House of Gold

Velikovsky had found a most fascinating, powerful and exotic queen

with whom to identify the biblical ‘Queen of Sheba’.

Bimson and his colleagues now had no one.

A major challenge to Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky’s popular thesis that Queen Hatshepsut was the biblical ‘Queen of Sheba’, or ‘Queen of the South’, was mounted by Dr. John Bimson writing for the UK’s Society of Interdisciplinary Studies [SIS]. Bimson exposed some serious weaknesses in Velikovsky’s reconstruction and demonstrated, from an in situ examination of Hatshepsut’s ‘Punt expedition’ inscription, that this could not have been the visit by the ‘Queen of Sheba’ to King Solomon’s Jerusalem, as so famously recorded in the Scriptures (e.g. 1 King 10:1-13). Bimson’s criticism was strong enough to turn me away from the Hatshepsut = ‘Queen of Sheba’ equation for a full decade. Then I revisited it, and concluded that Velikovsky indeed had a case, but that his argument was badly flawed, and that the Punt expedition itself was too late to equate with the biblical expedition, anyway, since, by then (Hatshepsut’s 9^th regnal year), she was no longer a ‘Queen’, but a Pharaoh. I drafted a new article on the ‘Queen of Sheba’ and it was accepted for publication by SIS (Chronology & Catastrophism Review, 1997:1).

The SIS Editor Alasdair Beal wrote in this issue, in “Editor’s Notes”, of the devastating effect on readers that Bimson’s critic had had:

Probably few articles caused more disappointment in SIS circles than John Bimson’s 1986 ‘Hatshepsut and the Queen of Sheba’, which presented strong evidence and argument against Velikovsky’s proposal that the mysterious and exotic queen who visited King Solomon was none other than the famous Egyptian female pharaoh. This removed one of the key identifications in Velikovsky’s Ages in Chaos historical reconstruction and was a key factor in the rejection of his proposed chronology by Bimson and others in favour of the more moderate ‘New Chronology’. It also took away what had seemed a romantic and satisfactory solution to the mystery of the identity and origins of Solomon’s visitor, leaving her once more as an historical enigma.

Given that the era of Hatshepsut (conventionally c. 1500 BC) has needed to be lowered by some 500 years, à la Velikovsky, to the time of kings David and Solomon (c. 1000 BC) – and Bimson in 1986 still accepted that Hatshepsut would have been a contemporary of the ‘Queen of Sheba’ – then Hatshepsut has to be the outstanding candidate for the queen. For, as Velikovsky had noted, the ancient Jewish historian, Josephus, had recorded that the biblical queen was actually a ruler of Egypt and Ethiopia (as Hatshepsut certainly was). Moreover, the name of Solomon’s famous visitor was, according to Ethiopian legend, Makeda; a name almost identical to Hatshepsut’s throne name, Make-ra (i.e. Maat-ka-re).

Jesus refers to her as “the Queen of the south [who] came from the ends of the earth…” (cf. Matthew 12:42 & Luke 11:31), and this phrase, “of the south”, also supports an Egypto-Ethiopian identity. In the Book of Daniel, the phrase “of the south” was used in the case of various rulers to designate their rulership over Egypt and Ethiopia (cf. Daniel 11:5, 6, 9, 11, 25, 40).

Velikovsky had found a most fascinating, powerful and exotic queen with whom to identify the biblical ‘Queen of Sheba’. Bimson and his colleagues now had no one.

Whilst I was trying to complete my article for publication with SIS, I came to this new conclusion: that Hatshepsut’s quasi-royal consort, the genius Senenmut, had to be Solomon himself. The chronology was perfect. This identification offered an explanation for the most enigmatic Senenmut, thought to have lived out his life as a bachelor; Senenmut, a supposed commoner, who seemed to be able to get away with appropriating to himself royal privileges. My identification served on the one hand to make far less enigmatic this Senenmut, and it in turn added a whole new dimension to Solomon (and hence Hatshepsut), showing that this great king of Israel had also come to wield enormous influence over Egypt. The Bible mentions this only in passing, regarding Solomon’s growing mercantile interests (I Kings 10:23-29), but then quickly loses interest in Solomon who had by now begun to abandon pure Yahwism.

I also came to the conclusion that the mercantile and travelling Solomon was the basis for the mercantile and travelling Solon, the wise lawgiver and reformer of Greek folklore. I asked editor Beal if I could include in the article this new development regarding Senenmut, and he agreed. He, by way of introducing my article, now entitled “Solomon & Sheba” (and continuing on from his paragraph about Bimson), wrote:

In this issue, Damien Mackey returns to the question, challenging Bimson’s conclusions, giving a new twist to Velikovsky’s scheme – and throwing up some controversial identifications of other famous Egyptian (and Greek) historical figures. No doubt it will not be the last word on the matter but maybe it will simulate fresh discussion about the identities and lives of these people whose names and stories have been handed down to us from ancient times.

A further point of interest in this SIS article was my discovery that some of Hatshepsut’s more personalised (less rigidly official) inscriptions echo some of David’s own Psalms. This would be completely anachronistic if Hatshepsut had preceded King David (her father, according to my view) by some 500 years (the conventional view). Again, Psalm 104 is reflected in one of pharaoh Akhnaton’s Sun Hymns. In both cases (Hatshepsut and Akhnaton) the Psalmist David was the inspiration, not the one inspired by predecessor poets, as is usually thought.

Many developments around Solomon and Sheba in Israel and in Egypt have arisen in the intervening years since the publication in 1997 of “Solomon & Sheba”. These can be read in detail in my “House of David” article (http://amaic-kingdavid.blogspot.com). The early Thutmosides (I-III) of Egypt were found to be a Davidic dynasty. And Hatshepsut was further identified as the beautiful Abishag (1 Kings 1:3-4) over whom Solomon and his older brother, Adonijah, feuded with fatal results for Adonijah (2:17-25). Solomon refers to his spouse in the Song of Solomon as his “sister” (4:9) – they shared the same father – and as of dark complexion (1:5). She was partly Egyptian.

Since then, also, I have developed the Mesopotamian side of Solomon’s worldwide influence (1 Kings 10:23-25), as Hammurabi of Babylon (see same site). And I have also speculated, most tentatively, that the third name in the Hammurabic dynastic sequence, Abi-eshuh, may even have been the powerful Abishag herself. The meaning of the name ‘Abishag’ is much disputed.

Another important female of the time is Hammurabi’s sister (no wife is known for Hammurabi, as is also the case with Senenmut), Iltani, also a poetess and psalmist. She would thus, too, be a possible candidate for Hatshepsut/Sheba/Abishag.