CHAPTER VIII.

THE BOOK OF PROVERBS AND THE AVESTA.

The legend of the Queen of Sheba forms not only a poetic prologue to the epical tradition of Solomon's wisdom, but has a substantial connexion with the character of that wisdom, to whose final personification she contributed.

The corresponding Oriental stories do not necessarily deprive this legend of historic basis, but point to the region of this "Queen of the Seven (Sheba)." Those Oriental pilgrimages of eminent women to great sages, however invested with magnificence, are natural; even such romances could not have been invented unless in accordance with the genius of the country in which they were written. There is no antecedent improbability that a queen, belonging to a region in which her sex enjoyed large freedom, should have made a journey to meet Solomon.

The Abyssinians, who regard her as the founder of their dynasty, at the same time show how little characteristic of their country the legend was, by their ancient tradition, that it was the Queen of Sheba who provided that no woman should sit on the throne, forever! They claim that this Queen is referred to in Psalm xlv.-"At thy right hand doth stand the Queen, in gold of Ophir." This psalm is Solomonic, but the reference is no doubt to the Queen Mother, Bathsheba

(whose throne was on his "right hand," 1 Kings ii. 19). Neither Naamah the Ammonitess, mother of Solomon's successor, nor the daughter of Pharaoh, who was his. especially distinguished wife, is described as a queen, -this indeed not being a Jewish title for a king's wife. The psalm indicates much glory to be conferred on a woman by wedlock with Solomon, but not that he was to derive any honor from either or all of the "threescore queens" assigned him in later times (Cant. vi. 8). In another Solomonic Psalm (lxxii.) it is said:

"The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts, Yea, all kings shall fall down before him."

No glory is here supposed to be derivable from a woman, and an inventor would probably have merely devised a saga on the last of the lines just quoted, which is adapted in-1 Kings iv. 34, to Solomon's wisdom, or he would have imagined some instance of a particularly illustrious monarch coming to pay homage to Solomon. That the only example particularized is that of a woman carries some signs of reality.

Assuming that there was ever any King Solomon at all, this Psalm lxxii., whose Hebrew title is "Of Solomon," might have been written in the height of his reign. The title of "God" given him in Psalm xlv. is here approximated in the opening line, "Give the King thy judgments, O Elohim," and in the ascription to him of such virtues and such beneficent dominion, "from the river (Euphrates) to the ends of the earth," without any further reference to God, that an indignant Jahvist expands the doxology (18, 19) to include a reclamation for Jahveh. The ancient lyric closes with verse 17, which says of Solomon:

"His name shall endure forever;

His name shall have emanations as long as the sun;

Men shall bless themselves in him;

All nations shall call him The Happy."

The Jahvist answers:

"Blessed be Jahveh Elohim, the Elohim of Israel,
Who alone doeth wondrous things,

And blessed be His glorious name forever;

And let the whole earth be filled with His glory.
Amen, and Amen."

Now in this beautiful poem (omitting the doxology) the elation is especially concerning some connexion with Sheba. In verse 10 it is said "The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts"; in verse 15, "To him shall be given of the gold of Sheba." These lines might have been written on the announcement of a royal visit, or meeting, which had not mentioned a queen. But what country is indicated by Sheba (the Seven)? In India there are seven holy rivers, and seven holy Rishis, represented by the seven stars of the Great Bear. But these correspond with the Seven Rivers of Persia which enter into the Persian Gulf, in the Avesta called Satavæsa, a star-deity. In the Yir Yast 9 it is said:

"Satavæsa makes those waters flow down to the seven Karshvares of the earth, and when he has arrived down there he stands, beautiful, spreading ease and joy on the fertile countries, thinking in himself, 'How shall the countries of the Aryas grow fertile?" "

As there are seven heavens, there are seven earths (Karshvares), and these, as already shown (ante II.), are presided over by the "seven infinite ones" (AmeshaSpentas). Of these seven the first is Ahura Mazda himself, and of the others only one is female-Armaîti, genius of the earth. Of this wonderful and beautiful

personification more must be said presently, but it may be said here that Armaîti was the spouse of Ahura Mazda, and Queen of the Seven,-the seven AmeshiSpentas who preside respectively over the seven karshvares of the earth.

The function of Armaîti being to win men from nomadic life and warfare, to foster peace and tillage, she was a type of "the eternal feminine"; and such an ideal could hardly have been developed except in a region where women were held in great honour, nor could it fail to produce women worthy of honor. That such was the fact in Zoroastrian Persia is proved by many passages in the Avesta, wherein we find eminent women among the first disciples of Zoroaster. There is a litany to the Fravashis, or ever living and working spirits, of twenty-seven women, whose names are given in Favardin Yast (139-142). Among these was the Queen Hutaosa, converted by Zoroaster, the wife of King Vistâspa, the Constantine of Zoroastrianism. Hutaosa was naturally a visible and royal representative of Armaîti, “Queen of the Seven," a princess of peace, a patroness of culture, to be imitated by other Persian queens.

That the sanctity of "seven" was impressed on all usages of life in Persia is shown in the story of Esther. King Ahasuerus feasts on the seventh day, has seven chamberlains, and consults the seven princes of Media and Persia ("wise men which knew the times"). When Esther finds favor of the King above all other maidens, as successor to deposed Vashti, she is at once given "the seven maidens, which were meet to be given her, out of the King's house; and he removed her and her maidens to the best place of the house of the

women."

Esther was thus a Queen of the Seven,—of Sheba, in Hebrew,-and although this was some centuries after Solomon's time, there is every reason to suppose that the Zoroastrian social usages in Persia. prevailed in Solomon's time. At any rate we find in the ancient Psalm 1xxii., labeled "Of Solomon," Kings of Sheba (the Seven) mentioned along with the Euphrates, chief of the Seven Rivers (Zend Haptaheando); and remembering also the "sevens" of Esther, we may safely infer that a "Queen of Sheba" connoted a Persian or Median Queen.

We may also fairly infer, from the emphasis laid on "sevens" in Esther, in connexion with her wit and wisdom, that a Queen of the Seven had come to mean a wise woman, whether of Jewish or Persian origin, a woman instructed among the Magi, and enjoying the freedom allowed by them to women. There is no geographical difficulty in supposing that a Persian queen like Hutaosa, a devotee of Armaîti (Queen of the Seven, genius of Peace and Agriculture), might not have heard of Salem, the City of Peace, of its king whose title was the Peaceful (Solomon), and visited that city, though of course the location of the meeting may have been only a later tradition.*

The object of the Queen's visit to Solomon was "to test him with hard questions" as to his wisdom. It was not to discover or pay court to his wisdom, though he received from her "of the gold of Sheba" spoken of in the psalm. As a royal missionary of the Magi her ability and title to prove Solomon's knowledge, and de

*It may be mentioned that the Moslem name for the Queen of Sheba is Balkis, which points to the great Zoroastrian city of Balkh, near which are the Seven Rivers (Saba' Sin), whose confluence makes the Balkh (Oxus), with whose sands gold is mingled. (Cf. Psalm lxxii. 15.)