Monday, 11th June 2007
Prof. Kenneth A. Kitchen (Liverpool University)
SHEBA TO GASHMU: ANCIENT ARABIA AS BACKGROUND TO THE HEBREW BIBLE
In pre-classical antiquity, there were four 'Arabias' - (1) Eastern Arabia (along the Gulf) with the Dilmun and Magan civilisations, (2) SW Arabia, famous for the kingdoms of Saba (Sheba), Qataban, Main and Hadramaut, and (3) NW Arabia centred on Al-Ula and other oases, with the smaller kingdoms of, for example, Qedar and Lihyan, - besides (4) the great north-south stretch of Syro-Arabian desert that separated (1) in the east from (2) and (3) in the west.
In the Hebrew Bible, we find links with Midian and Qedar in the NW, and with Sheba in the SW, all the way from Solomon (most famously the queen of Sheba) down to Nehemiah (versus Gashmu). The archaeological and inscriptional discoveries of the last 130 years (not least since the 1970s) enable us to appreciate the variety and richness of these ancient civilisations both in their own right and as illuminating background to the scatter of biblical references to the exotic worlds of Sheba, Hadramaut and others, and to the traditions of Arabian wealth in gold, and aromatics such as incense and myrrh.
Kenneth Kitchen is Personal and Brunner Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Archaeology, Classics and Oriental Studies at the University of Liverpool. A leading expert on Biblical History and the Egyptian Third Intermediate Period, he is author of over 250 books and articles, one of the most recent being On the Reliability of the Old Testament.
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