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the sacrifices using only unblemished male animals. The priest slaughtered the animal with a sharp knife and its blood was sprinkled or smeared on the altar. The carcass was flayed and cut into pieces, which were then burned. Offerings of wine, cereals, and oils were also burned. Pigeons and doves were available as substitutes for the large—and presumably more costly—animals. These were dispatched by the priests, who slit their throats with a fingernail. The contents of the animal’s stomach were discarded—in case it had eaten something impure—and the wings were pressed flat without breaking them before the carcass was burned. That daily processional of ritual sacrifices continued in Jerusalem from the time of Solomon until the Temple was destroyed in 586 BCE. Temple sacrifices were restored in 516 BCE, after the return from the Babylonian Exile, and continued until 70 CE, when the Temple was destroyed by the Romans.

Where is Sheba?

Besides the famed baby-slicing incident, a visit made to King Solomon by the “Queen of Sheba” stands as the other memorable episode in Solomon’s life. This meeting of royals has fueled historical speculation and several legends. What exactly went on between these monarchs when they met? And where did the Queen of Sheba come from? Both questions are still matters of mythology. Ethiopians who claimed that Meroe, the ancient capital of Ethiopia, was the biblical “Sheba” decided that their first emperor was the offspring of a liaison—unmentioned in the Bible account—between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. This provided the link allowing the last Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, to call himself the “Lion of Judah” and claim descent from Solomon. This story gets more complicated because, according to Ethiopian legends, the regal offspring of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba’s alleged dalliance, Menelik I, returned to Jerusalem and stole the Ark of the Covenant from the Temple and took it back to Ethiopia, where it remains to this day.

Good legend. Bad geography.

The biblical Sheba was actually a state in southern Arabia—in the area of present-day Yemen, a region that produced those famed biblical spices, frankincense and myrrh. The Queen of Sheba’s visit, if it actually happened, was most likely a diplomatic mission made to iron out some differences regarding the spice trade, which Solomon was attempting to get a piece of. The fact that the territory had a queen was historically interesting because it demonstrated that women could hold such power in these male-dominated times.

PLOT SUMMARY: THE DIVIDED KINGDOM

After Solomon’s death between 930 and 925 BCE, political and religious differences quickly shattered the kingdom built by David and Solomon. When Solomon’s son Rehoboam foolishly told the northern tribes that he planned to be even tougher than his father had been, the policy did not sit well with his already disgruntled subjects. Led by the rebel Jeroboam, supported by the Egyptian Pharaoh Sheshonk (called “King Shishak of Egypt” in the Bible), the ten tribes in the north broke away from the southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin. In the wake of this “secession,” two weaker kingdoms were left: Judah in the south and Israel in the north. To assert his religious and political independence from Jerusalem, Jeroboam set up two shrines with golden bulls, recalling the Exodus story, an act of idol-worship for which the northerners would eventually pay.

Jeroboam’s twenty-year reign over Israel was followed by that of his son, who was soon deposed by a military coup. A series of rebellions followed until an army officer named Omri gained the throne and established a period of relative order, proving to be one of the ablest kings in Israelite history, a fact that the southerners who wrote this story conveniently overlooked. It would be like a Confederate historian writing about the American Civil War and saying that Lincoln was an American president—but nothing else. Omri set up a new capital in the town of Samaria, recovered previously lost territory—conquering neighboring Moab, a fact omitted from