well-
nigh hopeless of their lives. But this also passed.
Now Maqeda in her forethought had brought
from Axum a wagonload of the herb kat, which,
if one eat of it, takes from him for a certain space
of days the ache of emptiness; and at the last she had
made Tamrin parcel this out, saying to him, "Every
noon I have adored our Sun-God and prayed to
Almaquh for a successful journey. That we find
our feet set on the slope of destruction shows that
he cannot hear us. From this hour, for so long as
my breasts lift to breathing, I shall pray to Jah-
weh."
That night, accordingly, when evening's chill
[46]
had quenched the fever of the day, and the caravan
rested its weariness, she called Aftsi, her slave-
woman, to attend her, and going some ways from
the tents into the sea-of-sand where the barking
jackals prowled, she prostrated herself, then lifting
her face to the spangled sky, she said:
"O Jahweh, Whom I know not, I call upon You!
I have called upon our Lord of the fiery Sun and
upon Almaquh. They have vouchsafed no an-
swer.
"/ invoke You by whatever title You have made
sacredest. Bring me and my people to Your land
of Judah and Your city Yerushaldyim, and to Solo-
mon, its Great King! I adjure You by the light of
day and the dark of night.
"Grant my prayer, O Jahweh, and when 1 have
learned the sacrifices that best please Your aloof-
ness, I will offer them—even to a thousand black-
bulls, a thousand white bulls, and sheep of a
number incalculable."
When she had said this, she rose and ran back
with Aftsi to her tent, for the caravan was in sud-
den confusion, with men running hither and
thither, and soldiers buckling armour, and voices
shouting out of the desert.
And lo, a file of laden dromedaries wheeling from
the shadows—an hundred of them, high-backed and
wind-swift—whose leader dismounted before the
Royal Standard and said he, to Tamrin, "We seek
[47]
her who is called the Queen of the South, Regent
of ShSbi"
Tamrin answered, "This is she."
The other bowed low before her.
Said he, "O Majesty, my master, King Solomon
of Yerushalayim, learning of your royal visit, has
sent me, who am Captain of his Guard, to give you
guidance."
Then all their trouble was quickly turned to re-
joicing, and the night saw feasting and merriment
within a camp a thousand paces square, with fag-
gots of fig-wood crackling in the fire, with swollen
water-skins and dainty meats, together with wines
and fruits of all kinds.
A Pavilion of purple was raised for Queen
Maqeda, and all her people, to the last burden-
bearer, rested that night in the lap of comfort and
plenty. And the day following the caravan resumed
its march to Yerushalayim.
[It is written otherwise, however, in the codices of
the Arabs, in the Quran, the holy book of the Prophet
Mahommed, and in the Annals and Commentaries of
the Jews:
That King Solomon once made a wine-bright feast
for a company of neighbour Kings, and that when
they were mellow and merry with drink—Jahweh hav-
ing made him overlord of the beasts, birds, insects, and
all spirits of the air—he commanded the attendance of
the Battalion of the Birds.
Now the lapwing (which in the Arab tongue is
[48]
called hoopoe) did not appear with the rest, so that
Solomon cried to his attendant Jinni who was Con-
troller of the Great Void, "If it have not fair excuse
it shall be dragged in the sand and eaten of vermin!
Search it out, and woe to you if you return without
it!"
So the Jinni flew to the ceiling of the high sky,
where he could see the whole rounded marge of the
earth like a silver saucer, and hovered there in wait till
he discerned the lapwing, when he darted on it with
the vertical dive of a pelican and dragged it before
Solomon, cursing it the while for its desertion and
absence.
There, trembling with fear in all its feathers, it
bowed before the King, saying, "To hear me is to ex-
cuse. Tor these three months, without touching beak
to food or water, the frenzy of my wings has borne
me abroad, seeking if there were any domain of the
world not under your Kingly governance.
"Till on the border of the far land of the Mthiops
I came upon an outland lapwing sitting in a tamarisk
tree. I told it my quest, and it said, 'Seek no more. In
this land the folk worship the Sun. They know not
Jahweh or of His servant the Great King.'
"Then I cried, 'What is its name and who its ruler?'
"It answered, 'From its first monarch and founder it
is called Shebd, and it is so rich a land that gold is of
less value than the dust of the street and silver lies
about like dung. Its last King1 was a tyrant, a hound
on the trail of chastity, a lecherous goat-face, who be-
came etiamoured of the pure daughter of his Prime-
Minister, till his sullied soul was netted in desire for
1 Some texts give his name as Scharabhil.
[49]
her. And she, whose name is Balkis, out of her great
heart, made herself ransom for chastity. She cove-
nanted with him to marry him, and with a bloody
dagger stung his bridal-night.
"'Now she sits on a silver chair twenty cubits high,
giving judgement—a Queen, intact and untouchable,
with thighs of satin, not knowing of love, undesirous,
a bride without a bridal, a mystery of waiting.'"
When Solomon demanded of the lapwing whether
itself had seen Queen Balkis, it fainted from the excess
of its emotion.
Solomon summoned his Chief Calligrapher and dic-
tated a letter which, perfumed with musk by the ritual
of magic, and signed with his signet-ring which bore
his Great Seal, he sent to Balkis by the bird. It said:
"Peace with you and with the Rulers of your
Realm!
"Know that Jahweh has made me Regent over all
beasts and birds, spirits both good and evil, and spec-
ters of the night. All Kings defer to me. Come to me,
therefore, and acknowledge my supremacy and I will
show you great honour. Refuse and I will send against
you my Kings, Riders and Legions. Do you ask who
are these? My Kings are the beasts, who will slay your
folk in the fields by day. My Legions are the demons
who will strangle them in their beds by night. My
Riders are the birds who will gorge upon their bodies."
The lapwing -flew to Shebd and finding Queen
Balkis seated on her Throne, dropped the letter into
her bosom. She, reading, was perplexed, and called her
Counsellors, rank by rank, and asked their minds upon
it. But they replied, "O Queen, ours to do, but yours
to command. Tell us your will."
[50]
Then said she, "Lest he waste our city and abase us,
I will send him gifts to bespeak his favour."
She bade them, therefore, prepare the five hundred
youths and the five hundred damsels, richly habited,
and sent them to him, together with the crown, the
kikarim of gold and other precious things. But to test
his subtlety and discernment, she arrayed the girls as
lads and the lads as girls, and added to her gifts a pearl
unpierced, of the size of a lark's egg, and an onyx
pierced with a hole that wound with windings tor-
tuous. And her letter said:
"O King, prove yourself. Accept my living gifts.
What means my pearl? Thread my onyx-stone."
Now Solomon had bade the lapwing linger and
bring to him what it discovered, and the bird flew to
him with this news. And Solomon laid out a great
Square in his Capital, whereabout he erected a lofty
wall of gold and silver bricks, and when Queen Balkis'
Embassy arrived, he received it there in all magnifi-
cence.
When the thousand young slaves were presented, he
bade vessels of water be brought them and by the
daintiness of their ablution he knew that the pre-
tended boys were girls and in like manner that the
pretended damsels were lads. Said he to the Queeris
envoy, "They are acceptable, but shall be clad accord-
ing to their proper sex."
When the pearl and onyx-stone were presented, he
commanded a thread-worm to pierce the first. Said he,
"The pearl unpierced is the virgin-sign, the symbol
of the immaculate. Pierced, it is a pledge of the
Queen's destiny, for her translation!" He bade the
worm crawl through the onyx's tortuous hole, holding
[5i]
in its mouth the end of a hair plucked from his head.
Said he, "Thus the stone is thridden."
As for the kikarkim of gold, Solomon bade the en-
voy take them back, saying, "What! Will you bring
me riches, when Jahweh has given me more than he
has given you?" And said he, "Go back and say to
your Queen that I will come against her and humble
her and make her contemptible."
When this saying was brought to Queen Balkis, she
said to her Ministers, "There is no help for it but I go
to him and give my submission," and she set out with-
out delay for the land of Judah.]

VI
HOW NEWS OF HER CAME
TO THE GREAT KING
O SMELL of herbage and first green of grass!
O rustle of palms and sweet bird-calls and pleas-
ant pipings of shepherds and voices of their sheep!
O young trees standing by the water-courses!
The desert, with its burning sky and thirsty
sands, was gone now. The caravan, bending to the
westward, was in a land of languid hills grey-blue
with olive orchards and brooks lined with white-
thorn barbarinek and nebbuk trees, of groves of
lemon and mango, of yellow valleys of ripening
barley musical with the purr of Persian water-
wheels—lovely as our ^thiop vale of Challa—the
land of Moab.
From there a fleet messenger on a racing-drome-
dary, flying like a swallow through lights and
shades without pause or rest, took the word to the
Great King.
Solomon's Secretary, Elihoreph, bowed before
him where he sat in his tent, pitched in the Outer
Court of the unfinished Temple to Jahweh, with
the aged King Huram of Tyre.
"O David's Son!" he said. "The caravan of the
[53]
Queen of the South, for which armed escort was
lately sent, is three camel-days to the southward.
Her retinue number three thousand and thirty and
three, and she has great quantity of beasts, among
them fifty elephants."
Solomon answered, "Presently I will give in-
structions," and the Secretary went out with quick
step.
Huram coughed, with discretion, and waited.
He was a huge gnarled old man, this Huram,
bowed with the weight of years, but with a sly
humor, eyes piercing bright as an eagle's, and wits
sharp as the hind legs of a grasshopper. He had
known David, Solomon's father, and had watched
the son with approving eyes.
He was subtle in logic, fond of sophisms, magic
and conundrums. When he was in enigmatic mood
he delighted to send a bouquet of his riddles to
Solomon, and Solomon did the like by him. Till
they set a prize of a kikar of gold for right-solving
and a like penalty for failure, after which Solomon,
setting all his sagacity to the task, won great sums
from the other—till Huram unearthed in Tyre a
youth1 whose acumen solved Solomon's most diffi-
cult enigmas, and through whom he got his ki-
karim back.
1 Josephus, on the authority of Dius, gives his name as
Abdemon.
[54]
NEWS TO THE GREAT KING
Despite disparity of age the two were such
friends as Kings are seldom. Huram's foresters
axed Solomon's timber for him on Mount Lebanon
and he sent cedar and cypress to Yerushalayim's
port of Japha by floats, in exchange for corn and
oil. He was here now on that same business.
He had heard of the coming of the Queen of the
South: the desert has many tongues. This was not
one of the usual kind, Kings of single cities, sun-
dark Sheiks of desert tribes that boasted fifty fami-
lies and a thousand camels. A real Queen, this!
Huram grunted into his dyed and braided beard,
and smiled his wry smile.
Then Solomon said, with some shortness (for he
knew that smile of Huram's), "I count her worthy
of singular honour, this Queen of the /Ethiops.
Israel's ancient legend says that Moses himself was
King over ./Ethiopia for forty years, after he fled
from Egypt. And men call her learned."
"So I have heard," said Huram. "It is even said
that she can read and write. Luckily, you know
one of her tongues, the Sabaean. No doubt she will
have a many cunning riddles to bait you with—
but you are good at them. I pray you, have note
made of the cleverest for me!"
"I will do that," Solomon told him.
"At any rate, the tongue of rumour lies if she be
not beautiful. Moreover, the Queens of Sheba are
[55]
virgin. A Queen that is both beautiful and virgin
should be rare enough!"
King Huram drank from the goblet of wine that
sat on a stool between them, and uncrossed his
great and bony knees. "She is rich, I am told, but
women are seldom generous—save to their lovers.
She is like to give you a ring and to look for an
hundred kikarim of gold when she departs."
"She will bring gold no doubt, as is the custom,"
Solomon said. "The Temple can use it. And per-
haps I shall give her a ring. Who knows?"
As he spoke King Huram's speculative eye had
fallen to Solomon's finger that held his signet, with
its Great Seal, which was his Circlet of Power,
graved with the Pentalpha and within it the four
letters of the ineffable name of Jahweh, which may
not be uttered.
Huram had a fancy for that ring. He had once
offered Solomon ten cities for it, but Solomon had
only laughed. Some whispered he had prisoned in
the stone a root of the mystic herb baara,2 which
cast out devils. Perhaps there was some magic in it!
[Now of this Ring the Jews say that Jahweh gave it
to the first man, Adam, when he was in Eden, to wear
so long as he kept His commandment.
It held four precious stones: a carbuncle that was
Lord of the Four Winds which at his command would
bear him through the upper air; an emerald that ruled
2 The mandrake.
[56]
the waters, whether of lakes, of rivers or of the sea;
a ruby that gave dominion over all living creatures
whether beasts, birds or fishes; a sapphire which com-
pelled all spirits good or evil. So for a time, Adam
ruled by it, but when he was driven from the Garden
it flew from his finger and hid itself in the Glory
under one of the pillars of JahweWs Throne.
Till Solomon was made King over Israel, when
Jahweh sent it to him by the Archangel Gabriel, to
make him master of all finned things and winged
things, beasts and men who walk.
These things are told in the Talmudh.]
"Well," King Huram said presently, "I wish you
joy of the visit of Sheba, or Balkis as her Sabaeans
call her. I shall not see her, for my ship waits at
Japha, and three days will find me again in Tyre.
And this is a drought upon my soul, for I long to
know if that is indeed true which is said of her
feet."
Solomon looked at him askant. "What say they
of her feet?"
"Why, that she has legs of a most hideous hairi-
ness and the cleft feet of a goat. Although one of
my Captains, who has sailed the Sea called Red,
will have it that she is cursed with but one such.
Perhaps it will be given you to solve that delicate
question."
He went out to make preparation for his de-
parture, smirking. He knew that Solomon's senses
clamoured at sight of beauty that was woman.
[57]
As for the Great King, he sat plunged in thought
for a space, conning contingencies, then clapped
his hands. To his Secretary, who came as swiftly
as bow-string follows bended bow, he said:
"This is my instruction:
"The Queen of the South is to be conducted so
that she will arrive on the fourth day from this.
Her caravan shall enter the South gate, and its
people and beasts shall be disposed at once in the
quarters provided. She herself, together with her
personal attendants, shall be housed as my Royal
guests in my House-of-the-Forest-of-Lebanon.
"'Azaryas,3 son of Zadok the High Priest, shall
be my Deputy to welcome her, for to women's eyes
he is beautiful as the sunrise and as a white lily by
the water-brooks. Also he speaks Sabaean. I shall
receive her in the Eastern Portico of the Temple.
Let all be so arranged that she shall cross its thresh-
old precisely at high noon, neither earlier nor later
by so much as a cubit of sun-shadow. Charge
'Azaryas with this—on his head be it!"
After the Secretary had gone out Solomon sat
brooding, gnawing at the parting words of old
King Huram. Could it be that this famed Rose of
Beauty had indeed goat's-legs and a cloven foot?
Skirts might well conceal such! And he thought,
"Unless I am assured, I shall be most damnably be-
3 Azariah.
[58]
devilled with surmise. There is nothing for it but
I devise a device by which to see for myself!"
And he summoned the overseer of the Temple's
mosaics and marble paving, cunningest in Israel in
the setting and joining of delicate stone-work. The
artificer came hastily from the workers, and Solo-
mon said to him:
"O with subtle fingers and nice in calculation!
Lay me in the Eastern Portico a floor of glass over
its marble pavement, and between the two let water
flow, clear as rock-crystal, with coloured fish swim-
ming freely. Let the pavement's plates be without
sign of juncture, and its surface smooth as the mir-
ror of a lake, so that one who steps upon it shall
think he indeed walks in water. This to be done in
three days."
The overseer answered, "It shall be so."

VII
OF THE QUEEN'S FIRST SIGHT OF SOLOMON
On the sunrise of the fourth day the young
Queen Maqeda looked from her tent door upon
a marvel. When the caravan had pitched camp the
evening before, nightfall had drawn about it a cur-
tain of darkness. Now she beheld—a delight and
splendour!—the long grey walls of Yerushalayim
scarce a parasang away. It sat on its three-fold hill,
sunny above the valley mists of Kedron, in come-
liness surpassing the tales of Tamrin the ocean-
spanner. And her heart danced. Beyond the austere
walls, on foliaged knolls, square towers of white
stone lifted tier on tier. Far off, tenuous as a silver
thread, a sound of trumpets. And over all pale
sapphire clouds swam in the blue like floating slim-
stemmed flowers.
It was the month called by the men of Israel
Thanim, the perennial, and its tenth day.
She called her serving-woman, Aftsi, saying,
"The City is here. It is the time to do what may
be done with me."
And Aftsi made ready the bath of asses'-milk,
and her mistress bathed. She anointed her with pre-
[60]
THE FIRST SIGHT OF SOLOMON
cious sweet-smelling unguents, till her lovely body
shone like even moonlight.
Lastly she brought a coffer-of-secrets kept
against this hour, guarded like the water-of-life,
and set out its contents—crystal phials of perfumes
from Bake and Galtet, from 'Alsafu and 'Azazat;
odourous ointment for the palms of the hands and
the neck-nape; attar for the sleeves, aloe-juice for
the eyebrows and musk for the hair; for the finger-
nails the flush of rose-analine, and for the under
circlets of the eyes antimony.
Thus she ministered to her, while the Queen lay
submissive on the leopard-skins or sat obedient be-
neath the solicitous touch, when she rose, willowy
and supple, and gave herself to the robing—an attire
of purple threaded with scarlet, whose hems were
heavy with broidery of fine gold. About her neck
she wound a necklet of emeralds and on her wrists
clasped bracelets of cunning workmanship set with
sapphires.
Then she looked in the mirror Aftsi held, and
sighing, said, "Ah me! I am round-eyed and burned
by the desert-sun!" So that the other cried, "Hush,
or all the gods will be angry at you!" and made
her swift gesture with crossed fingers against mis-
fortune.
Presently came the procession from the City, a
noble array to welcome her—heralds, a company of
slingers and bowmen, a thousand spearmen and
[61]
four hundred chariots. It came with cadenced
rhythm of swinging shields and glitter of breast-
plates, and helmets burnished and crested, while
she stood alone, against a background of blaring
elephants, sardonic camels and restive soldiery,
waiting, till its leader dismounted from his chariot
before her.
She saw a man of pale complexion, with eyes
thunder-black, a face sullenly handsome and arro-
gant, that missed nobility. His golden beard ex-
haled the odour of spikenard. Against his robe of
rich brocade, deep-fringed, a gold gorget swung set
with jewelled symbols.
He bowed before her, for a breath tongue-tied.
Amazed at the greatness of her state and the size
of her caravan with its rich accoutrements, the
sight of herself, shining in her beauty and sumptu-
ous apparel, stung his blood.
Her look searched him, consuming, suddenly
clouded. "Are you the Great King?" The words
fell across the silence like pearls dropping into a
silver bowl.
"No," he answered. "I am 'Azaryas, son of
Zadok the High Priest, the King's deputy and the
least of his servants."
He bade her welcome, then, with honied words.
When Tamrin had lifted her to her white ass under
the purple canopy, he marshalled his escort, and
wheeling his chariot beside her, cried the advance.
[62]
Thus they came to the South Gate, where the
folk of Yerushalayim were gathered in their thou-
sands to see her, for the news of her arrival had
gone all abroad. And, seeing her fifty elephants,
towered and caparisoned, moving like Castles un-
der the mahouts' goads, the jEthiop men-at-arms
in their strange armour, and the half-naked Swarthy-
Faces, with bodies vermilion-striped and hair
tressed with zebra-ears, rattling their necklaces of
crocodile's-teeth and crying fearsomely their in-
articulate cries, these shouted her name and threw
flowers before her.
Smile on us one day, Yerushalayim, holy city, as
you smiled that sunny noon on Maqeda! From
thronging esplanade and teeming market-place,
from curving street and covered terrace, from folk
watching with wonder and welcome in their
hands.
In an open Square, vacant of crowd, the caravan
dissolved, its beasts led one way and its folk an-
other to the quarters prepared for them. Only the
Fleet-Master, Aftsi her attendant, ten of the higher
Nobles of her Court, with their wives as Ladies-in-
Waiting, and her gift-bearers, remained with
Maqeda.
And now, as her cortege parted the sea of strange
faces, behold a wall, great and lofty, with a
carven entrance prickly with spears, emitting a
mingled roar of voices as of a thousand lions.
[63]
Asked she, "Noble 'Azaryas, what is that?"
He said, "O lovely as Amm, the Moon, this is
our Hippodrome. To-day is a day of the horse-
racing. Shall we not see?"
She answered, "Let it be so."
He lifted his hand. The guard at the entrance
fell back and they entered.
With what words can one figure forth that Royal
Field-of-Sport? A vast concourse, round as the sun's
disc, spread with silver sand. About it a glittering
multitude, banked in four segments, each with
robes of its colour: Blue for the King's Household,
the Doctors of Law and the Priests; white for
dwellers in Yerushalayim; red for the tribesmen of
the countryside; green for visitors of foreign na-
tions.
Opposite each segment massive platforms, one
capping another, holding four thousand chariots
with their horses and charioteers, the platform-
doors of wild-olive wood, inset with porphyry, ala-
baster, jasper and lapis-lazuli. At one end—a stip-
pled carpet, wind-shaken—ten thousand horses sad-
dled and bitted, waiting.
In the midst of the concourse two lofty pillars
supporting iron cages holding all manner of beasts
and wild-fowl. About these pillars, like a gliding
cohesive cloud, forty running horses.
The thud of hooves was like the beat of distant
drums in the tumult of a tempest. Eight times they
[64]
made the circuit, and the winner was showered
with gold and crowned with green leaves.
But Maqeda could not defer the benediction of
her sight of Solomon. Quickly she said, "Should
we not go on?"
And 'Azaryas, with hot eyes smouldering on her,
led them forth again.
On the hill called Moriah the walls of the Temple
Solomon reared to Jahweh were rising span by
span. They came to it by a causeway laid in smooth
black basalt. The greatness of its plan was an
astonishment to her.
Before the Eastern Gate called Beautiful 'Aza-
ryas drew his escort one side by the great steps. He
alone mounted, with the Queen and her attendants,
to the Court of the Women, where on three sides
curtains of goats'-hair with looped edges hung on
taches of brass.
A company of Priests received them. They
wore robes gold-broidered and golden belts about
their loins, around their necks chains of gold, and
golden crowns on their heads. Zadok, the father of
'Azaryas, was their chief. He greeted them in the
Sabaean tongue, and when he had complimented
Maqeda and wished all well of their stay, he seated
them beneath the eastward-fronting Portico on
tufted chairs and served them with sweet wine.
"The King receives you at noon," he told her.
"He rides forth each morning for boon of exercise,
[65]
loving horses, but it is now the hour of his return."
With his words there came from the lower slope
of the hill, where Solomon had his Palace, the clat-
ter of riders. Maqeda rose upon her feet and peered
down, unable to hold back her eyes.
She saw an hundred youths, tall and of flower-
age, astride blooded horses of recorded line. They
were fair and of grace incomparable. Their long
hair hung about their shoulders, sparkling in the
sun from gold-dust sprinkled in it, and they wore
nether garments of Tyrian purple. They were in
light golden armour and carried bows.
Their horses' hooves echoed from the stone
causeway, and in their midst, riding loftily in his
chariot, a man in his first manhood, clad in speck-
less white.
"Who is that?" she asked Zadok. "He in white
with a sash of cedar-red, with skin ruddy from the
sun, with lips like a bow and eyes black velvet that
yet holds a sword?"
The High Priest peered beside her. "Who but
the King?" he said.
"He? Solomon? But—this man has youth!"
"The King has but two and twenty years," said
the old man.
"When said I he was old?" cried Tamrin.
"True," she told him. "Never did you that!"
And she laughed a little. "No doubt I fancied him
[66]
a grey-beard, deeming wisdom must have age to
husband it! I fear he will find me very foolish!"
But Aftsi, looking narrowly at her, saw that her
face was on a sudden pale, and behind her eye-
curtains she discerned two new lights, like caught
stars of strange colours, that glowed and pulsed and
sank in the black lakes.
And she thought, "Have I seen the lights that
flare at the coming of The Stranger? O Almaquh!
Let not her young heart be eaten!"

VIII
HOW A MIRACLE BEFELL MAQEDA
At length a bell struck and Zadok went and
drew aside the curtain that hung between the
pillars.
"He waits, O Queen," he said. "Enter, first put-
ting off your sandals."
Cried she, "No! That I cannot!" and drew her
flowing skirts more close about the leathern boot.
But he said, "This is the dwelling-place of our
Most High. It is holy ground. None can enter it
save with unshod feet."
So, in despite, she beckoned Aftsi, who, making
of her own garments a screen, drew off the jewelled
sandal that was offense to holiness, and unlacing
the leather from the twisted foot hid them in her
bosom. Maqeda entered. Zadok let the curtain fall
behind her.
And now, behold the cunning of Solomon's pav-
ing of crystal and the running water! As she
crossed the threshold and trod the mirroring
glass, with its coloured fish darting and flirting be-
neath, she deemed herself walking indeed in water.
And seeing a great timber lying thereby, in quick
[68]
dismay she mounted on it, lifting her skirts to her
knee-hinges.
And lo, a wonder! As her right foot touched the
wood, her rose-lips opened to a cry, at one time
sweet and terrored. "Ah-ah! Ah-ah!"
For the foot was in that instant become as its
sister, straight and rightly arched and flawless.
Now Solomon knew not the secret of that cry.
But in the shadow of the alcove where he had
taken stand to watch, when he saw that perfect
body thus mirrored in the crystal, he exclaimed
within himself:
"Malediction on him who gave her name for
hairiness and goat's-feet! Where is perfection fairer
fashioned? O thighs of unfingered ivory! O mys-
tery of down and tube-rose petalled loveliness!
Praise to the Creator of all beauty!"
And he went back softly through the alcove,
with a hand nursing his lips, to enter the Portico
from its further end.
So he came upon Maqeda, sitting upon the
timber, laughing and crying together, distraught
with joy and stricken with amaze at the miracle.
At his appearance she rose upright, and her agi-
tation was covered with the cloak of composure.
He greeted her with the three-fold ceremonial.
As the great Queen he saluted her openly, and in
his heart the while (where he hid his exultation) as
the woman, whose virgin-loveliness, veiled with
[69]
the skirts of modesty, the mirror of the glass pave
had made the sweet secret of his eyes.
But when the ceremonial syllables had been
spoke, under the urgence of her joy she searched
for words to thank him, stretching for his gaze her
right foot's new perfection.
"O you who walk in music!" he said. "O ankle,
arched like a crescent-moon! O straight small digits
wrought of ivory capped with rosy madreperl!
How can it be credited? Yet if blemish indeed
there was, that brought darkness on your eyes be-
cause of it, give thanks to Jahweh rather than to
me. For the healing is His deed. His power is
present in the timber yonder that your foot
touched. You shall be told how it came to pass. But
in this hour my Court waits to welcome you."
From the Portico, then, they passed to the
Outer Courtyard, whither meanwhile, by a corridor,
the High Priest Zadok and his cassocked company
had conducted Tamrin the Fleet-Master and the
Queen's Officers and ladies. There, under a lofty
tent, Solomon's entourage were gathered, and he
led her by the hand among them.
Here were the highborn Heads of the Twelve
Tribes—his Officers of State, in shirts of linen, with
robes of brocade, swords gold-scabbarded and
jewelled collars—Benyas,1 Captain of the Host,
stocky, corpulent, with sparse grey beard and
1 Benaiah.
[70]
secret-keeping eyes—Zabud, the Great King's
Chief-Companion, son of the Prophet Nathan,
sulky and scowling—Jehoshaphat the historiogra-
pher, palsied and senile, with faded pale blue eyes—
the seventy Sacred Elders of the Synedrion,2
plenteous-bearded, grave as oxen, their cloaks
pricked out with opals and amethysts, carbuncles
and emeralds, wearing their golden chains of office.
His three Queens: Makshara, child of the Pharaoh
Shishak,3 with skin tinged by Egyptian suns, hair
dark as the cliffs of Gojjam, decked with a cluster
of amber pins fashioned like ibises, and a golden
uraeus hanging between her bared breasts; King
Huram's daughter, in cloth-of-silver trimmed with
scarlet plumage; Dibonah, daughter of the Moabite
King, slim-hipped, narcissus-cheeked, with tawny
hair tight-curled by the curler. And ranked right
and left a swarm of lesser, bright hued as birds.
Round about were tables of ivory and ebony,
set with baskets of silver lattice-work, holding
quinces and medlars, pomegranates flushed with
sunrise, yellow-green melons, saffron citron and
purple-velvet grapes. Cup-bearers, clad in scarlet,
bore about white wine and red. Canaanite slaves
waved fans of palm-fronds sewn with gold.
Beyond the tent lute-players plucked the singing
strings, and dancing-girls, naked-footed, round-
2 Aramaic Sanhedrin. The Israelite Supreme Court.
3 Pasebkhanu II.
[71]
bosomed, circled with lisping tread and floating
misty scarves.
At the fit time, Maqeda said, "Great King, suf-
fer me in meagre appreciation to lay before you
my poor guest-gift." At her sign Tamrin signalled
to the bearers waiting in the court.
They entered, iEthiop youths of the southern
Plateau Tribes, chose for their comeliness, with
skins red-copper and black hair curling to their
shoulders, bright-eyed as harts. They paced with
even tread, bearing their treasures: the soft-tanned
skins, the crown of massy gold and jewels, the
racks of rare plumes and aigrets, trays of burnished
amber and precious stones, filling the place with
tints like shattered rainbows.
So they passed before The Presence, and the
tent rustled with admiration at the splendour.
Next the five hundred Sheba youths, in their
gold armour, with the five hundred damsels demure
and delicate, displayed to Solomon the coffers of
India-ivory holding the cases of cinnamon-wood,
set with crystal phials of tinctures—styrax and seli-
hop, rose-ledanon, moon-coriander, myrtle and oli-
ban—an hundred odoured attars with names like
fragrances. Till the delighted air was scented as
with a thousand flowers.
Last Tamrin himself, his iron sinews snapping
with the weight, bore in the one hundred and
twenty kikarim of gold, virgin and soft as when it
[72]
left the rock. The sight called forth a murmur of
wonder like the hiving of bees.
Even the Great King stood silent for a space.
Then he said:
"O Balkis-Maqeda, Queen of the South! Your
gifts to me are more than gold and gems—you give
me the red stairs and balustrades of my Temple,
its instruments of music, the bindings of its sacred
books. You give me the eight-fold steps of jade for
its brazen sea, their facing of Egyptian jasper, its
lions' heads of pink sardonyx-stone! For all who
shall worship here I thank you."
He smiled into her antelope-eyes.
And the three wives of Solomon, daughters of
Kings, looking on the beauty of Maqeda, sighed
with suddenly frightened gaze, and clasped their
hands.
Prayer of Makshara
O Ptah, King of the Two Banks!
Sbat, Lord of Slaughter!
Horus, Hawk-God, with your children, Mesthi,
Hapi, Tuamantef and Quebhsennuf!
0 Anpu the Jackel-Browed, Devourer of Bodies!
I call you! I, Mdkshdrd, Daughter of the Royal Line,
wearer of the golden uraeus.
Destroy this Shebd! Bring her speedily to the jaws
of the tomb! Seize upon her heart by violence! Rend
the place where it is fixed!
0 Lords who dwell in Amentet and in Nut!
Lords of the circuit of the flooded lands of Qebhu!
Lords ever-living, whose forms are hid in secret
places, to whom I give incense and music!
I know your names!
0 Beings of Fire-colour, who thrust forward your
horns!
I invoke you! I who am destined hereafter to rule
with you, as a Goddess.
Open for this Shebd your Chamber of Torture!
With your stone knives hack her members asunder!
O Siu, Crocodile who carries away the Charm, on
whose eyeballs are writ magic words!
Night-Watchers of the Crocodile, whose faces are
hid!
Let this Shebd's soul not pass your Gates!
[74]
Terrible Serpent-Shapes, Rerek and Seksek, let her
not go by!
O Eater of the Ass, Abomination of the God Haas,
Dweller in Tuat the Under-World, let her be Eaten
at the Mesquet Chamber! Let her Ka perish!

IX
OF THE TREE OF EDEN
"WHEN all had eaten and drunk and the napkins
and vessels of flower-water had been borne about,
Solomon said to Maqeda:
"O brimming Jar of Southern Perfume! Your
desert journey has been long and you are as yet un-
rested. Say when it pleases you to retire to your
own apartment."
She replied, "First let me look once more on the
blessed wood that has healed my foot and made
this day for me a day all gold!"
So, forsaking the tent, they two passed again
across the Great Court, and by the wide stair of
white stone to the east-fronting Portico.
And as they went, she said, "Is it true, Great
King, that you know the tongues of the beasts and
birds, as Tamrin, my Fleet-Master, says?"
Solomon smiled.
"Their tongues are simple, their speech has but
few words—for love, fear and hunger."
He pointed where, far off, in the lower Court,
a groom walked a white steed up and down. "Yon-
der is my stallion Sethur. Listen!"
He lifted voice in a call: "O Sethur!" And in
[76]
OF THE TREE OF EDEN
the distance the animal turned his head, tugging at
his bridle, and a long-drawn whicker came to
them.
Said Solomon, "He says, 'I love you, Master!'
Is that so difficult?"
Within the Portico, with its glass pavement, lay
the huge timber, and when he had seated her in an
alcove drunken with odors of incense, he told her
the tale of it.
Said he, "When I began the building of this
Temple to our Jahweh, I thought, 'Our God is the
One God, unchanging, incomparable, and His
Temple should be enduring as the mountains.
Therefore it shall be set on mighty foundation-
stones.' But when my stone-masons and quarrymen
considered my specifications, they cried, 'What
man-made tool can hew blocks so gigantic?' Nor,
though I pondered the matter long, could I devise
a way to cut them.
"Then I fasted and prayed to Jahweh that he
magnify my intelligence, and he spoke to me in a
dream, saying, 'Son of David, get you a young
Simurgh-bird1 and prison it beneath a brass cal-
dron in the Temple Courtyard, and you shall re-
ceive a sign.'"
Said Maqeda, "I know not a bird of that name."
1 This fabulous bird, corresponding to the Arabian Rukh, in
the Shah-Nameh lived on Mt. Alberz and nursed the infant
hero Zel, after he had been exposed by his father by reason of
his white hair.
[77]
"It is found only in the Eastern Mountains. It is
the Emperor of all Winged Things. It is huge as a
ship, and can carry an elephant in its talons.
"I sent a thousand bowmen, who, after search of
three months, found the nest of a Simurgh-bird
and brought me one of its fledglings, which was
the size of a calf. And I had made a huge caldron
of brass and put the young bird under it, and fas-
tened it to the pavement of the Court with fifty
bronze nails three cubits long.
"Now the Simurgh has eyes and ears so keen
that it can see a field-mouse across ten mountains
and ten valleys, and hear the shrill of a locust on
the further side of the sea; and hardly had I done
this when lo, the mother-bird, wheeling and cir-
cling through the limits and horizons, having heard
its young one's cry here in Yerushalayim and per-
ceived that it came from the brass caldron in this
Temple Court, dropped from the firmament upon
it. But she could not pluck the nails from the stone,
and at length flew up to the apex of the sky and
vanished.
"She was gone three days and nights. When she
came again, she bore in her beak a great slab of
wood that seemed riven from a giant tree-bole.
This she set on the brass caldron, which instantly
split into two halves, when she seized her fledgling
and winged away.
"When my Ministers called me to see it, I cried,
[78]
OF THE TREE OF EDEN
'Praise to Jahweh, the Ineffable One, the Provider,
the Bestower! For this wood can be nothing else
than a fragment of the Tree which He planted in
the midst of Eden!'"
Asked Maqeda, "Is it your Jahweh's Land, that
Eden?"
"It is a garden," he told her, "which He, when
He created the first man and woman from the dust
of the ground, made for their delight. Its flowers
never fade or its fruits fall. The fruit of this one
Tree He forbade them to eat. But they disobeyed
Him and He drove them out of it, and His anger
smote the Tree to fragments."
"O Subtle and Divine Will!" she said. "And
then—?"
"I said to my Ministers, 'It has come down to us
that the wood of the Eden Tree is an hundred
times harder than iron and can never know decay.
The Simurgh is the wisest of the birds. And is it
not written in the ancient writings that of all living
creatures it alone has strength to cross the fiery
deserts which Jahweh has set roundabout Eden?'
"Then said I, 'In this is the sign He promised me.
Take up the wood and lay it on yonder rock.'
They did so, and behold, the rock split without a
sound from top to bottom, leaving its two faces
smooth as mirrors.2
2 Ancient Jewish legend says it was with a sliver of this
wood that Moses engraved the commandments upon the two
Tables of Stone.
[79]
"Thus in the quarries the great foundation-
stones of the Temple were cut. My stone-masons
had but to trace the line and lay the slab upon it,
and the thing was done. When the work was com-
pleted, lest it be used unworthily, and that it might
receive due reverence, I had it set here in the
Portico."
Said Maqeda, "I am, then, made perfect in my
members not by magic, as I thought, but by the
presence of your Jahweh!"
"There is no magic," he replied, "save the power
of Him."
Then she said to him, "It is my wish to do honour
to this wood. For surely it is of the Lord of all
Trees. Have I the Royal permission?"
Said he, "O lady of all those below and above!
More lovely than the twelve precious stones,
sweeter-odoured than the fragrance of cassia and
galbanum! You shall do what you will with the
wood—and with me And with me!"
Later, when she had reflected upon it, Maqeda
summoned Axum's cunningest worker in fine
metals, whom she had brought in her train, and
bade him make a silver collar, of chaste and elegant
pattern, and it was riveted upon the wood as her
mark of honour.
Moreover, Solomon, when he saw it, had an-
other collar made, also of silver (though in humil-
[80]
OF THE TREE OF EDEN
ity that the thought had not been his own, he made
it of lesser size), graved with his name, and it was
fixed on the wood below hers. Also he caused it to
be written in the Tablets of Instruction that each
of his successors in the Kingship of Israel should
do likewise.
[Now of this great timber whose touch had lifted
from the young Queen the affliction of the twisted
foot, it is further related that after the Great King
had passed and Yerushaldyim knew him no more, it
was set in an inner room of the Temple. And each of
the Kings that held rule after him decorated it with
another collar of silver, till at the time of the coming
of Jesus, the Saviour of the World, it had thirty of the
circlets upon it.
When Judas, the Accursed {whom may God put
to Everlasting Shame!) covenanted with the High
Priests to betray Jesus to the Roman soldiery for
thirty pieces of silver, the Treasury of the Temple
lacked so much, and it was these silver collars that they
gave him, stripped from the fragment of the Eden-
Tree.
It is told also that on the fifth day, when Jesus was
condemned to be crucified, certain of the younger
Priests who counted him pure of taint and robed in
innocency, but lacked the courage to declare them-
selves, said to one another, "If he must thus die upon
a tree, it shall be a blessed one!" And they took the
Eden-wood secretly from the inner room of the
Temple and gave it to the Roman soldiers to make a
cross.
So that the wood of the Eden-Tree that healed our
[81]
Queen Mdqedis foot3 became the Cross on which the
Heavenly King of Kings was lifted up for the redemp-
tion of the world.
These things are writ in the records of the Syrians
and the Arabs.]
8 This legendary association of the Cross with the Ethiopic
Queen had a bearing on the national rejoicings when a frag-
ment was brought to Ethiopia at the end of the Fourteenth
Century.
X
HOW MAQEDA SAW SOLOMON'S GLORY
Now the House-of-the-Forest-of-Lebanon, Sol-
omon's Mansion of Entertainment, was among
the most splendid structures he had reared. It was
of three storeys, an hundred cubits long, builded of
Lebanon cedar. Its wide terrace overlooked the
Great Court and its stately tower could be seen
ten parasangs down the Damascus Road.
Across its front were forty cedar columns,
whose capitals had the form of lilies. Its walls were
overlaid with beaten gold, carven in palms, apples
of the pine, and cherubim, and it was groved in
sycamores, fir trees and valonidi-oaks. In its porch
were hung three hundred golden targes.
Therein Maqeda, with Tamrin the Fleet-Master
and her attendants, was housed.
And because he was thralled by her beauty and
mazed by the qualities of her mind, Solomon added
to her own entourage daughters of his proudest
Princes, the Chiefs of the Twelve Tribes, of the
Elders, and of the Heads-of-Houses, to be her
handmaidens. The daughter of Zabud he set over
these.
In this House-of-the-Forest-of-Lebanon he made
[83]
for her a banquet, seating her on his right hand and
his Queen, Makshara the Egyptian, on his left.
There were also there grandees of his Court and its
women most famed for wit and delicate loveliness.
The room was hung with draperies of crimson
and sunny hyacinth. It was decorated with rare
carpets, with sculptures cunningly wrought and
paintings in colors. Set in its ceiling were eight
polished mirrors of Sidonian workmanship. At one
side stood a great round font of perfumed water
on brazen feet. Comely Philistine youths, taken in
the wars, served the tables, and string-music and
singing made pleasant the time of eating. From
time to time the guests were sprayed with rose-
water that held the perfume of a thousand blos-
soms.
Maqeda was clad in a robe of the hue of violet
that gave forth the scent of nard. On her head was
a crown of kingfisher-feathers caught with dia-
monds. Behind her a slave waved a fan of ostrich-
plumes dyed the colour of her robe. And Solomon
longed for her in his heart.
Now when the service was concluded and the
singing died, Maqeda said in The Presence: "O
Solomon! A favour, a privilege!"
He replied, "It is yours without the asking."
Said she, "When, having heard of your fame
and name for wisdom, I left my land in the South
to make my visit here, the Priests of our god Alma-
[84]
SOLOMON'S GLORY
quh said to me, 'We would prove the subtlety of
that northern King of Israel.' And they constrained
me to ask of you two questions."
Solomon replied, "Ask them, but by Moses'
beard! When I have answered them, you shall an-
swer one of mine in return."
She said, "It is agreed."
Then she took from the folds of her dress a
peeled wand of willow-wood two cubits long, and
handed it to him, saying, "Behold a length of sap-
ling cut betwixt root and branch. Which end
grew nearest earth?"
Regarding it, the great Princes, the Captains and
jewelled Dignitaries, and the learned Doctors—even
the Scribe, Elihoreph—shook their heads.
But Solomon, rising to his kingly feet, strode to
the brazen font, and laid the wand on the water.
And lo, it floated uneven, one end sinking lower
than the other. Said he, "O Maqeda, that which
shows the heavier is the root-end."
Then, smiling on her out of grave eyes, he
waited her second question.
For this she signed to her favourite, who sat afar
off like a plump idol, watchfully as a dog. And
Aftsi rose, holding a wide and deep box between
her hands.
Opened, it showed two garlands, twisted of
dewy flowers, myrtle and almond-blossoms and
damascena, cunningly made twins, to the smallest
[85]
flushed bud and trembling leaf. These she lifted on
high in either hand.
Said Maqeda, "Behold these two. One is a living
growth, born of sun's kisses and rain's tears. One
is lifeless, a mockery of empty art and cunning.
Without aid of touch or smell, distinguish them.
Which is the real?" ,
All present gazed, ridden with question, one
muttering, "It is the real she holds in her right
hand," and another, "No."
Said Solomon to the woman, "Hang them yon-
der, in the open window." Quickly she did so.
And lo, from the rose-bed terrace underneath
the window, came a vagrant bee, buzzing rejoic-
ingly, and lighted on one garland. And smiling on
Maqeda, Solomon said, "The bee answers for me."
At that, their slower minds retracing the wind-
ings of his thought, all his guests applauded, and
Elihoreph, his Secretary, drew his tablet from his
girdle and made note.
Then Maqeda asked, "And what will you ask
me? I am not good at riddles."
Said he, lifting his wine-cup toward her, "O Bal-
kis-Maqeda, Queen of the South, my question is
this: Which is the sweeter, first love or last?"
She replied, "To woman the first love, to man
the last."
Cried he, "Well answered! And what is the
sweetest love of all?"
[86]
SOLOMON'S GLORY
She said, "The love that is both first and last."
At this his sagacity knew that the same fire
burned them both, and his soul rejoiced in what
had come to him out of the shifts of time.
Now the two-fold striking of the bell in the
Porch of Pillars, on the eastward side of the Great
Court, signaled the hour when Solomon took seat
on his high Throne in the Court of Judgement, to
judge causes; and he rose, and when he had put on
over his short white tunic of Egyptian linen a
chiton of costly Sargonian byssin, and set on his
head a crown bearing three score beryllion, pale
blue-green the hue of sea-water, he went there.
And the Princes and Chiefs and Elders, with their
ladies, followed with respectful steps, bearing Ma-
qeda with them.
The Throne of the Great King was the most
splendid of any on this earth. It was fashioned of
marble inlaid with ivory, studded with rubies and
emeralds and flowered with fine gold and traceries
of pearls. Its seat had arms of gold and a footstool
of sapphire, finely chased, and on its right hand
were a lion and an eagle and on its left an eagle and
a lion of massy gold of Ophir and Parvaim.
Because there are six Heavens hanging between
the earth and the Seventh Heaven, which is Jah-
weh's, the Throne had six steps. On the first were
a lion and a bull of iron, on the second a leopard
and a goat of lead, on the third a wolf and a lamb
[87]
of brass, on the fourth a bear and a gazelle of
bronze, on the fifth a buffalo and an ass of copper,
and on the sixth a hawk and dove of silver. When
he mounted the steps, holding in his hand the
scroll of the Law and the emerald Sceptre, the
lion roared and the bull bellowed, the leopard
screamed and the wolf howled, and each in its
proper voice made outcry.
As he sat vines of gold twined about him, giving
out scents of saffron, musk and amber, and over
his head was a hemispherical canopy of iridescent
gauzes of scarlet and hyacinth.
Below the Throne those who were gathered sat
on benches of jasper, high and low, noble and
humble, Israelite and stranger. Austere desert-men
with black-bearded faces; heavy-jowled Philistines
with wiry hair and golden armlets; pale-faced, sloe-
eyed, hibiscus-lipped Hittites; haughty-browed
Babylonians, profligate Ammonites—they sat in a
hushed silence.
And when the trumpets had sounded, the Great
King, signing with his left hand, on whose fore-
finger glowed his Ring of Power, cried aloud, "In
the name of Jahweh! Let who will speak!"
There came forward three brothers, exhaling the
halitus of hatred, hot as the feral odour of lions'
breath. The eldest spoke.
"Today we have tombed our father. When he
lay dying he said to us, 'AH that I have is yours.
[88]
SOLOMON'S GLORY
But lest you quarrel, I have decreed the division.
Here is a box of three compartments. The top-
most is for you, my eldest; the middle one for you,
my second born; the lowermost for you, my
youngest.' So he died. When we opened the box
we found its top section filled with discs of gold,
its middle one with bits of bone and cloth, its low-
est with splinters of wood and clods. Since mine
alone held anything of worth, I being the eldest,
count that he leaves to me all his possessions."
When he spoke thus the other two cried out
against him, with clenched hands.
Said Solomon, "Peace! O you of little under-
standing! Your father's intent is clear as the clean
blue sky. The gold stands for his wealth. The
bones and cloth for his cattle, sheep and slaves.
The wood and earth for his house and vineyards.
Divide in such wise."
And the three, now with friendliness, withdrew.
Ringed with the Dignitaries, Maqeda listened,
drunken with admiration, while he questioned,
weighed, confounded.
Till, at the last, came two women, harlots both,
clad in the painted finery of their trade. And cried
one, weeping:
"Great King, I and this other dwell together in
one room, and three days ago we each bore a son
in the self-same hour. This morning, when I woke
and would have given my babe the breast, I felt it
[89]
a dead weight in my arms, and looking narrowly,
lo, it was not my babe but hers. For she had over-
laid hers in the night, and while I still slept had
taken my babe and set her dead child in my bosom
in its place."
Solomon bent upon the other the twin flames of
his look. Asked he, "What say you in contradic-
tion?"
The woman replied, "It is she, not I, who over-
laid her child. And her grief has mazed her mind."
Then all who heard were nonplussed; of his
Ministers and Officers there present none saw a key
to open the door of verity. And Solomon for an
instant closed his luminous, wide eyes.
Then said he to his Chief Guard, "Go and bring
here both babes, the living and the dead."
The man brought them.
Said Solomon, "Draw your sword and hew both
babes in two, so that each complainant may have
an half of the living babe and an half of the dead
one."
At the order the people were aghast, and the
Dignitaries and Doctors wrung their hands, deem-
ing the judgement foolish and unconsidered. But
when the Guard flung up his sword to smite the
living child, the woman who had first told her tale
shrieked out to him to hold his hand.
And sobbed she to Solomon, "O Great King!
Let her have my son! Better that I see him forever
[90]
SOLOMON'S GLORY
in her arms than burn the death-fire on his little
grave!"
Said Solomon to her, "The babe is yours! There
is nature in your tears!" And said he to the false-
mother, in a voice of seven thunders:
"O eaten of wicked envy! Who, having lost
your own babe, would send your comrade's to de-
struction also! Get you gone from my city, and if
you return, the ravens of the valley shall peck out
your eyeballs!"
Now when the Hearing of Causes was finished,
and he had come down from the Throne and dis-
missed the assembly, he said to Maqeda:
"O Sister of Many Stars! What think you of our
justice and decisions?"
She answered:
"There was truth in the tales I heard of you in
my land, nor was the half told me. Your wisdom
is like a lamp in the dark, and a pomegranate in a
garden, like a pearl in the sea and the Morning Star
among the constellations. And happy are your
servants that stand before you."

Chant of the Levite Choristers
O Jahweh, how excellent, how excellent is Your Name
In all the earth!
Jahweh is in His Holy Temple.
He is our God forever,
Who has dealt bountifully with us!
He is our Rock, our Fortress, our Deliverer,
He is our High Tower.
His Voice is upon the waters.
He has given us the necks of our enemies.
In His Name we have set up our flags.
Clap your hands, O ye people!
Shout unto Jahweh with the voice of triumph!
O Jahweh, You have chose Zion for Your Habitation.
Beautiful for situation,
The joy of the whole earth is our Mount Zion,
In the city of the Great King.
Walk about Zion, ye strangers,
Number her Towers!
Mark her bulwarks, consider her Palaces,
That you may tell it to following generations.
To His Temple in this Yerushalayim
Princes shall come out of Egypt.
The Kings of Tarshish and the Isles shall bring presents.
To Him Êthiopia stretches out her hands,
To Him is given of the gold of Shebd!
Clap your hands, O ye people!
Sing unto Jahweh, ye Kingdoms of the Earth!
[9O
XI
OF SOLOMON'S SONG
NoW the Great King rejoiced more and more
in the beauty and intelligence of Queen Maqeda.
Morning and evening he surrounded her with all
delicate observances, so that his wives went with
dark looks and his concubines wept.
Is it not told in our Book of the Glory of the
Kings how so long as she sojourned in Yerusha-
layim, he sent: to her, for her and her people, each
day sixty measures of white meal, ten stalled oxen,
five bulls, fifty sheep, with kids, deer, gazelles and
fatted fowls, twenty score basins of wine, and
honey and sweets in profusion? And every day he
sent to her eleven costumes that bewitched the
eyes.
Moreover, he detailed five-and-twenty minstrels
and as many singing-women to regale her with
music, and five hundred of his most valiant
fighting-men, captained by 'Azaryas, he of the
boiling blood and honied tongue, guarded her day
and night.
Daily the Great King walked with her through
the vast architectures of the Temple Courts, un-
folding to her his plans for its completion: its two
[93]
massive pillars that should have upon their tops
four hundred brazen wreaths of pomegranates—its
molten sea, cast of fine brass, set on the shoulders
of twelve brazen oxen, whose border should be
wrought, like the brim of a cup, with lotus-flowers
—its great Gates, of the Virgin, of the Fountain,
and of the Bridge, and that of its inner Sanctuary,
which should be of Corinthian brass—the curtain
of its Holy-of-Holies, of fine-twined linen, blue
and purple and crimson, broidered with cherubin,
that veiled the visible presence of Jahweh, the All-
Knower, the All-Fashioner.
He told her how Jahweh created the Six
Heavens: the first that is called Gergel, of white
crystal; the second, named 'Erar, of vapour; the
two Heavens of fire, Rema and its twin that is the
colour of sea-pearl, whose Gate is greater than
the Earth and which has the Twelve Guardian
Angels; the Heavens Lewen and Dirigon, that He
made of water; and lastly the Seventh Heaven,
which is the Heavenly Zion, His own dwelling-
place. And how He created afterward the Earth,
fire, wind and light, and out of flame of fire the
families of the Holy Angels.
And his voice was wonderful to her ears.
Said she to him, "Among the Fifty Tribes of
my Land are adorers of many strange deities, some
worshipping stones and trees, some the carven
similitudes of the hyaena and the crocodile, as the
[94]
OF SOLOMON'S SONG
folk of the Nile Country worship the Bull, the
Cow, the Serpent and the Leopard. But I and my
own stock reverence the Sun who lights the dark,
and the god Almaquh, who is Mystery. Yet these
speak not to us, as your Jahweh does to you, nor
have we been taught that they are the creators of
the world."
He answered, "There is no true God but
Jahweh, who has made Sun, Moon and Stars, sea
and land, beasts and feathered fowl, crocodile and
whale, hippopotamus and water-lizard, the cloud,
the lightning and the thunder. He exalts and de-
grades, and none can question His decrees, Who
is Lord of all things, created and uncreated. And
His Spirit dwells with us, here in Yerushalayim,
abiding in our Ark, which the people call The
Lady-Zion."
She asked him of this Ark, and he told her:
How Jahweh had lowered His immaterial Zion,
which is the Seventh Heaven, to Earth, so that
Moses could make its tangible likeness in woods that
could not be eaten of worms, overlaid with plates
of beaten gold, which should be the earthly habita-
tion of His Glory. And of how this Ark, into
which had been put Moses' two Tablets of Stone,
a golden pot of the Manna that had come down
from the Heavens when his people wandered in the
desert, and Aaron's blossoming rod, waited only
the Temple's completion to be housed therein.
[95]
And when he ceased to speak Maqeda cried:
"Never again shall I worship the Sun or our
Almaquh, but only Jahweh!"
Now Solomon was perfect-master of parallelism
and of rhythm. He had composed a thousand and
five Songs, three thousand Parables and Similitudes,
and two and forty Odes, which latter were known
even in the tongue of Armanya.1 Also he was a
maker of songs mystical and melodious, that sang
of the everlasting pain of love; and he had schooled
the Realm's sweetest singers, who were of the
Tribe of the Levites, to render them in his own
measures.
On a day he sent Maqeda a message by her inti-
mate, Aftsi, which said:
"To-night, of your generosity, sit on the terrace
of my House-of-the-Forest-of-Lebanon. For in the
Great Court, as the moon rises, there will be
music."
And he wrote verses submissive to his mood,
and sent for his choir-masters, Heman and Asaph,
with their singers and instrumentalists, and nar-
rowly instructed them.
When evening came with its promise, the de-
lighting Maqeda prepared herself.
Aftsi, the plenteous-breasted, brought the day's
1 Armenia. A Syriac text of these was discovered by Mr. J.
Rendel Harris in 1909, among manuscripts brought from the
neighbourhood of the Tigris.
[96]
OF SOLOMON'S SONG
robes—eleven, each drunken with its own beauty,
unenvious of the rest.
Maqeda considered them. This one of cloudy
amber, shot through with gold and perfumed with
myat? That sea of silver tissue, hiding in its weave
tiny islets of rose and fairy-green, and breathing
forth odours of sehin and selika? Yonder gauze, pale
as a lily in a heated noon, with wan green bordure,
in which lurked scents of meurigo and kanaat? No,
none of these.
Rather, she chose one dark as danger, and in her
blue-black hair wound strings of black pearls. She
selected a girdle of crimson with studs of silver,
and for her feet red sandals made of kid, with
beads of carnelian on their thongs.
And when the sickle moon rose, she went to the
terrace, sitting alone. Below in the court were
moving shadows as the singers took their places.
And hark! Women's voices, bird-like, chanting
in monotone, to the rhythm of ghostly hand-
tapping of the timbrel:
"What is this coming up from the wilderness,
Like smoke rising,
Odoured with myrrh and spices?
It is the litter of Solomon!
Three score fighting-men surround it,
Bearing bright swords against night-peril.
"The Great King's litter is framed of Lebanon cedar.
O Litter, your hand-rests are silver!
[97]
Gold is your cushion, your curtains are purple!
Within, you are ebony-inlay!
"O Girls of Y erushalayim!
Come and gaze on King Solomon!
So he looked on the day of his first nuptials!"
Then, as the cadence fell, a woman's voice cry-
ing in minor mood, without accompaniment, a lone
voice, beseeching:
"O Girls of Yerushalayim!
I adjure you,
If you find my beloved,
Tell him I am sick with love!"
It wavered like smoke and died, and the clear
treble of pipes soared, companioning a man's voice
that poured out a melody liquid gold in the further
darkness:
"Ah, beautiful, beautiful, my beloved!
Your eyes are doves!
A hyacinth in the thistles—
O most loved among the maidens!
"Your lips are a scarlet thread
Binding your lovely mouth.
Your breasts are two fawns,
Twin gazelles,
Browsing in lilies!
"Come down from Lebanon, my sweet,
Come down from Lebanon!
How beautiful is your love,
[98]
OF SOLOMON'S SONG
How more precious than wine!
Your lips distil sweetness.
Honey and milk are on your tongue.
"And ah, the fragrance of your garments!"
There was silence then. The evening held no
sound, till the woman's voice lifted again, floating
now on the throb of the timbrels:
"Awake, Wind of the North!
Come to me, South-Wind!
Breathe on my garden,
Gather its perfumes!
Till my love shall smell them and come.
Till his left hand be under my head,
And his right hand embrace me!
"But O Girls of Yerushalayim!
I adjure you,
Rouse not my love till it please him!"
A second time the man's voice rose, desirous,
adoring, repeating its melody to the music of the
kinnor:
"Your body is a lithe palm tree
And your breasts its fruits.
Let me climb the palm tree
And lay hold on its clusters!
O breath sweet as apples,
O juice of your mouth, like wine!"
Three times the pipes alone repeated the meas-
ure, crystal clear, before the chorus of women
chanted the sequence's close:
[99]
"What! Is not your love a lover,
O loveliest?
Is he not your lover,
That you adjure us so?
Get you to the vineyard
Where the vine-blossoms open.
There give him your raptures!
"For love is mighty as death.
Its bolts are bolts of fire.
Many waters cannot quench love
Nor the floods drown it!"
On the terrace Maqeda sat in her curved ivory
chair and listened. Her eyes were closed. She knew
not what she thought, or if she thought at all.
There was a wind blowing about her spirit, a wind
of many voices.
She knew not when the music faded. One palm
lay uncurled on her knee, the other hand rested on
the silvern balustrade.
Out of the dusk another hand fell upon it—and
remained.
Then her soul woke, and she looked from star-
tled eyes into the face of 'Azaryas, son of Zadok,
the High Priest.
His voice was a lost whisper: "O Balkis-Maqeda!
Light-of-my-Darkness!"
"What! You, 'Azaryas?" she said, and drew her
hand away sharply. "What do you here?" And
[ ioo ]
OF SOLOMON'S SONG
when he caught her robe-edge she rose and took
three steps from him.
"I come because I must!" he said. "Will you not
look with kindness on me, who though a Queen are
no less woman too ... Maqeda, Maqeda!"
She made an exclamation, under-breath. "You!
Whom the Great King has set to guard me!"
"Would you had never come to this Yerusha-
layim!" he said. "You have put a sorcery on me,
I think. Since I first saw you there is a sighing in
my heart. Your eyes make me drunken! I do not
sleep!"
Frozen silence held her for a heart-beat. Then
said she, "Were this my city of Axum, I would
have you thrown to the Royal lions! You dare say
this to me, a guest of the Great King? O madness!"
His dark smooth face came closer, and a deep
breath lifted her breasts. "Dare is an empty word
to me, with what I carry in me that burns me day
and night! As for the King, I love where I will
love!"
A sound behind them from the corridor, a sound
above all sounds, Solomon's step, beating down the
quiet. Knowledgable, heavy with purpose.
He did not speak, but 'Azaryas, turning fearful
eyes, smelled doom, and hid them with a shaking
hand. He went from the place stumbling, precipi-
tate, like a dog from the thonged whip.
[101]
Solomon took seat beside her, grim and silent,
and so for a space time rested.
Till she spoke: "Great King, let not the might
of your anger fall on 'Azaryas. Since the day of my
coming he has not spoke word to me until to-
night."
He pondered a moment.
"It shall be so," he said at length. "Jahweh called
my father David a man of blood. For that he for-
bade him to build the Temple. I too have blood
enough upon my soul without this man. But, son
of the High Priest though he be, let him beware!"
'Azaryas guarded her no more.

XII
OF THEIR RAPTURE OF THE NIGHT
O MAGIC of voice, and of the word beautiful
when, on the tongue of Love the Quickener, it
enters into the rejoicing ears! It calls to the Spirit
and looses Passion that is the brother of Love,
whose bond-slave is Delight. O Ecstasy!
As Maqeda sat that evening with the Great King,
his golden speech flowed molten about many
things: The Stars and their holy signs and Houses,
whose lore he had learned from the Chaldeans; the
flowers and plants whose mingled scents rose from
the gardens below—for Solomon knew the close-
guarded secrets of the herbalists; of the precious-
stones set in the golden carcanet he wore—smaragd,
tender and grass-green, that banishes nightmare and
cures the bite of venomous serpents—the black
swallow-stone that confers eloquence—crimson
ligurion, found in the lynx's paunch, whose wearer
can see through walls three cubits thick—iaspis that
wild beasts dread and flee from.
She, in her turn, related to him the legend of her
Royal line: how its great Ancestor, ^thiopis, had
come from overseas—whence who could tell?—and
[103]
wove a Realm from fifty diverse Tribes. Of Axum,
her Capital, she told him, that had been founded in
the time of Israel's Abraham, with its monoliths and
Temples of grey fretted stone; and of the Land's
fruitful fields and waterways—its broad Lake Tsana
with silver floor mirroring the flamingoes' flaming
cloud—its sacred mountain, Zukwala the Mist-
Gatherer—its salty plains and jungled forests, and
its painted rocks studded with the smoky eyes of
lions.
Till the night, soft and laden with odours, was
full blown, and the trumpets sounded the change
of the watch. Then he said, "It is the time for food-
refreshment. Why should we two not sup together
here?"
She answered, "That would be the perfect close
and garniture of a day of days."
So he summoned his Director-of-Repasts and
gave command that the table be laid in an apart-
ment which was called the Closet-of-Meditation.
This he kept for his own usage, being wont to re-
pair to it when vexed with problems of State or
the distractions of his Palace. To enter it unsum-
moned, whether for slave or High Dignitary, was
death.
He gave orders also (she not understanding the
language of Israel in which he spoke) that all the
foods served them should be such as to increase
the thirst, and contain condiments hot as berberi-
[ 104]
OF THEIR RAPTURE
spice,1 and that with the wines be mingled anise
and sesame.
Now he had especially beautified this apartment
with Phoenician hangings of purple and costly car-
pets from Tabriz. He had decorated it with miskat
and marbles and with precious stones, agate and
yellow chrysolite. Each day it was sprinkled with
oil of myrrh and cassia, and braziers of aromatic
incense were burned in its four corners. And the
place was beauteous in her eyes.
There they supped at ease together, while the
night rounded to its noon, a night white as jasmin,
sweet as honey, hours for her of glossy-soft glances,
of singing blood, and unsighed sighs.
Till at last, when seven and three courses had
been set before them, the Director-of-Repasts and
the serving-men and flagon-bearers withdrew.
They two were left alone.
Then Solomon said, "O Maqeda, Balkis-Maqeda!
Must far Sheba, or your dim land of /Ethiopia,
one day rob me of you? For you have seen how it
is with me!"
She heard him, trembling, but with a wild joy.
"You have said it. I should have said it soon. I go."
(O soft dark hair upon his wrists!)
"Soon? Soon?" he cried. "No, no! Why should
you go at all?"
1 In Ethiopia this is compounded of braised paprika, onion-
seed and garlic.
[105]
"It is my land. Its people are my people. They
have need of me."
"I, too, need you, Maqeda. My way is often dark
and set with thorns. Let Axum choose another.
You shall be my wife—my Queen—by the Law of
Kings! I love you! Did you not hear me say it in
the song?"
It was still about her, that music, like a scented
smoke. She felt his arms. "Maqeda!"
Her hand against his gilded breast restrained him.
Love? Fierce as white lightning, glorious as drums,
beautiful as snow-mountains. Wife of the Great
King, Wisest of the World! And yet—
She thought of Axum, its Temples lifting sacri-
fices to the Sun. Knowing not the true God. And
she to dwell here in Yerushalayim, in the curtained
Palace, with his Queens, the Egyptian, the Tyrian,
the Moabitess. She, who herself was Royal? Ah,
no!
She felt a deep breath lift his breast. His arms
released her.
"I have dreamed!" he said, his voice muffled in
his throat. "I thought Jahweh smiled on my love
of you, that He sent it to me in comfort! Your
going will snatch the joy out of my labour, the sun-
shine from the hills!"
"You will still be the Great King! I shall be
only one of those who came to see your glory—and
went back. An atomy burning in the snowdrifts of
[106]
OF THEIR RAPTURE
silence and distance. You will forget me. I shall
not forget."
"O Crown of my forehead, thought of my
thought! You love me, then? For love's sake, give
me the proof that man desires!"
Said she, "That I may not do, however much I
love. We Queens of Axum and Sheba, by our law,
are virgin. If I became other, my return to my land
would be sorrow and tribulation."
He said, "For love's sake, then, if you will not
grant me that, leave me not lonely to-night. For
your words have been daggers in my heart."
"But you are weary, and should sleep."
"My couch is yonder, in my inner room. Rest
you here on this one. Though we slumber, our
spirits will be comforted by nearness."
Said she, "Then on the honour of a King, swear
that you will not, by your man's strength, constrain
me to what I will not!"
He replied, "Except you come to me of your
own will, into my inner chamber where I lie, the
morrow shall see you as virgin as this night. On
my mother's breasts I swear it!"
At that she smiled, saying, "If I do that, you are
absolved of your oath and shall have all your will
of me!"
Then said she, "O dear lord, let us sleep our
first sleep now, and when we wake later we can
pass the time in converse."
[ 107]
So he went and threw his great form on his
couch in the inner room, the panther-claws of de-
sire tearing him, while Maqeda, smiling, turned on
her own couch there and slept.
As for him, he, too, smiled, but he did not sleep,
lying moveless, watching. Till presently the Queen
stirred and her eyelids opened, when he began to
breathe heavily, as one in deep sleep. Her mouth
was dry as sand, and there was upon her a most
damnable thirst.
Now she had seen the serving-men set two
guglets of water, one in either room, and she rose
and took up the one beside her couch, but lo, the
last drop had run through a breach in its bottom
and it was empty as a cow's horn.
For this had been done by Solomon's strait in-
struction. He had moreover commanded that the
doors of the room be made fast from the outside,
so that though she tried them, she was unable to
go forth or to summon a slave to her relief.
Now the Great King had had sheeny pearls, as
big as pomegranates, set in the ceiling of the cham-
ber, by whose light she could see him lying on his
couch, his guglet of water by his hand, breathing
like one held fast in slumber. She said to herself,
"Drink I must have, or I shall perish; but surely I
shall not waken him!" And on feet light as a wisp
of incense, she entered the inner room and put her
hand to the guglet.
[108]
OF THEIR RAPTURE
When behold, Solomon caught her wrist.
Said he, "O Balkis-Maqeda, have you entered
here of your own will?"
She cried, "Alas, I have sinned against myself
and have betrayed my virginity! But let me drink,
or I shall die!" And he gave her the water and she
drank it, panting.
Asked he, "Am I released from my oath?"
And she answered, "You are released."
His hand drew her down on the couch beside
him. Beneath the coil of black pearls on her thick
hair, he drew a strand, winding it about his neck,
smelling its whorls as if they had been flowers,
kissing its springing sprays.
"O dusky flowers of far off southern gardens!"
His voice had a rustle in it as of forest-leaves in
wind. "O red-flower scents! My song soared on
feeble wings to-night. It held but one line worthy
of your beauty. 'Your eyes are doves!'"
A warm drop splashed on his wrist. He turned
his head on the cushion, lifted himself. His hand
went up and touched her cheek. "Tears?" he said,
wonderingly. And again, "Tears!"
There was a silence then, a silence that held its
breath. Beads were on his forehead. But his hands
were quiet.
At last he said, in a voice strange and cavernous,
"Yours is the victory! Go and sit in yonder chair."
She rose and sat there, in her dark robe, an ebony
[ 109]
idol with assassin eyes carved cameos of moon-
light.
"I cannot take you thus!" he said. "I beguiled
you, Maqeda. The food, the wine, were planned
to goad your thirst. The cracked guglet, the locked
doors—all were my ruse. My Royal ruse! Behold
the honour of the mighty King!"
"No!" she cried at him, crisping and uncrisping
her hands. "You broke no oath!"
He lifted himself heavily and sat with his dark
head against his knees. "Is such a trick kingly? The
game I set was not a fair one."
"Its close makes it so. I go—as I have come."
She was trembling now. O breath of his mouth,
how close! O tiny waves across her cheek! O
purple dusk perfumed with it! By the wan radi-
ance of the ceilinged pearls she saw the sadness sit-
ting in his eyes.
"Turn your face from me," he said. "When you
look at me my bones melt within me— So! I would
hold a memory-picture of you as I see you now—
comely as the tents of Kedar! ...
"The light is on your mystic hair—the hair I
kissed just now!—shining like zaberzate of Ophir,
that has baby suns tangled in it. The black pearls
girdling it—not sapphires, chill stones of virginity!
—I shall see them always!
"Your face—that has been a mirror for all my
tomorrows—I shall see it as I sit throned between
[no]
OF THEIR RAPTURE
my golden lions, in the dim distance, like a pale
cloud."
Under the silver voice a shiver flew through
Maqeda. There was a strange urgence in her veins.
She pressed a hand against her heart to still its
beating.
His voice fell lower.
"Upon my bed at night, I shall look for it," he
said, "but I shall not find it! I shall call it, but it
will not answer me!"
Then in the sources of her life the quivering joy-
bud burst to bloom. On winged feet she ran to
him.
"I give you the heart out of my woman's breast!"
she wept. "I give you my life!"
And the Great King took her in his arms. And as
in his song, his left hand was under her head, and
his right hand embraced her.
So, having savoured that wild-rose perfume from
the enclosed garden of an hundred Kings, he found
its watered bed and plucked its blossom.
And that flower of burning beauty he vased in
the sealed crystal of his heart.

Aftsi's Fear-Song
O my little leopard,
With soft black fur of velvet,
You are on the path of the pitfall!
You smell not the fires of brush-wood!
You see no more in the dark!
O my little leopard, you have forgot the scent of
danger!
O my little dik-dik,
With slim legs for leaping,
Alas, you are in the corral!
The iron gate has closed.
You will not leap the wattle.
O my little dik-dik, you have forgot leaping and
running!
O my little Queen,
To-night your lips are a censer,
Filled with love for incense.
His kisses will be the fire!
You will swoon in the fragrance!
O my little Queen, have you forgot your Throne in
Axum?
XIII
OF THEIR PARTING
From that day forward, while the Queen pre-
pared her return to her own Land, she and the
Great King sat in each other's shadows. There was
no hour of the days when they were separated one
from the other, nor did the star-studded night see
them divided. And the love between them was a
glory that shone from their faces.
'Azaryas she saw seldom, save at some Temple
ceremonial or feast, or at the Hippodrome or the
Field-of-Arms—always with many about them. His
gaze avoided hers and they never spoke together.
But more than once she beheld his dark-ringed
eyes on the Great King with the look of the
crouching leopard, liquid with bafflement and
desire.
Till at length his passion, sickened of its impo-
tence, that hated Solomon already, soured to some-
thing like hatred of her.
But Maqeda thought not of this. She lived alone
with her love in the tinted cloud.
It was Solomon's delight to surround her with
all lovely and curious things. Beside the House-of-
the-Forest-of-Lebanon he made her a garden that
[»3]
was musical with the babble of the brook Kedron
and sweet with the smell of its terebinth trees, deck-
ing it with arbours and fish-ponds of sweet-water
rimmed with iris, asphodel and thyme the honey-
plant of bees, and setting in it all manner of rare
shrubs and flowers. He gathered for her a thousand
priceless jewels of land and sea.
He sent to Tyre for its most famous artificer in
metals, who was named Huram Abie,1 who devised
a couch for their dalliance, which was supported
by eight lions of serpentine on whose shoulders
perched golden vultures with eyes of rubies and
teeth of pearls. On the couch's canopy were golden
eagles that continually sprayed it with rose-attar,
and when he desired that they two should be ob-
served of none, spread their jewelled wings to make
a screen. Nightly he caused it to be decked with
fresh lilies and marigolds.
Through the soft airs of spring he carried her
abroad, curbing the swift stallions of his chariot
beside her guarded fitter.
Many an excursion thus they made, sometimes
with long silences between them, sometimes gay
beyond prescience of the future, knowing only
they were there together—to Etham by the King's
Pools, with its paradises of blossom rimming his
high-arched aqueduct—to Bethlehem, the hamlet
where his father David had been born—to wistful
1 This is the Hiram Abif of the rituals of Free Masonry.
[114]
OF THEIR PARTING
Sharon, and placid Carmel dozing in its locust trees.
Once to the Hill of Gibeon, on whose height the
blue-hung Tabernacle once had stood under its
canopy of badger-skins, where, in that breathless
vision of his youth, Jahweh had offered him his
choice of gifts.
"And you chose wisdom!" she had said, when he
pointed out the spot to her.
And he had answered sombrely, "Would I had
enough to make you stay!"
For each day her going weighed more heavy
on him, and when he thought on their separation,
he groaned like a camel under the knout. By an
hundred subterfuges he sought to hold her. But at
end the day came, after four moons had waned,
when she said, "Dismiss me. For though it tear the
soul from my body, I must depart."
He replied in sorrow of spirit, "If it must be so!
I will gather my fleet at my port of Eloth to carry
you and your people."
But she answered, "No. My army waits in Sheba,
where my battered ships will betimes have been
repaired. From the desert I came to you. By the
desert way I go."
So he assembled for her a great splendour of gifts,
together with whatever the mind might wish for
of costly substances and entrancing apparel. He
added to these a thousand things on which store
was set in her land of /Ethiopia, with a herd of
["5l
select dromedaries and three thousand wains, with
asses to draw them, laden with riches and pro-
visions.
He marked her departure with the most splendid
of feasts, to which he commanded ten Kings of the
nations roundabout, at which were consumed three
thousand oxen and two thousand sheep, with fish
and game-birds without number. The tables cov-
ered the great concourse of the Hippodrome, com-
moners sitting at tables of iron, the Chiefs of the
people and the Army at tables of silver, and the
Court, with the Doctors of Law and those re-
nowned for their piety, at tables of gold. And these
last the Great King served with his own hands.
Here, in the presence of the host, Solomon added
to Maqeda's possessions his Province of Gaza,
which bordered the Land of the Philistines, to be
hers forever.
Now among the ten Kings bidden to the feast
was old Huram of Tyre, who, smiling his crooked
smile, said in the Great King's ear:
"O Solomon, I hear that an half of your ancient
prophecy came true, and that you got from Sheba
your kikarim of gold. But you have not yet given
her your ring." And he looked sidewise at the first
finger of Solomon's left hand.
Solomon answered, frowning, "Would she
would wear it, who has refused my crown!" And
Huram, wondering, said no more.
[116]
OF THEIR PARTING
That night she asked him, "Will you keep my
fifty elephants, Solomon? They were only to im-
press you. Did they impress you? I shall not need
them there in Axum."
"Very well," he told her. "I will give them to
Huram. He likes vast things, being so himself." For
Huram's bigness was a jest between them.
But the smile it called to her stiff lips was piteous.
The last day came.
In all magnificence her train set forth, Yerusha-
layim shouting its farewells. The Great King, in
his pomp and panoply, riding beside her, three
days' distance, through his smiling Land, till green
faded to grey and fields to sandy dunes. The desert
lay there like a sluggish sea, waiting to swallow her.
On its edge for a last night the purple tent was
pitched, the cushions spread, and the enclosure
sealed them to themselves.
O Sleep, Sister of Happiness! You will not con-
sort with Grief, your enemy! They did not sleep,
those two.
At the last, when the stars were blanching to the
dawn, she went to him and kneeled between his
knees.
"I thought to take away my secret untold," she
said. "But, oh, I cannot, Solomon! Put your arms
about me Closer. You remember our night of
nights, four months ago—the night of my thirst and
of your vow? Solomon, I shall bear your child."
[»7]
She felt his being thrill. "O Maqeda! I pray
Jahweh it will be a son!"
Long he held her, eyes staring into sorrowful
eyes. "This past is gone, Solomon. Lost it must be
forever, save in memory. Gone! But never, for me,
shall there be a night like that one!"
"Nor for me," he said. And after a time,
"Maqeda! If it is a man-child ..."
"I and he shall serve Jahweh. And the people of
my Land shall no more adore the Sun, or Almaquh,
or worship the mountains and forests, or the rocks
of the wildernesses, or what is in the abysses of the
waters, or graven images of gold, or feathered fowl
which fly. Nor by their means shall they make
divinement. This shall be a new law, to abide with
them forever."
He drew his ring from his finger, set it in her
palm and closed her hand over its glory. "When
he is of man's estate, send him to me. Let him bring
me this."
"I promise."
He wrapped his arms about her and she lay
quiet, on his breast.
"I thought to have a thousand sons," he said
sadly, "to carry the name of Jahweh to a thousand
nations. But I am not worthy and He has punished
me. I have no son. And this son of ours—if son he
will be—"
"We were not wedded by the Law of Kings,
[118]
OF THEIR PARTING
but though he does not rule Israel after you, he
shall rule his own Land one day. Axum and Sheba
shall have no longer Virgin-Queens, but Kings!
He shall be the first!"
Words failed them after that. There was not
much more to say. Nor time to say it, for the camp
was breaking. There would be all the empty years
to come in which to remember. They arrayed
themselves.
At length a sound of trumpets. Then Tamrin's
voice, husky, outside the tent. "O Queen! The
dromedaries wait."
In Solomon's arms she turned pale and began to
tremble. She had not fancied it could be like this—
so like to death! "You will not forget me?"
"Not until I go down into my last sealed garden,
into the deep bed of spices, into the long stillness
of the trees!"
Behind the veil of the wicker Maqeda rode si-
lent, dark head on Aftsi's breast and hot dry eyes
bent on the backward trail.
Jahweh was a jealous god. Though she wor-
shipped Him, she could never tell Him! She must
be always silent... silent... never boasting of her
soul's adoration. Perhaps He would be merciful to
him... and her!
And so the caravan swept away, as it had come,
bahda-bdhda—bahda-bdhda, into the desert.
[119]
Song of Maqeda's Camel-Driver
One night of fire and stars
My cousin, the daughter of my uncle,
Whose beauty was a legend on all the trails,
Stole from her tent, that was guarded with sharp spears,
To where I scouted, wheeling my pacing stallion.
The moon was gold, the sand was silver,
The night was white.
A night made for burning kisses and love-clasping.
But with our first embrace,
The wind blew, the sand rustled, the sun rose, the
camels grunted, the caravan woke and shook itself—
And she was gone, like a shadow.
Another night of mist,
The daughter of my father's brother,
Lovelier than all children of the desert,
Writhed from her pallet between the drowsy watchers,
To where I lay, twisting, on my sheep-skin.
The moon was crescent, the sand was colourless,
The night was grey.
A night made for foreboding and presentiment.
But with my first kiss of comfort,
The wind blew, the sand rustled, the sun rose, the
camels grunted, the caravan woke and shook itself—
And she was gone, like a smoke-wisp.
On a third night of cloud
My uncle's daughter, my cousin,
Most beautiful of all the daughters of the Sheiks,
[120]
Crept from beneath the chins of her father's tribesmen,
To where I lay wide-eyed, hoping and trembling.
There was no moon, the sand was void and dark,
The night was black.
A night made for swift daring and swifter flight.
We waited for no kiss.
And when the wind blew, the sand rustled, the sun rose,
the camels grunted, the caravan woke and shook itself—
We were gone, on our stolen dromedary!

XIV
OF THE SON THAT WAS BORN TO HER
Long, long the toils and tedium of the sandy
way—the chill, creeping desert nights, the rolling
days of fire ... the tears.
They came at last to Sheba, where Nasiba,
Maqeda's General, bowed before her, and her wait-
ing Army raised a shout like the clashing surge.
Her broken ships were once more seaworthy.
Her host aboard, Tamrin led the fleet across the
sea.
Five months and five days after she parted from
Solomon, she came through the country of Bala
Zadisareya,1 where her birth-pains took her. The
child was a man-child. He was brought forth by
clear sunlight, white as milk, with blood of gold
and downy hair soft as young camel's wool. His
eyes were amber with dark flecks in them.
Aftsi set him pridefully in her arms, crying, "A
second Solomon! What shall he be named?"
Maqeda answered, "I shall call him Menyelek,
'Other-Self.' But his Name-of-Dignity shall be
iThe exact place, Ethiopian legend states, was near the vil-
lage of Addi-Schmagali, a few hours northwest of Asmara.
[122]
OF THE SON THAT WAS BORN
Walda-Tabbib, which is to say 'Son-of-the-Wise-
Man,' or, in his father's tongue, Bayna-Lehkem." 2
So, through the mountain passes, she came at last
to her own Land, and all the borders of the country
rejoiced at her return. Her Provincial Officers hast-
ened to bring gifts and to offer homage. Of the
riches with which Solomon had gifted her she made
lavish rewards. Some she arrayed in splendid ap-
parel, to some she gave costly jewels, others she
raised in rank.
Seyoum, brother of Nasiba, with his Army, held
her Axum. She entered it in majesty, and when she
had brought the Family-Royal from her rock-
fortress of Salalieh, and had set up again the golden
Throne in the Temple of Almaquh, she sent for
Seyoum and said to him, "O War-Uncle, I speak
to your loyalty."
He answered, "Yours to command, mine to
obey."
Said she, "In my sojourn in Yerushalayim I
learned much. I learned that over our gods of Sun
and Moon, and Almaquh, is yet a greater, a God
Jahweh, who has made them all. This Land shall
serve Him, and Him only. How may this best be
done?"
Then he was silent, brooding, till she said,
"Speak."
"Bid me seize all the higher Priests, the beaters
2 Or 'Ebna Hakim, the Ibn el Hakim of the Arabian texts.
[123]
of the silver kettle-drums, all who wear the lion's-
mane collar and the leopard-stole, and hurl them
down the deepest gorge of Harrar."
"Why this?" she cried. "I am no woman of
blood!"
Then asked he, "May I speak plain?"
She said, "I listen."
Seyoum, the General, said, "By Axum's law her
Queens must be virgin, having never known man.
The tale of your babe has gone abroad. Men say,
'It is the end of our ancient law.'"
"So it shall be. After me no woman shall reign,
but my own son and King Solomon's, and his seed
after him, from generation to generation. It shall be
so written in the rolls of our Prophets."
"So much, O Queen, may be. But to throw
down Axum's gods—profane their Temples with a
foreign worship—is to invoke disaster. The Priests
are rich and powerful. They will fight. And in the
end I see ruin and death for you and for your son."
When she had pondered this, she said, "Your
thought is rooted in honesty. Counsel me."
He answered, "Let well be. The law of the
succession may be altered—you can win through
that. As for the rest, worship your Jahweh, if you
must, in secret. When your son is grown, the dead
shall lift up their heads to learn his will."
And, after talk with Tamrin, the Fleet-Master,
whom she trusted fully, and because she feared to
[124]
OF THE SON THAT WAS BORN
lose all her plan, she did as Seyoum counselled.
There were many murmurs, but she was strong of
purpose that the child of the King of her Heart
should have his Kingdom. Under her gaze the
Nobles of her Court, Governors, Counsellors and
Administrators, declared their loyalty, and all who
plotted rebellion turned pale with fear.

Maqeda's Lullaby
Sleep, little Negus,
Sleep, and suck, and sleep again.
There's no harm can come to you at all.
When the tawny lions roar—
Ooo-rrr—ufffff-rrr-roo!—
There •will be a thousand spears
Round my little Menyelek,
Little Negus Menyelek.
Fire-light and rush-light, star-light and moonlight,
All for little Menyelek,
Here with me!
Sleep, little Negus,
Wake, and crow, and sleep again.
Mother's sitting in her silver chair.
When the Royal kettle-drums
Roar, dumd—de-de-de-de,
There will be an Army
To fight for little Menyelek,
Little Negus Menyelek.
Birth-right and King-right, crown-right and sword-
right,
All for little Menyelek,
Here with me!

XV
HOW SHE SENT WALDA-TABBIB
TO HIS FATHER
So the years went over the tops of the mountains
in peace. Maqeda ordered her Kingdom aright and
none disobeyed her command.
As for the child Walda-Tabbib, he grew up
blithe and handsome. Tamrin taught him as a lad
all that had to do with water and with ships, and
Seyoum lessoned him in the coursing and trapping
of wild beasts and the arts of cavalarice and
weapons. Also Maqeda had him taught outland
tongues, besides Sabaean, especially—Gaza being
now in her sway—the speech of Israel.
While the high-chinned Priests, in their white
robes, in the Temple of Almaquh, and in the Tem-
ples of the Sun, beat the silver kettle-drums and
chanted their invocations, she and her son in secret
worshipped Jahweh together.
And as he grew, he so resembled his father
Solomon—in his members and the bearing of his
• shoulders and the look of his eyes—that sometimes
Maqeda's heart would stand still to see him.
Ah, the long, long silence! No more she sent her
trading-ships into the north, but rather to the Land
[127]
of Mesr, which is Egypt, and to the further coasts
of the Indias, while Axum waxed in riches and in
might.
Her Armies carried its flags far, till her Realm's
border ran from Gaza nigh to the northern Land
of Judah, by the sea-coast to Leba and Sheba, to
Bisis and Asnet: thence by the Sea of the Blacks
and the Naked Men, to Mount Kebereneyon and
the Sea of Darkness, where the sun sets: thence by
Fene'el and Lasifala to the Lands near Eden; thence
to Zawel and the Seas of Tarsis and Medyam and
so again to Gaza. A Realm Imperial! She ruled it
all, having such wealth and honour as had none be-
fore or after her.
Likewise the Great King's fame, she knew, had
widened. His rule was potent from Thapsacus to
the Euphrates, on the Lower and Upper Nile, in
Phoenicia and Armanya, from Tabriz to Yemen
and from Ismar to Persepolis. In the lands of Kittim
and Kaphtor1 men uttered his name in wonder.
Of darker tales that were told of Solomon who
was to tell her? Though Tamrin, who had been
suckled on rumour, and knew an hundred mariners
in every port, had heard them—how he no longer
sat each day in his Court of Justice under the cedar
pillars, leaving disputes to the dusty Synedrion
Doctors—how his great Temple Courts heard sel-
domer now the quiring of the Levite choristers,
1 Cyprus and Crete.
[128]
OF THE SON'S MISSION
oftener the candled dancing of gauze-clad women
—how he had wasted in one single year a thousand
kikarim for swift-hoofed stallions from Cuth,
coursers of Kings—how he had wedded seven hun-
dred wives, and had three hundred concubines.
Tamrin's dream of the blameless King was empty
now!
But of all these things Maqeda had heard noth-
ing. Her son was her life, his young eyes were her
mirrors of the past.
But ah, the long, long silence! The noiseless
memories down the clanging years! There were
grey strands now in her raven hair.
One day, when the Lad Walda-Tabbib was
twelve years old, he said to her, "My mother, what
manner of man is King Solomon, who is my father?
Tamrin used to tell me many tales of him, when I
was little. He has forgot them now, I think. Why
do you tell me none?"
At that she spoke shortly, for the questions
stabbed her. "Ask me not of him." And he went
out from her presence.
Again he said to her, "My playmates know as
much of my father, the wise Solomon, as do I. Why
do I not know him as other boys their fathers?"
And a second time, she put him off with short
words.
But a third time, when he was turned eighteen,
[129]
he said to her, "Shall I never know my father, who
is so wonderful?" Then she replied, "His Land is
very far and the way is difficult."
But he said, "O my mother, nevertheless I would
go and look upon his face."
She summoned Tamrin then, white-polled now,
though tough as a pine-cone, and said to him, "My
son is of age and stature to be taken to his father
in Yerushalayim. You shall go with him, and if
Jahweh permits, shall bring him back to me."
He pondered a moment, for he knew that tears
lay in it for her. "Is it best?"
She answered only, "A Queen's promise is not
to be broken like a stone."
Then said he, "On my head be his safety!"
She bade a retinue be prepared, with a body-
guard of an hundred spearmen, and had all made
ready of ships and provisions that were necessary
for the journey, together with fitting gifts for
King Solomon and for those in authority. And she
charged Tamrin especially with the health and
safety of the lad, whom she made swear to her that
he would wed no wife in Israel, and would on no
account remain in Yerushalayim, but when his visit
was ended would return to her.
With her own hand, then, on white, split kid-
skin thin as inner willow-bark, she wrote a letter
in ink of musk and amber.
This she put into a holder carved from a single
[ 130]
OF THE SON'S MISSION
onyx-stone, and that into a case of unique crystal
that had seven stars imprisoned in its veining, and
the crystal in a box of gold, and gave this to the lad
to take to the Great King. She gave him also the
Ring of Power which Solomon had given her, bid-
ding him give it to his father for a sign, and kissed
him between the brows. Said she:
"One last thing. Beseech the Great King to send
me by your hand a piece of the fringe of the cov-
ering that is over the Ark of Jahweh, so that this
Land may have it to worship all our days."
But when old Tamrin cried the cry of depar-
ture, and the caravan uncoiled, she could not bear
to see it start (lest she should cry out not to be left
behind) and fled and hid herself.
Now Tamrin this time took the long water-way,
to the tip of the Sea Al-Ahman, where was Solo-
mon's port of Eloth. There he harboured, and when
all was ready, made a caravan and pushed north
to Gaza.
For this was the Province Solomon had given
Maqeda, her own possession, and near to Yeru-
shalayim.
XVI
OF THE CRYING OF SHIMEI
Now with the going of Maqeda the Great King
had sought forgetfulness of her in labour. He could
not rest.
The Temple finished, he had flown to building
costly Palaces. One for his Egyptian Queen, Mak-
shara, of Tarshish marble and gold, raftered with
India almug-wood and floored with cypress, in
whose ceiling were set jewelled figures of the sun,
moon and stars which lighted it by night; whose
balconies were of brass, its roof-tiles of silver and
its walls of vari-coloured marble; whose Court was
paved with blocks of sapphire and sardius-stone.
One for himself with walls of Sidon glass, lustrous
and tinted, paved with Sargon mosaics and girdled
with gardens of aromatic shrubs and flowing rivu-
lets.
When these were done—and long years sped in
the doing—he had dotted the land with Forts and
Chariot-Cities, decorating their walls with costly
graven-work and with tablets of bronze. And from
one to other he laid down roads of basalt.
Till zest failed him, and he had turned to gaming
[132]
and the chase, horses and chariots, riches and de-
lights.
His merchants combed the seas for rarities. They
brought him stallions out of Egypt, live Mesopo-
tamian tigers, alien trees of gorgeous blossoming,
perfumes of Punt and spices of Galtet and Zafar.
And for these he levied tribute from an hundred
bondaged peoples.
He drank deep. Often all night long the shawm,
the sambuk and the tambour trilled and twanged.
O weary days!
At last lust had crept from its ambush, looking
at him level-eyed, abashed no more.
His three Queens, the Egyptian, the Tyrian and
the Moabitess, from their curtained Courts had
watched his women come, by one and one, by
twos, by tens: Malcha, Princess of Edom, gracile
and melting in the dance; and Jarah, cool-breasted,
honey-haired daughter of the King of Zobah; Shi-
phra the Silent, swarthy child of the Baktrian1
King, with red-dyed hair and flowing gem-sewn
trousers; Zibia, the voluptuous Babylonian beauty,
witty and wanton; wives of the Canaanites and the
Zidonians, of Rif the Upper Nile Land, of Surest,2
Kuergue and Damascus. Concubines of every na-
tion between the horizons.
But in the end none held him as the Egyptian,
1 Afghan.
2 Syria.
[133]
Makshara, devious, subtle, secret, passionate, first
of his Queens and closest, after all.
Now when Tamrin's caravan that carried the
youth reached Gaza Province, the folk of its chief
town, beholding him sitting his dromedary with
posture of a Ras, thinking him Solomon's self—
such was the likeness between them—made awe-
struck obeisance.
And far and wide the word went, "The Great
King comes!" till all Gaza was stirred, even to the
border of Judah.
But the wiser of the town said, "It cannot be
Solomon! This very day he weds the Assyrian
Princess in Yerushalayim. Besides, this is a youth!"
Straightway a spy of Benyas, Captain of Solo-
mon's host, who had an hundred eyes, galloped on
relays of swift horses to Yerushalayim to bear re-
port.
The caravan passed from Gaza into Judah.
There one night, at a populous river-town where
they rested, old Tamrin said to Walda-Tabbib,
"Son of my Queen, let us walk abroad and listen
with our ears."
So they veiled their faces in their chammas and
strolled the market-place, and lo, an old man, bent
and frost-bearded, brandishing a staff, and crying
to the people:
"O Israel, be admonished! But who shall admon-
[i34]
ish your King? For his feet point from the way
of Jahweh. They go down to the abysses!"
When he heard this Walda-Tabbib was in-
censed, and he cried to Tamrin, "Who is it dares
say such words of the Great King?"
One nearby, overhearing, answered, "It is Shi-
mei,3 the learned, who lessoned Solomon in the pre-
cepts of the Law. He dared to chide even David
... but David repented!"
And the youth's anger bubbled at that, also. The
old man, shaking his staff on high, cried on:
"Hearken, O Israel! Justice once sat on the
Great King's lips. In his mouth was wisdom. But
no more! Men wait 'in vain before his golden
Throne! The jasper benches of his Court of Jus-
tice are empty!
"He has wed the offspring of forbidden Kings,
worshippers of obscene gods, and called from far
Lands their daughters of ribaldry. O skilful in
caresses, ministers of lewdness! In his after-Palace
are seven hundred wives and three hundred concu-
bines! Their lips drop honey, but under their
tongues are wormwood and a two-edged sword!"
But when folk crowded about him, listening, one
obese and wrinkled, wearing a rich robe perfumed
with authority and gold ear-rings, laid hooked fin-
gers on his arm and said harshly, "Get you gone,
3 In fact, Shimei, the Teacher, was dead before Solomon
married the Egyptian.
[135]
Shimei! One day the Great King will smite your
neck!"
And the old man, his tangled hair blowing about
his face, stumbled away in silence.
Walda-Tabbib turned a white face on Tamrin.
"Is he mad, that Shimei?"
Tamrin shook his head.
"It is true, then? How much of it is true?"
Tamrin answered, "Who knows? Kings are not
like other men, nor Solomon like other Kings."
Walda-Tabbib said, "I am his son. These things
I must know before I come to him."
He drew his chamma closer about his face, and
left the other, saying, "I will walk alone awhile.
Be not concerned for me."
And to himself he said, "O Jahweh, is it thus you
will punish me for my sin of pride?"
Tamrin saw him not again that night. Nor did
either ever speak of that walk abroad. But after-
ward to the old Fleet-Master's eye the youth
seemed less-a youth.
Ah, well, it was bound to come, Tamrin
thought.
Song of Walda-Tabbib's Body-Guard
Ha-Bdhf The Ras!
The Wife of the Ras and her Necklace of Gold!
The Sardius-Stone of the Golden Necklace of the Rasf
Wife!
The Fire of the Sardius-Stone of the Golden Necklace
of the Ras* Wife!
The Chief of the Mountain that saw the Fire of the
Sardius-Stone
Of the Golden Necklace of the Raf Wife!
Was it the Fire of the Sardius-Stone of the Golden
Necklace?
Or the Fire in the Eye of the Ras, Wife?
Ha-Bdh! The Ras' Wife!
Who from the House-top threw the Golden Necklace
to the Mountain-Chief!
The Gleam of the Ras, obsidian Dagger
When he saw the Golden Necklace of the Sardius-
Stone
Thrown from the House-top to the Mountain-Chief!
Weep, O Daughters of the High-Places!
Weep for the Wife of the Ras!
Weep for the Chief of the Mountain!

XVII
HOW WALDA-TABBIB CAME TO SOLOMON
Now Benyas' spy, coming to Yerushalayim,
sought out his master at the Field-of-Arms, and
said:
"O Benyas, Gaza, which is in the Realm of the
Southern Queen of Axum-Sheba, is perplexed.
There is come a caravan—not of the merchants, for
it neither sells nor buys—guarded with strange
spearmen, and at its head one who is in noble car-
riage and in stalwart stature the Great King's very
twin."
Benyas said, "Whence comes he, and whither is
he bound?"
The man answered, "None dared ask him. But
some said that his people speak among themselves
the tongue of the southern Land of the /Ethiops."
And Benyas, thinking, "Has a son come to Solo-
mon from that Queen of the South of twenty years
ago?" carried the story to the Great King.
When Solomon heard it he trembled. Could it
be? O Sheba, Sheba!
And he bade Benyas go with all speed, carrying
gifts to the traveler, with many wagons of meats
and wines to entertain his people.
[138]
HOW HIS SON CAME TO SOLOMON
When Benyas, with his train, encountered the
caravan, with Walda-Tabbib and Tamrin riding at
its head, he remembered the old Fleet-Master, call-
ing him by name. And making himself known, he
said to the youth, "O fortunate traveler! Are you
indeed from that Queen of the South called by the
Sabaeans Sheba-Balkis?"
Walda-Tabbib replied, "She is my mother, Ma-
qeda. I go to my father, King Solomon the
Exalted, in Yerushalayim."
Then Benyas cried, "O seed of David, the lord
of my lord! The Great King is burned with fire of
longing to see you, and has bade me come with
you quickly. You are his first-born heir. To you
belong all this Land and the Throne of Israel."
But Walda-Tabbib answered, "I rejoice if I have
found grace with him unseen. But I put trust in his
God Jahweh, that when I have seen King Solo-
mon, He will bring me again to my own Land and
to my mother, its Queen."
Said Benyas, "That country of cold ice-clouds,
heat-glare, and whirlwind? How may one prefer
it to this, that flows with milk and honey!"
Then Tamrin, the old Fleet-Master, said in his
harsh voice, "In /Ethiopia we must not dig deep
wells as do you, nor do we die in the summer's
heat. And this son of his mother is sworn to return
to her."
So the caravan passed on to Yerushalayim.
[i39]
When they were yet some parasangs from the
walls, Benyas galloped ahead to Solomon, where
he sat in his Palace, who cried, "Speak! Is it my
son?" And Benyas said:
"O two wings of one golden bird! O likeness of
one sea-pearl to another! He looks with your look
and speaks with your tongue. His eyes are as one
gladsome with wine, and his neck is like the Tower
of David!"
Said Solomon, "Fetch him quickly by the
King's-Gate!" And Benyas rode back, and when
the youth and Tamrin had arrayed themselves,
and the hundred Axum warriors who were their
body-guard, in gorgeous raiment, outspeeding the
caravan they entered into the city.
Now their way led by the Hippodrome, and
when the young men there beheld Walda-Tabbib,
they were all astonished, saying one to another,
"What! Does Solomon ride so early? And what
strange guards are those?" And they flocked after
in a swelling crowd. Also, at the King's-Gate the
soldiers stared out of round eyes, muttering, "How
comes he back who has not yet gone forth?"
Till Benyas cried, "Out of the way!" and led
the youth within the Palace, and took him to
where Solomon sat in his hyacinthine chair.
Walda-Tabbib approached with bowed head,
and did obeisance. But the Great King, seeing in
him his own so-shining youth—like King David risen
[ i4° ]
from the dead, but handsomer—sprang up and ran
to him and kissed his eyes. "O Son of your mother,
and of me!" he cried. "My son!"
He stripped off his own robe of cloth-of-gold
and his jewelled belt and put them on him, and set
a crown upon his head, crying to his Officers and
Nobles, "Look you! You who have scoffed among
yourselves, counting me lack-seed, say now if
here be not proof of virtue in my loins!"
They answered, "Now bless the woman who has
brought him forth! And bless the day that mingled
your bodies in rapture! Seeing him beside you,
who shall say, 'Whence did he come?' We are his
servants! Let him be Israel's King after you!"
And they brought the youth gifts, each accord-
ing to his estate.
He gave to the Great King the ring his mother
had sent. And Solomon said to him, "My son, you
shall ask of me what you will, even my Kingdom!"
Walda-Tabbib answered, "Only one thing I ask,
beside your blessing. The Queen, my mother,
would have you send her a piece of the fringe of
the covering over Jahweh's Ark, that our Land
may have it to worship forever."
Said Solomon, "She shall have that and more."
Then Tamrin spoke, in a voice like a sour olive:
"May I give the Great King a message sent by
me?"
"Speak, old friend," said Solomon.
[141]
Said Tamrin, "My Royal mistress prays you to
anoint and consecrate this youth, her son no less
than yours, as King over Ethiopia. Lay upon him
the command that a woman shall no more reign
over it. Make him its King by the Great Decree.
This she asks through me."
Cried Solomon, "By the eternal Lake of Fire!
Save for her travailing with him and suckling him,
what has a woman to do with a son? The daughter
is to the mother—not the son! He is to his father!
In such words Jahweh cursed Eve. I to give back
my first-born son to her? Never! He shall sit on
my Throne between my golden lions, and rule
this Israel after me!"
Then the youth spoke:
"O Great King! I came to look upon your face
and feel your hands. To salute you and to do you
homage—then to return to the Land where I was
born. As for riches and apparel of honour, rule and
Throne, they wait me there."
"Enough!" cried Solomon, in his voice of seven
thunders. "You are my son! You shall not go with
my blessing! I say you shall be King here!"
And when he spoke, all his Officers and Minis-
ters, and the great Dignitaries, listened in fear and
wonder. Then said he to the lad, "Go now, lest I
be angered! Tomorrow I shall choose instructors
for you."
Then Walda-Tabbib bowed before him, and
[142]
laying at his feet the gold box his mother had sent
by him, went out, followed by glum Tamrin, mut-
tering in his beard.
With the anger still in his eyes Solomon lifted it.
He raised its lid, opened the crystal case and onyx
holder, and took out the letter writ in ink of musk
and amber.
His fingers fumbled as he unrolled the kid-skin.
At a sign all present there retired. Not till he sat
alone did he read the writing:
Solomon!
Do you remember, in your high emprizes, far in
the backward and abysm of time, the hot wine of
sesame-seed and the broken water-guglet? Balkis-
Mdqedd remembers!
With this I send you our son, as I promised. He is
all I have of you, so I have sworn him on my breasts
to return to me when he has seen your glory.
So, farewell.
The sun sank, goldening. The shadows length-
ened. All the Palace waited.
At length Elihoreph, the Scribe, lifted the door-
curtain and peered within.
Solomon sat bowed like a sickle on his hya-
cinthine chair. The fire was out in his eyes.

XVIII
HOW WALDA-TABBIB was declared
EMPEROR OF THE AZTHIOPS
Now Solomon, wishful that his son should see
the splendour of his rule, made him feastings galore
with music and dancing, and entertainments of
horse- and chariot-racing in his Hippodrome, and
in the hunt, coursing the hart, the roebuck and the
fallow-deer. Also he bade Benyas, Captain of the
Host, to take him with an hundred chariots to see
his greater cities, and the huge-walled Fortresses
he had founded on the hills of Lebanon and the
borders of uneasy Ephraim, at Horon and Hazor
and Tadmor in the desert.
Walda-Tabbib beheld and praised, but he saw
the sullen mutiny in the labourers' faces as they
toiled in sweat.
Also Solomon, at his wisdom's peak, had made
deep study of the veiled lore of the Qabalah. He
had learned effulgent Names and terrible Words
of Power, to pronounce against unclean spirits,
water and fire, to interpret dreams and to summon
the absent. These he would have given to the
youth, to be a heritage.
[ 144]
EMPEROR OF THE jETHIOPS
But now his mind, weakened by lust, was traitor.
What he told him Walda-Tabbib set down—is it
not writ by his hand in our Book of the Wrapper
of Righteousness,1 which the foolish and ignorant
hold was writ by Jahweh himself? But he who ex-
plores this sees but a mind astray, stumbling in a
labyrinth of dark shadows without The Light!
In a day-dawn the youth issued from the House-
of-the-Forest-of-Lebanon, where was his apart-
ment, hard by the Great King's Palace. He
thought, "It is the hour for the morning sacrifice.
I will go with my father to the Temple."
At the gate the Levite Guard bowed low. "En-
ter, Son of the King/' he said. And Walda-Tabbib
entered.
The Great King's couch was on its marble ter-
race under the sky, and threading the corridors, he
came to its wide-arched door. Looking, he saw
that Solomon slept, and he thought, "His slaves
have forgot to call him. Shall I go and waken
him?"
But while he hesitated, Makshara, the Egyptian,
stepping softly, crossed the terrace, with her slaves
bearing a canopy of black cloth. It was studded
with a thousand diamonds, shining white fire, dis-
posed within it like the constellations of the sky-
vault.
1 The Lefif a Tsedk.
[145]
"Spread it quickly," she whispered them, "be-
fore the sunlight wakes him."
They spread above his couch the false night
with its lying stars, and vanished, while the youth
watched in wonder.
And presently the voice of Solomon beneath the
canopy, muffled, thick with sleep: "Makshara! Is it
not day?"
"Not so, my lord. See how the stars are
shining!"
Then silence, while the Great King slept again,
not knowing in his folly day from night. For the
wine had ravened in him the night before. And
that day, from the high altar of the Temple, no
morning smoke arose to be a sweet savour to Jah-
weh.
Down the corridor Walda-Tabbib's slow foot-
steps. The waste of treasure—the empty Court of
Judgement—the cloud of concubines—and now,
this! Prayers forgot before the Holy-of-Holies,
where the Shekinah burned, perpetual, between the
Cherubim!
But, lo, the lisp of bare rose-tinted feet behind
him, a voice whose tone was sorcery: "O King's-
Son! Have you no word for me?"
He turned and looked into the Egyptian eyes of
Makshara.
She drew him to a place where a censer burned
and painted curtains hung, and made him sit.
[146]
"Why have we seen so little of each other? Only
at stifling feasts and duller chorals!"
"I have been away," he said, uneasy under those
subtle, ardent eyes.
"I know. The Fortresses and Chariot-Cities!
And what next?"
"I return to my mother's Kingdom."
"I remember her," she said, "as all here do. I
wonder if she is still as beautiful. I hated her then,
of course. But that is so long ago. I hold it not
against you."
She leaned nearer, looking up at him through
fringed lashes. "Why should you go? You know
you could be King!"
"I shall be King in my own country."
"That as not here. If it were Egypt, now! But
Israel is above all else but Egypt. Do not go!"
"I must."
A languorous sigh lifted her breasts. "You
would make Yerushalayim a fairer place, you
whose beauty has only half this gloomy blood.
These hard, cold Israelites! Forever prating of
their mighty Jahweh! I like better our shining Ra,
and gentle Hathor and Khnumu, each with his
proper instrument of harp or dulcimer or tam-
bour."
She touched his sleeve, letting him feel the
warmth of her fingers.
"Stay!" she whispered. "Stay for my sake! I
[i47]
was a baby when they married me to Solomon. I
love youth about me...."
Something like the claw of an evil bird tore at
his heart. A sickness of body and spirit swept upon
him. He rose, stammering excuses, and with hur-
rying step went down the corridor and out the
guarded gate.
He found Zabud, the Great King's Chief-Com-
panion. "The rime of my sojourn here is at an
end," he told him. "I pray you lay at my father's
feet the request that I may go." Zabud did so.
Next day Solomon called his Ministers and
Counsellors and his Chief Officers and the Elders,
and said he, "My son will not remain in Yerushala-
yim, nor will he reign over this Israel after me."
Having said this he bowed his head and was for
some while silent, and those to whom he spoke,
seeing the pain behind his eyelids, sighed a long
sigh that went whispering regret.
Then he said to them, "It is my will to make
him, by the Grand Ceremony of Installation, King
in his own Land, and by my Royal Edict to con-
stitute him, before all the Nations, right and law-
ful Emperor of the ./Ethiops.
"This shall be done before the down-going of
the sun. Zadok, see you to it."
"Yes, Lord," said the old High Priest. In his
voice was pity.
[148]
Solomon continued, heavily:
"Now you, my Counsellors and Officers, sit on
my right hand and on my left. Thus my Govern-
ment is well-ordered. And that my son's may be
so—he being my first-born child—you shall send
with him your first-born sons, to sit in like man-
ner, on his either hand. Thus his people shall see
the right ordering of Royalty, and in /Ethiopia as
in Israel, Jahweh shall be exalted."
They answered, "O David's-Son, who can resist
your command?"
And they prepared the sacred oil of Kingship.
Soon the air throbbed to the golden drums. Flutes
and pipes and the harps of pleasant sounds made
the Squares of the city glad.
They brought the lad to the Temple and into its
Holy-of-Holies, where he laid hands on the horns
of the Altar, and Zadok, with Benyas the Head of
the Army, anointed him with the holy oil and
the ointment of Kingship, naming him David.
Then they set him on the white mule of the
Great King and led him about the City, the Tem-
ple trumpeters going before, sounding the silver
khatsotsrah, while all the people saluted him, cry-
ing, "Ha-Bah! Long live the King!" And the con-
gregation of the Priests intoned "So may it be!"
Afterward Zadok admonished him, saying:
"O King David, hearken! Worship none but
Jahweh and keep His precepts. Otherwise you
[ H9]
shall be cursed in your Palace and your people in
their houses. You shall suffer leprosy and the burn-
ing fever, blindness and terror of heart. And their
barns and granaries, their flocks and cattle-runs
shall fail, and their laughter become the howling of
jackals.
"Fear and obey Him and the maned Hon shall
flee your footsteps. Your enemies shall tremble
before the bridles of your horses. Your people shall
run by seven ways to bless you, and they shall
share in your glory."
Then they carried Walda-Tabbib in procession
to his father's Palace, and Solomon issued his De-
cree to all foreign nations, reciting the youth's
Kingship.
And he ordered two hundred oared-ships of his
fleet, with their mariners, to gather at Eloth-port
with Tamrin's, to carry the men of Israel who
went with Walda-Tabbib to his Land.

XIX
OF THE RAPE OF THE ARK
The first-born sons of his Counsellors and Offi-
cers whom Solomon appointed to accompany the
new King were:
A High Priest learned in the Temple rituals and
rubrics, with his Archdeacon and Acolytes; a
King's-Companion; Commanders of the Land- and
Water-Forces; Scribes of the Oxen and the Vine-
yards; an Administrator of the Royal House; a
Chief of the Workmen; a Master of Decorations;
an Assessor of Tithes; a Director of Drums and
Music;1 a Bearer of the Royal Standard and a
Royal Vintnor; with three score others of lesser
dignity.
And Solomon prepared for the youth horses and
chariots, a thousand racing-camels and three thou-
sand asses, with twenty score wains laden with all
manner of precious things, woven stuffs, eye-
witching apparel, gold and silver and jewels un-
countable.
And for his Army he gave him sixty score war-
riors from each of the Ten Tribes of Israel; thus
1 The word used here Budge translates "Recruits."
[151]
did his Army number in all twelve thousand fight-
ing-men.2
He gave him also the outer covering of the Ark
—part of whose fringe Queen Maqeda had asked
for—wove of fine gold wirework twisted and ham-
mered into pattern, wherein were the five gold
mice and the ten gold emerods of the Philistines.3
Now of the chosen Functionaries-Elect—all first-
born sons of their fathers—the chief was 'Azaryas,
son of the High Priest Zadok. When with the rest
he came for the Great King's blessing, Solomon
felt a little wind stirring a dead memory's dust. But
it was long ago—that night of the moonlight ter-
race, with Sheba listening to his song. He looked
at 'Azaryas' humbly down-bent head, his brows
for a moment knotted in a frown. And the dust
stirred, but that was all.
O secret hatred! It had buzzed like a great bee
in 'Azaryas' heart those twenty years!
He had not now the limber hps, the smoldering
insolent eyes. He was heavy from fat-living, jaun-
diced, with pallid face and eye-pouches. But in him
burned still that coal Queen Maqeda's beauty had
fanned to flame.
What did she look like now? He would be
2 From these descend the present-day Falasha, the so-called
Jews of northern Ethiopia, and the "Prester John" of medieval,
travelers.
3 See I Samuel vi, 4. In the Ethiopian legend the number
differs from that in the Biblical account.
[15*]
High Priest in her Axum, under the new King
David! Even a Queen bowed low before the High
Priest. He alone spoke with Jahweh!
In his bed that night he dreamed—a shrewd,
sharp dream that shocked him wide awake. In his
dream he had stolen Zion, the holy Axk! Robbed
Solomon of what had made him and Israel great—
robbed him of Jahweh!
He lay sweating and shaking. So real! So stung
with verity! What did it mean? Were not dreams
sent for a purpose?
He slept again. He had no memory of a further
dream when he woke, but it was in his mind full-
blown, a fact, a plan. As if an Angel had brought
it to him!
It was Jahweh's will! The Great King had
thrown away his favour. Wine, chariots, women,
had taken the place of prayer with Solomon. He,
'Azaryas, had been chosen to punish him! The
Angel had shown him how!
With eager feet he went to find his doom—in
Jahweh's way!
He called together certain of the Officers and
Counsellors who were to go with the young King.
They were twelve. Gloom was in their faces. He
asked them, "Why are you sorrowful?"
They answered, "We are chose out for wrath.
We must leave our home, our smiling Capital, the
sacred Temple of our worship, to live in a heathen
[i53]
Land forever. Here we were born. Here we would
die, by Jahweh's living Spirit in our Ark."
Then 'Azaryas said, "I come to strike a covenant
with you all. Swear, each, by Jahweh's secret
name, that so long as life is in you, none other shall
hear what I now say." They swore.
Said he then, "Last night, in a dream, Jahweh's
Great Angel appeared to me and said, 'Hear, 'Azar-
ya! Israel has provoked Jahweh to anger. The
King contemns His law.'"
A mutter rolled among them—of consent.
"Till he repents, my favour is turned from him.
It shall cleave to his son David. With David shall
go the Ark of My Presence from Yerushalayim."
He paused. They were looking at him out of
white, strained faces. "The Lady-Zion!" Their
voices babbled and clashed.
"How could that be?" It was his Archdeacon
'Elmeyas who spoke.
"The Angel told me. Later you shall know. He
bade me search your hearts upon this thing."
'Elmeyas asked, stammering, "If we touch the
Ark, will not the Glory smite us? Shall we not
die?"
"Sacrifices are to be offered first, and priestly
hands shall move it—we are Priests. Say now, each
one of you, are you for this? It is from Jahweh."
One by one, though fearfully, they covenanted.
And 'Azaryas warned, "No word to our Bang
[i54]
David! He shall know nothing till the Lady-Zion
is well on the way with us!" At the end he said,
"Give me, each of you, ten double-drachmas, that
I may do the bidding of the Angel!"
Presently they brought the sum to him.
With it he sought out a skilful joiner, and bade
him make certain planks of shittim-wood, shaped
and measured, telling him, "We are for the sea-
way, where are frequent storms, and for safety's
sake I take these planks that in need may be made
into a raft."
These ready, with the drachmas he bought
beaten gold and in his house, secretly, overlaid
them with it.
Now he had cunningly designed these so that,
rightly joined, they would form an Ark propor-
tioned like Jahweh's in the Holy-of-Holies.
Then, going to Walda-Tabbib, he said to him,
"Shall we depart this city of Yerushalayim with-
out a sacrifice of Propitiation before the Lady-
Zion? This should be on the last night. Since I am
your High Priest, will you not ask your father
Solomon to let me celebrate this rite, with my
Archdeacon and his Acolytes?"*
The youth asked this, accordingly, and the
Great King answered, "Do so." He ordered given
*In the Ethiopian version of the legend, in the account of
the later ceremonies at Axum, the former is seen to have been
the Administrator of the Royal House and one of the two
latter the Assessor of Tithes.
[155]
to 'Azaryas five score each of bulls and oxen, ten
thousand sheep, and goats of equal number, with
two hundred and twenty silver sahal-weight of fine
white flour and of bread forty hampers.
Thus in the night, when all the caravan was
loading for the start, 'Azaryas and his ritualists per-
formed the rite of the sacrifice, and the poor folk
and the hungry gathered in the Outer Court of the
Temple and the birds of the air rejoiced.
Now 'Azaryas, joining the golden planks, had
brought the false Ark secretly into the Temple,
wrapped in priests' vestments, and in the Holy
Place, dim with the smoke and incense, he showed
it, and stripping the cover from the Ark of Jahweh,
bade 'Elmeyas and his Acolytes lift it from its
place. And, trembling, counting themselves as dead,
they did so.
He set in its stead the gold-emblazoned box and
spread the purple mantle over it. And he bade the
three bear the sacred Ark after him.
By a private way he led them from the Temple
and to the assembling caravan.
[It is told otherwise in the histories of the Arabians
that the youth went to his father and said he, "Give
me not gold and silver, for in my Land these are like
heaped-up sand. Give me rather the sacred Ark of
Jahweh, so that it may guard me on my journey and
be for my people in Êthiopia to worship."
Solomon said, "My son, this cannot be. None but a
High Priest can touch it, or he dies. And what were
[156]
this Israel without its Ark? If it be Jahweh's will for
you to take it, it will be easy. But if you do so let me
not know. For the Priests and Elders of the Temple
will make me swear an oath by Jahweh's name that I
knew nothing of it."
Then the youth summoned an artificer and when
the man had made the case of shittim-wood, he slew
him with his sword and hid the body, lest the plot be
betrayed. He called also goldsmiths to overlay the case
with plates of beaten gold, and these likewise, taking
them unaware, he slew. The simulacrum he covered
nvith draperies and hid it in a secret room in the
Temple.
He had bound to him four Priests with gifts of gold,
and these in the night he summoned to say prayers for
him. When they came he fettered them with iron, and
his Mthiop spearmen haled them to the Temple, where
at sword?s-point he made the four exchange the true
Ark and the false one. Under the night's veil he made
them bear the stolen Ark forth to his caravan, that lay
without the city wall.]
With the dawn came Walda-Tabbib to his
father, where he sat in the Temple Portico. Kneel-
ing before him, he asked his blessing.
Solomon blessed him and kissed him between the
eyebrows. "May your seed be like the sea-sand,"
he said, "or like the heaven's stars."
And as the lad turned from him to the great stair,
he said, low-voiced:
"Say to your mother I am not yet grown so old.
Say I remember."
[157]
Dirge of Those Left Behind
There is sorrow in Israel,
There is grieving in Yerushaldyim.
Our city is filled with the echoes of lamentation.
Weep, ye parents! Weep, brothers and sisters!
The sons of our Nobles, our young Stalwarts,
First-born of their fathers,
Depart to an alien country,
A Land that knows not Jahweh!
We are left lonely,
Bereaved and broken-hearted.
Our foreheads are in the dust.
There is no house wherein is not wailing,
Where young and old mingle not their tears together!
O ye disconsolate!
Mourn and cast ashes on your heads!
Weep and rend your garments!

XX
OF THE FLIGHT FROM YERUSHALAYIM
The host of Walda-Tabbib set forth into the
south, with its troops and beasts, wagons and
burden-bearers. None felt the burning sun's heat
or the ache of thirst.
For Michael, the Great Angel of Jahweh, in-
visibly went with them, spreading his wings over
them like a cloud. As for the wains, no man
hauled them, but the wheels turned of themselves.
Whether men or mules or loaded dromedaries, each
was lifted from the ground a cubit's space. The
wagons made on like ships in a strong sea-current,
or like an eagle gliding above the wind. And none
dismayed them, on the right hand or the left.
In a single day's span they came to the border
of Gaza Province, which had been gift to Queen
Maqeda from the Great King, where they rested
but a night, and in another day they came at eve-
ning to the port of Eloth at the top of the Sea
Al-Ahmar, which is the Sea of Eritrea, called Red.
There, seeing they had come in two days a dis-
tance of nine camel-days march, and suffered
neither hunger nor thirst nor weariness, man or
beast, those who had joined with 'Azaryas in the
[i59]
rape of Zion rejoiced. Said they to him, "O trusted
of Jahweh! Surely His Angel is with us! Shall we
not tell the King? He cannot take our Lady-Zion
back!"
He answered, "I will tell him. Go you and bid
'Elmeyas, the Archdeacon, and his Acolytes to set
up the curtains about her wagon for a Tabernacle.
In an hour let the trumpets sound for worship."
He found Walda-Tabbib sitting before his tent,
watching the lading of the ships.
Said he, "O King, the shining Sun of Heaven
that Moses made for Israel has left Yerushalayim.
Jahweh has given to you the Lady-Zion."
When he said this the youth sat like a man of
stone, staring at him speechless. And 'Azaryas told
his tale of the Angel's bidding.
Cried Walda-Tabbib, "You cannot mean you
have stolen the Holy Ark!" His voice was an-
guished. "From my father, Solomon? Say not so!"
Said 'Azaryas, "Think you it could have been
moved against Jahweh's will? It is His doing. Two
days ago we left Yerushalayim, nine camel-days
distance. A miracle! He wills that the earthly
Dwelling-Place of His Presence shall go swiftly
and safely to your Land."
But the youth smote his hands together. "He
was my father!" he wept. "He loved me. He would
have given me anything, even the Throne of Israel!
And you have made me rob him thus!"
[160]
OF THE FLIGHT
Then said 'Azaryas, frowning, "Lift not voice
against Jahweh's word! As High Priest I summon
you to worship when the trumpets sound. This
hour our Lady-Zion shall receive our joy!"
Quickly they set up the dyed hangings on their
gold-shod poles. The odour of incense spiraled
through the dusk, saffron and musk, galbanum,
myrrh of Smyrna, frankincense.
And 'Azaryas robed himself, in fine byssus linen
broidered with purple flowers, with azure vestment
fringed with pomegranate-colour and tiny silver
bells that tinkled as he walked. Over this the ephod,
caught at each shoulder with a sardonyx-stone. His
breastplate was afire with topaz, jasper and jacinth.
On his manifolded cap of linen he wore a triple
crown topped by a golden cup like a poppy's
calyx.
Within the enclosure, following the code of the
Leviticus, he dressed the Ark, setting over it the
covering Solomon had given for Queen Maqeda,
wove of twisted gold-work and with jewelled
fringe.
When all was meet he rang the signal bell, and
the massed trumpeters before the enclosure blared
the rallying-call. All the people gathered in their
thousands, the men of Israel grave, the .flLthiops
wondering.
Walda-Tabbib came, and 'Azaryas, bowing be-
fore him, drew aside the hanging and led him
[161]
within the enclosure, where in the midst the Ark
glowed in the light of torches.
They bowed themselves and worshipped.
And lo, deep in the golden mystery a gleam be-
gan, that pierced outward through wood and metal,
a shining sun that forbade the eye to look upon it.
How shall one tell the joy of the men of Israel
when they knew that their King worshipped the
Lady-Zion in their midst?
They were glad beyond gladness. Their hearts
danced like young sheep and skipped like kids
that have suckled plenteously. They smote the
ground with their feet like young bulls, shouting,
while all the Officers and Functionaries, from least
to greatest, cast themselves on the ground among
the tents, giving thanks to Jahweh, the Giver.
But Walda-Tabbib sat in his tent alone, with his
hand at his hps as if he tasted blood, muttering:
"Jahweh, you are my God. But your hand is
heavy upon me!"

XXI
HOW THE GREAT KING PURSUED
WALDA-TABBIB
THE day following the setting forth of Walda-
Tabbib's host, at daybreak Zadok the High Priest
went to the Temple to offer the dawn-time
prayer.
Now whenever the High Priest prayed, making
supplication for the people within the Holy-of-
Holies, the Ark was wont to raise itself from the
ground, hovering in air as a sign the prayers were
accepted by Jahweh. When it did not move the
High Priest knew that somewhere a sin was hidden.
Then they searched and found the sin and pun-
ished the guilty one, and the Ark would rise from
the ground as sign of Jahweh's forgiveness. •
This day the Ark did not raise itself, so that
Zadok went out in fear and told King Solomon,
who decreed fasting during three days, while the
Priests went among the people. But no guilt was
found.
Then Zadok knelt alone before the Ark, be-
seeching Jahweh's pardon for the unknown dere-
liction. But its gold showed never a gleam. The
jewels on its mantle lay blank as dead fishes' eyes.
[163]
Thus in prostration, he noted something un-
wonted—he could not have said what—and lifted
the mantle's edge. And lo, it covered not the
sacred Ark, but a lying counterfeit, a profane box
that before he looked within it, he knew was
empty.
At the sight Zadok felt his scared old eyes shrivel
in his head. His spirit was poured forth. Like an
arrowed man he fell forward on his face.
When he came not forth, the Great King sent
Benyas, Captain of the Host, who finding him lying
without sign of life or breath, rubbed him till his
senses came back to him. And learning what had
befallen, Benyas threw dust upon his head, and
leaving Zadok groaning, flew to tell Solomon.
When he heard, a lion's rage flamed in the Great
King's eyes. Cried he, "My son, whom I made Em-
peror of the iEthiops, has betrayed me! He would
shame me before the nations!"
He said to Benyas, "Warn Zadok that none must
know what has befallen. And when you have laid
this command upon him, let your trumpeters sum-
mon my Army. We shall pursue them, and when
they are overtaken, we shall seize my son and put
his .ZEthiops to the sword! May Jahweh's curse be
upon them!"
He did on his golden mail and mounted his
charger. At the head of the horsemen, with
frenzied hooves beating the drum of his wrath, he
[164]
OF THE GREAT KING'S PURSUIT
rode on the trail of the fugitive host, unresting.
Three days they went with all swiftness, till they
came to Gaza. There they questioned the people,
who said:
"By the splendour of David! That great host
passed here four days since, resting but a single
night. And there was a marvel in their going. For
with all their heavy wagons they went more swiftly
than eagles!"
From there the pursuers galloped to Eloth-port,
reaching it in three days more. And lo, they be-
held on the shore the scars of Walda-Tabbib's
great camp, but the harbour was vacant of ships.
And the folk there said, "The company that
came last harvest in the ships from the Land of
./Ethiopia, five days ago, with the Great King's
fleet carrying the men of Israel, spread sail again
for the southward. And their departure was an
astonishment to us. For they went aboard singing
songs and blowing flutes, and their ships seemed to
our startled eyes to be lifted from the waves and to
sail like eagles, resting on the wind."
The Great King entered into his tent, and for
two days and two nights tasted neither food nor
drink, ceasing not to walk up and down lamenting,
and saying:
"Woe, woe! The Glory of our Yerushalayim is
gone! My back is turned toward the spears of my
enemies!
[165]
"Rise up, dead David, my father, and mourn
with me! For Jahweh has taken away our Lady-
Zion from your son!
"Woe, woe! I have loved fables more than the
Scriptures, and the harp more than the psalter! Now
my love and laughter of life is changed to weep-
ing!"
But Benyas said to him, "O King to the
Horizons! Comfort yourself. For the Ark has not
gone with an outlander, but with your first-born
son. Who may yet, in Jahweh's own time, sit on
the Throne of David, your father. Think on this.
And get you back to Yerushalayim and let not
your heart despair."
The Great King returned to Yerushalayim, and
summoning the Elders of Israel to the Temple, told
them. And he wept there with them a great and
bitter weeping.
Afterward the Elders said to him:
"Be not too sorrowful, O King. For all that
happens is destiny, which is the will of Jahweh. If
the Ark does not return, it will be His good pleas-
ure. As for us, Yerushalayim and His House re-
main to us."
Said Solomon then, "Your words are good. But
lest the nations say of us, 'Jahweh has forsaken
them and they have lost their Glory,' let all keep
silence. And the golden box which sits in the place
of our Lady-Zion we will make in all points like to
[166]
OF THE GREAT KING'S PURSUIT
the stolen Ark, and instead of the Tables of Stone,
the gomor of Manna and Aaron's Rod, which that
contains, we will set in it our sacred Book of the
Law."
And they did this.
But after that it was Zadok the High Priest, not
the Great King, who offered the oblation within
the Holy-of-Holies. When the cloud of incense
wreathed the Inner Court, Solomon would walk
on the Terrace outside, gazing toward the south,
and whispering to himself:
"O Bayna-Lehkem! My son, my son Bayna-
Lehkem! Could you not have left me our God?"

XXII
OF WALDA-TABBIB'S HOME-COMING
TO AXUM
So the great host of Walda-Tabbib—his own
train and /Ethiop Guard, with all the largess of
Solomon—his Ministers and Officers of the Great
King's choosing and his twelve thousand Israelite
men-at-arms—boarding the ships of the joint fleet
of Tamrin and Solomon, set sail down the Sea Al-
Ahmar to Eritrea.
All the airy gales were favorable and they went
to the melody of harps and flutes and timbrels.
Sea-birds, mewing gladness, flapped wings over
them, and sea-creatures, great and small, minnow
and Leviathan, thrust up from the deep their scaly
snouts, barking their joy.
When the waves sprang on them like mountains
leaping, roaring as lions enraged, behold, again the
miracle of speed! For the ships, like flying wedges
of white cloud, rose up above them three cubits'
space, and met no buffeting at all.
In a morning's twilight all came without harm
to port, and disembarked on the curved strand,
Êthiop and Israelite, Walda-Tabbib and his suite,
Officers, warriors and people. And Walda-Tabbib
[168]
dispatched without delay swift horsemen through
the mountain passes to Axum to apprise Queen
Maqeda, his mother, of their coming.
Then, when the camp had been laid out and the
army of tents erected, as at Eloth where they had
embarked, they raised about the wagon of the Ark
the Tabernacle. The trumpets called their silvern
note to worship. The host drew inward about it.
And again Zion sent out its glow like a secret sun.
Now the folk native to that coast reverenced
savage gods feathered and maned and scaled, such
as the raven and the sea-shark, and at Gerra vipers
that had men's faces and asses' tails. And when that
gleam went forth, behold their foul worship-huts
burst into flame. Their obscene idols were broken
to fragments, and their magicians and mystagogues
gashed themselves with sharp flints and ran howl-
ing like hyaenas into the mountain gorges.
In three days the caravan was organized, and
took its way southward, led by the Israelite Army
with the Ark in their midst. With shouts and mar-
tial songs they went, incredulous of the land's grace
and beauty, its flowing springs and verdured hills,
and counting the country they had left no loss.
And in each Land through which they passed—
by 'Azyaba to Wakerom, by Masas and Bur—the
towers of sacrifice, the pylons and obelisks, tum-
bled. The idols of gold and silver, figures of birds
and beasts, fell and were broken in pieces.
[169]
They entered Axum like a conqueror host hom-
ing from war, glorious with flags. The Israelite
men-of-battle, with helmets and breastplates of
aureate gold and clanking swords, surrounding the
wagon of the Ark, opened the way. A choir of
Levite cymbalists followed, chanting. Then the
High Priest, 'Azaryas, in his vestments bordered
with blue and purple and crimson pomegranates
interspersed with golden bells, with his Arch-
deacon, rich-robed as in a Temple processional,
leading a white mule of Royalty on which rode
Walda-Tabbib, the son of the Queen, white habited
in /Ethiop dress, wearing the double lion's mane
and the aigret crown.
After him the Fleet-Master Tamrin, his /Ethiop
entourage who had gone with him, the beasts and
wagons—a train for length without precedent.
In the Temple of Almaquh the Priests huddled
in fear, for the tales, flying on the wind's wings,
had outstripped the marchers. And lo, as the Ark
passed its portal, earthquake shook its walls and its
high fire-altar split in twain. So that dread seized
the hierophants, and they fled outside, and threw
themselves on their faces in the dust before Walda-
Tabbib, crying:
"O King! Son of Queen Maqeda! Spare our
lives! Though we did not believe because our
hearts were hardened, now we know that the God
you bring is set above our Regent of the Sun, and
[ 17° ]
is greater than Almaquh! We forsake magic and
divination, augury by birds and the use of omens!
We accept Him as our Lord, and covenant to serve
Him all our lives!"
Now the Lady-Zion entered the Land of ./Ethi-
opia in the month called in the tongue of Israel
Tarmon, and in ./Ethiopic Miyazya, on the sixth
day.
In such state Walda-Tabbib was brought to the
Palace, where Queen Maqeda, pale with expec-
tancy, sat in her audience-room, in her silver chair,
waiting. He made Tamrin enter with him.
He knelt before her and kissed her beautiful
hands.
Her deep eyes plumbed his own. "You gave him
my letter?"
"Yes."
She took three deep-drawn breaths. "He ... sent
me no word by you?"
"He said, 'Say to your mother I am not yet
grown so old! Say I remember.'"
At that a still small smile ran round about her
mouth, and a bright colour rose in her face. Behind
her in the shadow Tamrin coughed, wishing he
were with a camel-train in the furthest Indias.
"Well?"
"Mother, he has given me the value of ten cities
in treasures. Ministers and Officers and an Army.
[171]
They have come with me. For— Mother... till
Tamrin told him, I did not know you had asked
it—he made me King of this /Ethiopia, naming me
David. They want to proclaim me now. But
Mother, I would not take your place! I am not
kingly, I am just your son!"
"Hush, my son! It is not well for a woman to be
Queen—unless she can be woman also. This is what
I planned. You and your son, and your son's son
to the end, will rule this Realm. David the Second
—the first was Solomon's father! For this is now
Israel, too. But I shall always call you Menyelek!
"They are right about the Proclamation.
Tamrin!" He came forward.
"My friend, forgive me. Presently we shall talk.
But now, see that my son is proclaimed immedi-
ately!"
So the men of Israel, a thousand of them in a
close-walled phalanx, led the white mule, bearing
Walda-Tabbib on his back, about the Capital, with
trumpeters before and after sounding the Jobel-
horns, and a Proclaimer-of-Tidings shouting, "Be-
hold your King, Son of Solomon, King of this
/Ethiopia by the Law of Kings!"
All Axum bowed down before him. And that
day, in sacrifice of thanksgiving to Jahweh, on the
plain beyond the city wall, by its river of sweet
water, they slaughtered one score and twelve thou-
sand stalled bulls and oxen.
[172]
OF WALDA-TABBlB'S home-coming
For Maqeda, on the open terrace, high above the
lion-pits, listening to the far blare of the silver
trumpets and the shouting, it was the perfect hour!
Till dusk drew down she sat there under the
sky, hearing the city's tumult swelling, fading and
swelling. Till at last the cavalcade returned, across
the broad Square, to the Palace gate. Over the
garden trees she saw Walda-Tabbib's white
chamma'd figure dismount, and heard the soldiers'
rallying-shout, "The King! The King and the
Ark!"
The Ark? What Ark? Why did they cry that
cry?
Presently the door of the terrace opened. He
came, again with the old Fleet-Master, and sat
down beside her.
"My son, what are they shouting? What say
they of an Ark?"
His face fell before her. "Mother, we have
brought to Axum the Ark, out of the Temple at
Yerushalayim."
"The sacred Ark? The Dwelling of Jahweh!"
"Yes."
"Solomon gave you that!" The words were big
with wonder.
"No."
"I do not understand."
Tamrin spoke: "It is a long tale—better from my
lips, I think. I pray you let me tell it to you alone."
[i73]
She signed to Walda-Tabbib, who rose and
went. Then she said to the old Fleet-Master,
"Tell."
And he told her. She must know, and it was
better from his hps whom she so trusted. The knife
would cut deep. He would have faced death gladly
rather than tell her. But he had faced death so many
times.
Hating himself the while, he told her. Much that
lay in the long-gone past that she had not known.
All that he and the lad, Walda-Tabbib, had seen
and heard, from their departure from Axum half a
year ago, till that present.
He spoke and she listened, voicelessly. Without
movement, save that once or twice—when he told
of the Great King's glory in eclipse, of his wide
wisdom dimmed, his splendour faded, of how his
name was become synonym for wantonness—her
fingers writhed and plucked at one another.
But moment by moment she seemed in her tall
silver chair to shrink smaller, till she was only a lost
child with piteous burning eyes.
Tamrin told on to the end. No fault of Walda-
Tabbib, or of those who had come with him! It
was Jahweh Himself who had taken the Ark from
Solomon!
And when still she said no word, he told of
covered things, things hidden from Walda-
Tabbib's sight, heard in caught whispers on the
[i74]
lip of night—of consort with the Chaldean sorcer-
ers, libations to their Bel, whom the desert-men
call Ammon, the dread Moloch of the Canaanites,
Devourer of Infants. Of secret incense burned to
the Egyptian's idols, to Sobku, Apopi and Hathor,
the Crocodile, the Serpent and the Cow.
Only then she flung up a hand, quivering. "Go!"
she said, panting. "Tell me no more now!"
When he was gone, control fell from her like a
rotted garment.
"O Jahweh!" she cried, wringing her hands.
"Must this stand so? Must his soul die? In Your
Heavenly Zion there must be forgiveness! See! I
have given You all this Realm of mine! My people
will fear and worship You forever! Do I, who gave
up my woman's love, not merit some reward? For-
giveness, Lord of the Universe! For Solomon! Give
me only this—I ask no more. I will live all my life
offering up sacrifices to You! O Jahweh, the
Requieter, the Forgiver! Forgiveness for Solomon!"
She broke into a dry sobbing that had no tears,
clutching her slender throat with both her hands.
At last, more calm, she stumbled to the parapet
and leaned upon it. Bonfires were sparkling on all
Axum's hills.
"Jahweh!" she said, with upturned face. "I said
I would ask no more, but one small thing I ask.
Have mercy, too, on me! Release me from one of
your Commandments! Let me kill that Egyptian!"
[i75]
XXIII
how tAmrin, the fleet-master,
went sailing
There had been a terrace, too, in Yerushalayim!
O House-of-the-Forest-of-Lebanon! O misty moon,
and sweet singing voices, and sound of timbrels! O
echoes in the Cavern of the Years!
Remembered words sang themselves to her in
the silence:
Aivake, Wind of the North!
Come to me, South-Wind!
Breathe on my garden,
Gather its perfumes!
Till my love shall smell them and come.
Till his left hand be under my head,
And his right hand embrace me!
Almost that long-buried year knew resurrection.
Almost the faded scene grew back to quivering life
on the curtain of the night. If she had heard that
vanished quiring, actual, audible, she would scarce
have wondered.
It did not startle her, therefore, when a real voice
came, so much a piece was it of the ancient pattern:
"O Queen, deign to remember me! 'Azaryas, who
welcomed you to Yerushalayim, so long ago!"
[176]
HOW TAMRfN WENT SAILING
Remember! Was there anything of that night
that she could ever forget? But this was not that
old 'Azaryas of sullen beauty, with the swagger in
his blood. This was an older one, crafty, patulous,
glazed with effrontery.
"I have not forgotten you," she said coldly.
"Come you to Axum with my son, the King?"
"I am his High Priest, as my father, Zadok, is
Solomon's."
There was a little flame burning now in his eyes.
Never in that old time had she been more desirable
to him than in this perfect maturity.
"I recall," he said with a dark smile, "an evening
of song—Solomon prided himself on his love-songs!
—when you sat on your terrace, above the silver
footprints of the moon. You were not pleased at
my coming. You said if it had been here in
Axum—"
"I would have had you thrown to my lions."
Soul-weariness was upon her. How had he come
to that terrace? Why had no one—
"That was it. You were very Royal in those
days! As for the lions, I see you still keep them
below in the courtyard."
As he spoke the shuddering roar came up more
clear:
Urrr-UeiyarrrafffU!
O Queen Mdqeddf We are hollow as goat-skin
[ i77]
drums! Give us ox-entrails! A haunch of crocodile-
meat! A zebra!
U rrr-Ueiyarrrafff!!!
"You would not make such an order to-night,"
he said. "We are six score hundred fighting-men of
Israel, and I, as fortune has decreed, sit above their
highest, Priest, Seer and Prophet. Not only am I
the King's Judge and Mentor—I am his Voice with
Jahweh, Keeper of his God."
A wan contempt twisted her pale lips. This loose-
tongued boaster! Did he think because her son—
and she—worshipped Israel's Jahweh, that he, High
Priest or no, was master in this land?
"Go!" she said. "The audience—and I remember
granting none!—is ended."
"Not yet! I speak to whom I will in Axum. And
say what I would say. You will learn that! Your
son is King, yes. But I am more. You are not even
Queen, after to-day."
He came toward her. "Yet you might be so
much more than Queen—with me!"
And lo, suddenly Tamrin, lean and old, but
sinewy with the seafaring of his sixty years, was
there beside them. He seemed—so noiseless his san-
dalled step had been—to have materialized, cor-
poreal, out of the still air.
His wiry arm went round 'Azaryas' sagging
waist, and thrust him backward. With an elbow
[178]
HOW TAMRIN WENT SAILING
crook'd about the enpurpled neck, he bent the
writhing form over the parapet.
'Azaryas struggled. Quick fear was strangling
him. "Jahweh will curse you!" he gasped. "The
High Priest's person is sacred!"
"Tell the lions that!" Tamrin grunted.
His big hand closed the panting mouth that
would have shrieked, but could not. "Go down!"
said Tamrin.
'Azaryas went down, a threshing bundle of gold-
encrusted terror—to the tawny lords of the
Numidian desert.
A scuffling roar, that was presently but a mum-
bling and a tearing of cloth. Then, quiet.
"And now, O Dawn-Upon-the-Land," said
Tamrin. "It is farewell."
She took both his hands. "Faithful and true! An
honest tongue is not your only gift, Tamrin. Are
you sure this must be?"
"It is best. The thing is like to be traced to me,
and these moody Israelites would kill me out of
hand. I would rather die on the breast of my
mother, the sea. I shall make my ships. It will not
be known till daybreak—and no dromedary in
Axum can pass mine."
She held his seamed hand against her cheek, in
silence.
"All will be well for you," he went on, musing.
[ i79]
"The lad, till he may appoint another as High
Priest, will be King and High Priest, too. That is
Israel's law. And this Ethiopia, as you have so de-
sired, shall be Jahweh's. As for me, I am a Gentile—
I am too old to change. And if He is a just God, as
they say, I think He will not blame me overmuch
for tonight's doing."
He left her with that, saying over his shoulder,
in the doorway, "Think of me always as sailing
somewhere into the wind."
But the door opened and he came back for a last
word:
"Do not grieve more than you must. The sun is
over us. The stars still shine at night."
She nodded.
"And this I know, Tamrin," she said, "deep
down under all the pain. For a time I had the won-
derful, other-than-earthly thing! And still I have
my son, and jEthiopia. That is much."

Song of Tamrin's Mariners
The sky that arches over the land is blue,
But the sea-parasol is bluer.
The sycamore forests are malachite-green,
But the sea is greener.
The almond-blooms that foam on the hills are white,
But the sea-foam is whiter.
The moon on the marshy elephant-grass is lead,
But the moon on the sea is silver!
The sea is our first love—we will go back to her arms
forever!
The breeze stirred by the turquoise fan is cool,
But the sea-breeze comes cooler.
The rounded, pomegranate breasts of girls are fair,
But the sea-waves' curves are fairer.
The perfume of maidens' garments is rare,
But the scent of sea-salt is rarer.
The soft-eyed kisses of women are dear,
But the sea's wooing is dearer!
forever!
The roar of the drums calling the Tribesmen is sweet,
But the drum of our Tdmrin is sweeter.
To battle afield with spear and targe is keen,
But the clean sea-fight is keener.
To die by the thrust of the bronze sword is kind,
But a sea-death is kinder.
A tomb of rounded stones on the hillside is good,
But a deep-sea grave is better!
forever!
[181]
Amen. And Amen
We of /Ethiopia salute you, Mdqedd!
O more esteemed than the Twelve Precious
Stones is the memory of your name, that is more
fragrant than spilt myrrh, than flowers or sweet-
smelling plants and galbanum!
We salute your face, holy and glorious!
Your eyes dark as moonstone, with their lashes,
dark rays about dark stars, eye-guards for twin
lamps hung by the Cunning Workman in the high
chamber of your body's ivory tower!
Your ears, to which the Great King announced
his passion!
Your cheeks, roses and pomegranates in snow,
whose languor was fire and their tears mingled
with flame!
Your lips, red in the morning after their night of
love, that took his kisses!
Your nostrils, double windows for life's breath,
fashioned in symmetry!
Your sweet and beautiful throat, with its voice
that spoke with Solomon of his mysteries!
Your hair, a mingled skein of shadowed purple
filled with dew!
[182]
AMEN. AND AMEN
Your two breasts, haloed toells of the milk your
child-of-love desired!
We salute your whole lovely body! Your House-
of-Life, that lies in ancient Axum with our Ark,
safe folded in the bosom of the earth,1 till the Con-
cealer shall say "Come forth!"
We salute your pure Spirit, your availing Prayer,
your golden Blessing!
And may our Salutation be ever a sweet incense,
spiraling to Heaven, where you sit, smiling, and
saying:
"How dear are those my people, Solomon!"
1 Father Almeyda, the Jesuit, writing about 1624, and the
Patriarch Father Alfonso Mendez, count the large obelisk at
Axum her tomb.

AFTERWORD
There are many tales written of Queen
Maqeda's life after King David, who is known in
Ethiopia's Annals as King Menyelek the First, took
seat on the Throne of Axum and Sheba. But these
are not recited in this place.
She lived a long life of good deeds, and when
The Divider sent his Angel for her, he found her
blithe to go.
As to Menyelek, he ruled in wisdom and in might
and loved righteousness all his days.
It was when his line had sat upon the Throne for
thirty generations that one of the Royal line, cousin
to the King then reigning, and a famed student of
the Wisdom of the Stars, by name Gazpor (in
northern Lands called Gaspard) beheld the shining
of the strange Star in the East, and on his drome-
dary, with his two Magi brethren, Melchior and
Balthazar, came to Bethlehem to find the Saviour of
the World.1
Warned in a dream with the others, he did not
make report to Herod, but fled and in time re-
turned with his story to Ethiopia. But the Child
born in the manger, grown a Man, had been cruci-
1 Sir John Maundeville made this legend familiar to Europe.
[184]
AFTERWORD
fied before Candas,2 the then Queen-Dowager at
Axum, learned of his Ministry and sent her Unuch-
Treasurer to Jerusalem, to be baptized by Philip, as
is related in the Acts of the Apostles, and to carry
back to the ancient Realm the new Teaching.
For seven and forty generations further the line
of Menyelek ruled. Then the Falasha woman
Judith, the Usurper, dethroned King Delna'ad and
set in his place Mara Takla Haymanot, first of the
eleven Zague Kings who reigned in Axum. But
these passed and Tasfa 'Iyasus8 restored the Solo-
monic Throne.
The Pagan Gallia, too, living by pillage, whose
chief gods were Wak and the evil spirits called
Sarotsh, stole the Power, and held it for three gen-
erations, till King Menyelek the Second cast them
out and ruled, Emperor of the Tribes.
Two separate times the chain held by a single
link. Judith slew all of the Family-Royal save one
Prince. The invading Moslems six centuries later
did the same. But the line of Solomon's succession
held.
It holds till now, with Haile Selassie, Negus
Neghesti.
2 Candace.
8 Or Yekuno 'Amlak. He reigned in the latter part of the
Thirteenth Century.
0)

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Generated on 2013-11-28 16:27 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.

capital he guards is Christian tAxum. Courtesy of the Huntington library

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA ARRIVING AT JERUSALEM

From fifteenth century paintings by Sano di Pictro di Menico, 1406-1481.

Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Love - Story of Mdqedd,

Virgin Queen of Axum

the Great King

POST WHEELER, Litt.D.

NEW YORK 1936 LONDON

All rights reserved. This book, or parts

thereof, must not be reproduced in any

form without permission of the publisher.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO THE ONE GOD

I. OF THE QUEEN OF THE SOUTH

II. HOW MAQEDA LEARNED OF THE GREAT

III. OF THE QUEEN'S DEPARTURE

IV. OF HER ARRIVAL AT SHEBA AND HER SET-

TING OUT FOR YERUSHALAYIM

V. OF THE SUFFERING BY THE WAY

VI. HOW NEWS OF HER CAME TO THE GREAT

VII. OF THE QUEEN'S FIRST SIGHT OF SOLO-

VIII. HOW A MIRACLE BEFELL MAQEDA

IX. OF THE TREE OF EDEN

X. HOW MAQEDA SAW SOLOMON'S GLORY

xi. of Solomon's song

XII. OF THEIR RAPTURE OF THE NIGHT

XIII. OF THEIR PARTING

XIV. OF THE SON THAT WAS BORN TO HER

XV. HOW SHE SENT WALDA-TABBIB TO HIS

XVI. OF THE CRYING OF SHIMEI 132

XVII. HOW WALDA-TABBiB CAME TO SOLOMON 138

XVIII. HOW WALDA-TABBIB WAS DECLARED EM-

PEROR OF THE jETHIOPS 144

XIX. OF THE RAPE OF THE ARK 151

XX. OF THE FLIGHT FROM YERUSHALAYIM 159

XXI. HOW THE GREAT KING PURSUED WALDA-

XXII. OF WALDA-TABBIB'S HOME-COMING TO

XXIII. HOW TAMRIN, THE FLEET MASTER,

WENT SAILING 176

AMEN. AND AMEN 182

This is the story of Maqeda, the Virgin Queen

of Axum and Sheba (by which name Saba of the

Sabaeans was known to the peoples below the Sea

of Eritrea, called Red), of how she journeyed to

the Land of Israel, whose capital was Jerusalem,

and came again home bearing in her flower-body

the seed of its young King, Solomon the Wise. Of

how her son, Menyelek the First, was born and

of how when he became a youth she sent him to

his father, and of what occurred between those

two. And afterward.

Fragments of the tale are to be found in many

an old parchment of Syria, Armenia and Palestine,

of Egypt and Arabia Felix, and more especially of

Ethiopia, wherein was his mother's Kingdom of

Three thousand years have played upon her

name: To the folk of Tigray she was Eteye of

Azeb, which is to say the Queen of the South, and