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God made man, so the Africans say,
because he loved to hear stories.

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Here in Ethiopia, they have a story
which is nearly 3,000 years old.

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It's still told today in songs and fairy tales
and sacred books.

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It's a legend which leads to lost cities
and forgotten civilizations.

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We're inside the city here,
a city of tens of thousands of people.

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This is a search for a great ruler
who was also an evil genie,

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a worshipper of the sun and moon
who believed in one god...

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and she's a woman.

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She's turned into a kind of fairy tale,
demonised in Islam,

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and then, in modern novels and films,
she becomes a femme fatale.

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This is a search for the Queen of Sheba.

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(PIPES AND DRUMS PLAY)

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- (FANFARE)
- The legend begins in Jerusalem,

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with the arrival of a mysterious foreign queen.

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Do you think she will be as beautiful
as we have heard?

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She's come to meet the wisest king in the world,
King Solomon.

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Israel extends a warm welcome to Your Majesty.

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I am grateful for Your Majesty's permission
to visit your country.

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(WOMEN ULLULATING)

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(SINGING, DRUM BEATING)

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Hollywood made Sheba a sex goddess,
Solomon's lover,

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and they made her white.

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To Africans,
she's black and a woman of power.

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In Arabia, she's half human, half demon,

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but everyone at least agrees
that the tale begins here.

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This Easter in Jerusalem is
the beginning of a journey

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to uncover the ancient links
between Arabia, the Near East and Africa

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but also, perhaps, to uncover the life
of an extraordinary person,

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who, it says in one version of the story,
was not a woman but a world.

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(ULLULATING, BELL RINGING)

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As the Ethiopians tell it, the story begins
1,000 years before the time of Christ.

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Queen of Sheba came to pay respects.
She met King Solomon

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and as you can see in the picture,
she brought lots of valuable goods.

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Lots of gold, incense and ivory tusks
and so forth.

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- So the treasures of Africa.
- Treasures of Ethiopia.

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- And do know we why she came?
- Her religion.

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- Oh, really?
- Yes.

38
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- So this isn't a trade mission.
- Not at all, it's religion.

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''And when the Queen of Sheba heard of
Solomon concerning the name of the Lord,

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''she came to probe him with hard questions.''

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- What were the questions?
- I'll leave that to the monks!

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- Or to the priests!
- Great, great.

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(SINGING, BELL TOLLING)

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(ULLULATING)

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So the story of two rulers, a woman and a man,
both founders of their nations.

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Treasured by Christians, Jews and Muslims,
their tale is in the Bible and the Koran

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and it's been retold by storytellers ever since.

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Now...

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the Queen of Sheba was beautiful and wise

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and wore a royal cloak with seven glittering stars.

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She entered Jerusalem
with an immense caravan of camels

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laden with precious stones,
gold and aromatic incense,

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the like of which had never been seen
before in Israel and has not been seen since.

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Solomon greeted her
and asked her, ''Why have you come?''

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And she replied, ''I have heard that you are
the wisest man on earth

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''and I was curious to see if this could be so.''

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And the queen tested Solomon
with many clever riddles

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but he answered all her questions

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and, so the Bible says, satisfied all her desires.

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But is the tale myth or history?

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And why has it held such a fascination
for so long?

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She first appears in the Bible,
in the 0ld Testament.

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And this is the earliest surviving copy
in the world.

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(SPEAKING HEBREW)

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- So it doesn't carry the headings at the top?
- No, no, no, no.

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But there's a conundrum. The Bible was
put together centuries after the events.

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No other evidence has ever been discovered
that Sheba or Solomon existed.

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Yeah, here it starts.

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Here it starts, Chapter 10, verse 1.

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(READS IN HEBREW)

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The Queen of Sheba is arriving to Jerusalem

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and in this chapter,
you hear that she's not the only one.

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All the kings of the world are coming to Jerusalem,

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fascinated by this wunderkind, by King Solomon,
so they all come to Jerusalem.

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But we concentrate and focus
on the Queen of Sheba, a woman.

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So on the one hand it's a woman who comes
but we hear nothing about her beauty,

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we hear nothing about any relationship
between the two of them,

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but as you know very well, in later literature
and in the Ethiopian tradition,

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that actually they had a relationship,
they had a son together,

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the first king of Ethiopia.

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But the Bible is quiet about it
because it was too delicate to deal with,

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the king of Israel having a relationship
with a foreign woman and fathering a child.

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So as a textual archaeologist, then,
what's your feeling about the story?

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Is it a fairy tale
or do you think there's a historical kernel to it?

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I'm very careful when it comes
to historical kernels. I don't know.

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It's a great fairy tale, anyway.

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But is that all it is?
Doesn't history itself become myth over time?

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What we remember most is
the power of the story.

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And stories build up in layers over the centuries,
like human life itself.

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If Sheba was only a fairy tale,
why did they remember her?

91
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But if she was history, how do we find her?

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I asked Israel's top archaeologist.

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Can you find Solomon and Sheba in history?

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The only thing that we can do is
to go to Jerusalem,

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to Judah, to the Highlands,
the sites mentioned in the story,

96
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and try to see whether there is evidence there
to back the story.

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And the answer is no.
The answer is completely negative.

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But don't despair. Professor Finkelstein thinks
you can find Sheba

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if you look beyond the Bible
and far away from Israel.

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What you have there in the story is
a depiction of the great Arabian trade.

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- The world has opened up in that story?
- In that story.

102
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And the world opened up
only with Assyrian imperialism.

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The first globalisation
was Assyrian globalisation,

104
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so it's the late 8th and early 7th centuries,
the Assyrian century.

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00:09:56,847 --> 00:09:58,917
(MICHAEL) Right.

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So you begin to see how the Bible story of Sheba
might fit into a much bigger picture.

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Around 700BC when the Assyrian empire in Iraq
ruled the Near East,

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trade boomed with Africa and Arabia.

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And it wasn't just commodities and luxuries
that travelled but religions, ideas and stories.

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A foreign queen, exotic and mysterious,

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comes bearing precious things
never seen before.

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So this is also a tale about how civilization grows,

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how distant worlds make first contact.

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But to find Sheba,
do we head for Africa or Arabia?

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In the ancient world the link
between them and the Near East was Egypt.

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(SPEAKING ARABIC)

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To understand the big patterns in history
you have to get an idea of the geography,

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and this is a wonderful place
to get an idea of the geography of Egypt.

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Here in Luxor are two of the great trade routes:

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the desert caravan route
from Chad and Mali

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and the route over from the Red Sea.

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If the Queen of Sheba came from either place,
these are the routes she might have taken.

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And she wasn't the first.

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Centuries before, the Egyptians had traded
down to the Horn of Africa.

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And they were looking for one thing
above all else.

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This is the mortuary temple
of Queen Hapshepsut

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from the 15th century BC.

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In this place, there's a crucial clue
to our story.

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It's the tale of another queen
who sent an expedition to a fabled land,

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which sounds very much like the land of Sheba.

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Come and have a look.

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The journey was so remarkable that the queen
had it depicted inside her house of eternity.

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Seven great ships were sent down the Red Sea.

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Their mission, to bring back incense,

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incense to be burned on the altars of their gods,
just to please them.

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But as far as the Egyptians knew,
incense trees only grew in one far-off land.

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The name of the land: we call it Punt,

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''Puwanet'', perhaps, in Ancient Egyptian.

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But where was Punt?
You have to follow the clues to see.

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The incense trees are the most obvious.

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You see the trees in their pots.
This is what the Egyptians were after.

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Another thing the Egyptians are bringing back
is precious wood, ''wbny'': ebony,

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one of the words we still use
that comes from Ancient Egyptian.

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Precious wood, incense,
you see images of some of the animals.

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Baboons, the Egyptians even bring baboons back.

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The Egyptians were
just brilliant at representing nature.

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And these fish... You can even see the waves,
here, the little zigzags of blue.

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00:14:05,527 --> 00:14:11,238
The fish are from the Red Sea,
down at the point where Arabia and Africa meet.

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So this is a wonderful narrative

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of an Egyptian expedition, 500 years before
the tale of the Queen of Sheba,

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to what sounds like the incense coast
of the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa and Arabia.

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00:14:25,607 --> 00:14:31,079
But where was the land of Punt?
And was it the same as the land of Sheba?

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00:14:43,927 --> 00:14:48,398
So my plan was to try to track
the Queen of Sheba, if I could,

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all the way back to her homeland.

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The clues pointed towards Ethiopia

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and the first leg was the old caravan route
from the Nile to the Red Sea.

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You can still find traces
of the ancient trade with Africa,

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scratched by merchants and travellers
so long ago.

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There's the fertility god Min. Somebody's
chiselled his willy out, if I can put it that way.

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They stopped and had a sandwich
and an Egyptian beer

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at the side of the road here back in the...

162
00:15:27,407 --> 00:15:33,243
So there's graffiti here extending from
the 14th century BC, maybe the 15th.

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Somebody called Socrates
has left his graffito over there.

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00:15:43,807 --> 00:15:48,597
This is the debris of a kind of Roman period motel,

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you know, a kind of Roman period fast food joint

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on the route to Africa.

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It's absolutely fantastic, isn't it?

168
00:16:03,607 --> 00:16:09,842
But if you want to travel back in time,
you have to try to see the world as they saw it.

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00:16:11,167 --> 00:16:13,556
When we Europeans look at the map,

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we tend to see the Mediterranean
and those familiar shapes of Italy and Greece.

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00:16:20,087 --> 00:16:25,480
In fact, to really imagine...
to imagine this world as it is out here,

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what you have to do... (LAUGHS)

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is turn the map upside down.

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Then you see how the world really is.

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Here's the Mediterranean world.
Frogs around a frog pond, we are, said Plato.

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00:16:39,767 --> 00:16:46,286
If you look at the ancient world from this way,
it's Africa that looms large in the imagination.

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00:16:51,367 --> 00:16:54,165
Solomon was renowned as a lover of women.

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00:16:54,327 --> 00:16:57,956
His concubines and wives were
too numerous to count

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and he loved many foreign women.

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00:17:01,447 --> 00:17:07,682
Sheba agreed to stay in his palace
only if he promised not to touch her

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00:17:07,847 --> 00:17:11,635
and he made her promise
not to touch anything of his.

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00:17:11,807 --> 00:17:14,879
But Solomon was cunning.

183
00:17:15,047 --> 00:17:19,882
One night, he ordered a magnificent banquet
of the spiciest foods

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and after it, Sheba was consumed with thirst.

185
00:17:24,127 --> 00:17:28,279
Thinking he was asleep,
she stole into Solomon's chamber

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00:17:28,447 --> 00:17:30,483
and took a glass of water.

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00:17:30,647 --> 00:17:33,957
But he was awake and he gripped her by the arm.

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00:17:34,127 --> 00:17:37,756
''You broke your promise,'' he said,

189
00:17:37,927 --> 00:17:42,398
''and now I may touch something of yours.''

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00:17:42,567 --> 00:17:46,799
And he took her to bed and they made love.

191
00:17:46,967 --> 00:17:50,403
And that night, Sheba had a dream

192
00:17:50,567 --> 00:17:56,756
that a light moved across the sky
from Israel to Ethiopia.

193
00:18:15,007 --> 00:18:19,797
Massawa was once the haunt
of Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.

194
00:18:24,007 --> 00:18:29,604
Now it's recovering from a terrible civil war
which split Ethiopia apart.

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00:18:31,847 --> 00:18:33,360
Salaam.

196
00:18:35,687 --> 00:18:39,726
Arab dhows like this
have sailed these coasts for centuries,

197
00:18:39,887 --> 00:18:44,483
carrying incense
between the Red Sea, Africa and Arabia.

198
00:18:50,527 --> 00:18:53,758
(SPEAKING ARABIC)

199
00:18:59,607 --> 00:19:01,279
Wow, wow.

200
00:19:01,447 --> 00:19:04,439
Mohammed's ancestors were also boatmen,

201
00:19:04,607 --> 00:19:11,524
he knows all about the India trade
and trade from Iran, even in the 19th century.

202
00:19:15,967 --> 00:19:20,165
My idea was to follow the incense route
down the Red Sea,

203
00:19:20,327 --> 00:19:24,366
hoping it would lead me
to the kingdom of Sheba herself.

204
00:19:25,367 --> 00:19:30,236
You might think it's impossible
to find vanished ports from so long ago

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00:19:30,407 --> 00:19:36,755
but in fact an ancient traveller's guide survives,
written by a Greek sea captain.

206
00:19:39,207 --> 00:19:42,483
It's called ''The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea'',

207
00:19:42,687 --> 00:19:46,077
which means ''The Travel Guide to the Red Sea''.

208
00:19:46,247 --> 00:19:52,561
It lists the ports on the journey that we've come:
Berenice, Ptolemais Theron in Sudan,

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00:19:52,727 --> 00:19:56,686
and the most important of them, Adoulis.

210
00:19:56,847 --> 00:20:02,717
Now, in the Ethiopian legend,
Adoulis was the port of the Queen of Sheba.

211
00:20:02,887 --> 00:20:05,162
It's where she left for Jerusalem

212
00:20:05,327 --> 00:20:11,038
and the guidebook says it lay opposite
a hilly island in a deep bay.

213
00:20:24,247 --> 00:20:27,319
We're inching our way in over a coral reef.

214
00:20:27,487 --> 00:20:32,766
You can see it breaking around us,
it must be very shallow here.

215
00:20:32,927 --> 00:20:35,999
It's just... Oops, there we go. We've grounded.

216
00:20:42,087 --> 00:20:45,682
Oh, bloody hell! Nearly lost my boots then.

217
00:20:53,607 --> 00:20:59,637
It may not look much now but there was
a big town here from the 3rd century BC,

218
00:20:59,807 --> 00:21:04,085
a trading post leading into the heart of Africa.

219
00:21:04,247 --> 00:21:06,203
Oh, a big herd of camels.

220
00:21:06,367 --> 00:21:08,562
A big herd.

221
00:21:08,727 --> 00:21:12,606
There were temples of volcanic stone
dressed with marble.

222
00:21:12,767 --> 00:21:17,795
They drank wine and olive oil
imported from the Mediterranean.

223
00:21:17,967 --> 00:21:21,960
And the locals here still tell stories
about their decadence.

224
00:21:23,327 --> 00:21:27,286
(SPEAKS 0WN LANGUAGE)

225
00:21:29,567 --> 00:21:35,005
They... What, they wipe their bottoms with a fish,
they had so many of them?

226
00:21:36,407 --> 00:21:39,319
What he's saying is that people were so rich

227
00:21:39,487 --> 00:21:44,197
that they can wipe their bottoms with fish.

228
00:21:46,007 --> 00:21:49,124
That's one ancient custom
which never caught on.

229
00:21:49,287 --> 00:21:51,801
But in Ethiopian legend,

230
00:21:51,967 --> 00:21:57,564
this is the place where the Queen of Sheba
set foot again in her own land.

231
00:22:00,007 --> 00:22:03,522
When the Queen of Sheba returned to Ethiopia,

232
00:22:03,687 --> 00:22:05,757
she brought two special gifts.

233
00:22:05,927 --> 00:22:11,524
The first was a golden ring, given to her
by Solomon as a token of his love.

234
00:22:11,687 --> 00:22:17,637
The second was far more precious:
a child in her belly,

235
00:22:17,807 --> 00:22:20,446
her son by Solomon.

236
00:22:20,607 --> 00:22:25,886
His name was Menelik,
which means ''son of the wise''.

237
00:22:26,047 --> 00:22:30,086
Now, Menelik would become the king of Ethiopia

238
00:22:30,247 --> 00:22:33,444
and the first of the Lions of the Tribe of Judah

239
00:22:33,607 --> 00:22:37,566
from whom all the later kings of Ethiopia
were descended.

240
00:22:37,727 --> 00:22:40,002
And because of Menelik,

241
00:22:40,167 --> 00:22:45,241
a new Jerusalem was built in Africa.

242
00:23:04,127 --> 00:23:09,884
So Sheba's story isn't the usual fairy tale,
where the princess marries her prince.

243
00:23:10,047 --> 00:23:16,600
Sheba stays the woman of power
and goes back to rule her own kingdom.

244
00:23:17,727 --> 00:23:19,683
(BELL TOLLS)

245
00:23:25,927 --> 00:23:31,604
That story of the Queen of Sheba is
enshrined in the nation's holy book,

246
00:23:31,767 --> 00:23:34,520
without which their kings couldn't rule.

247
00:23:34,687 --> 00:23:40,922
But in 1867, I'm sorry to say,
the book was stolen by the British.

248
00:23:41,087 --> 00:23:44,523
Hello! Hello. Nice to meet you again.

249
00:23:44,687 --> 00:23:46,439
Hello. Hello.

250
00:23:46,607 --> 00:23:49,758
Now, I have brought with me from England

251
00:23:50,887 --> 00:23:53,526
here, this is the letter...

252
00:23:56,127 --> 00:24:01,042
..from Yohannes, King of Ethiopia,

253
00:24:01,207 --> 00:24:03,243
writing to Queen Victoria.

254
00:24:03,407 --> 00:24:08,435
He's saying the British have taken the book
from Ethiopia, please return it.

255
00:24:08,607 --> 00:24:12,202
(MAN SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

256
00:24:12,367 --> 00:24:14,597
This is the book! The very book.

257
00:24:14,767 --> 00:24:19,283
''This volume was returned to the King of Ethiopia

258
00:24:19,447 --> 00:24:22,996
''by order of the trustees of the British Museum,

259
00:24:23,167 --> 00:24:27,319
''December 14th, 1872.''

260
00:24:27,487 --> 00:24:30,126
The central story of this book,

261
00:24:30,287 --> 00:24:33,677
whose name, after all, is ''The Glory of Kings'',

262
00:24:33,847 --> 00:24:37,362
is the story of the affair
between Solomon and Sheba,

263
00:24:37,527 --> 00:24:43,796
because the dynasties of the kings of Ethiopia all
trace their ancestry back to Solomon and Sheba.

264
00:24:43,967 --> 00:24:47,960
Could he read just a little bit of this for us?

265
00:24:48,127 --> 00:24:52,325
- It's in Geez, no?
- It's in Geez! It's in Geez!

266
00:24:52,487 --> 00:24:55,877
This is the oldest language of Ethiopia.

267
00:24:56,047 --> 00:25:00,006
(KESSIS READS)

268
00:25:00,167 --> 00:25:04,399
(MAN) First she went to Jerusalem
and she met Solomon

269
00:25:04,567 --> 00:25:09,163
and he treat her very nicely
and she stay, like, six months there.

270
00:25:09,327 --> 00:25:13,559
Is it true that Solomon fell in love
with the Queen of Sheba?

271
00:25:16,407 --> 00:25:21,925
The centre of the book is the love relationship
between Queen of Sheba and Solomon.

272
00:25:22,087 --> 00:25:28,356
- While she was in Jerusalem, she got pregnant.
- And the name of the child is Menelik.

273
00:25:28,527 --> 00:25:32,486
- Yeah!
- His name was Menelik.

274
00:25:41,287 --> 00:25:47,840
So that's how the Queen of Sheba came to be
the mother of the Ethiopian nation.

275
00:25:49,367 --> 00:25:55,556
But the Kebre Nagast, the Book of Kings,
also names the city where she ruled.

276
00:25:55,727 --> 00:25:59,686
And our search now takes us north
from Addis Ababa

277
00:25:59,847 --> 00:26:05,285
to the spiritual heart of Ethiopia
and the centre of a forgotten empire,

278
00:26:05,447 --> 00:26:09,918
the legendary capital
of the Queen of Sheba, Aksum.

279
00:26:23,487 --> 00:26:29,596
When we think of the ancient world, we tend
to think of Aztecs and Incas and Babylonians.

280
00:26:31,847 --> 00:26:34,122
The Ethiopian empire of Aksum

281
00:26:34,287 --> 00:26:39,407
has been the last of the ancient civilizations
to enter Western consciousness.

282
00:26:39,567 --> 00:26:44,960
And yet it's the first great civilization
of sub-Saharan Africa.

283
00:27:12,287 --> 00:27:15,085
(WOMEN SINGING)

284
00:27:15,247 --> 00:27:19,001
Ethiopia has been Christian since Roman times.

285
00:27:19,167 --> 00:27:23,638
It may be the earliest Christian country
in the world.

286
00:27:23,807 --> 00:27:25,525
(SINGING)

287
00:27:31,447 --> 00:27:36,157
It's the night of Mary,
tomorrow is the day of the Virgin Mary,

288
00:27:36,327 --> 00:27:40,525
and over in the old church,
there's something else going on.

289
00:27:47,207 --> 00:27:51,883
(DRUMS BEAT SLOW RHYTHM
BENEATH LOW, DIRGE-LIKE SINGING)

290
00:27:53,447 --> 00:27:55,961
Listen to this!

291
00:27:58,327 --> 00:28:00,682
It's unearthly, isn't it?

292
00:28:21,327 --> 00:28:27,197
All night, the priests will stand in vigil,
guarding the holiest relic in Africa,

293
00:28:27,367 --> 00:28:31,042
a divine gift from Solomon's Jerusalem.

294
00:28:42,207 --> 00:28:47,440
And the little chapel over there is
the place where, all Ethiopians believe,

295
00:28:47,607 --> 00:28:50,326
is the Ark of the Covenant,

296
00:28:50,487 --> 00:28:55,163
the little wooden box
containing the two marble tablets

297
00:28:55,327 --> 00:28:57,795
given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai.

298
00:29:01,887 --> 00:29:06,836
When Menelik grew up, he desired to meet
his father, King Solomon,

299
00:29:07,007 --> 00:29:10,761
so he went to Jerusalem
and presented himself to the king.

300
00:29:10,927 --> 00:29:16,206
''Greetings, Your Majesty, from my mother,
the Queen of Ethiopia,'' he said.

301
00:29:16,367 --> 00:29:19,200
''I am Menelik, your son.''

302
00:29:19,367 --> 00:29:23,918
At first, Solomon doubted the boy
and refused to accept him as his own,

303
00:29:24,087 --> 00:29:29,115
but when Menelik showed him the golden ring,
the token he had given to Sheba,

304
00:29:29,287 --> 00:29:34,645
Solomon rejoiced and invited Menelik
to stay and rule with him.

305
00:29:34,807 --> 00:29:41,280
But Menelik's heart lay in Africa with his mother
and he insisted on returning home.

306
00:29:41,447 --> 00:29:47,886
And with him, he took the most precious relic
in the temple of Jerusalem,

307
00:29:48,047 --> 00:29:51,278
the Ark of the Covenant.

308
00:29:52,247 --> 00:29:54,920
(BIRDSONG)

309
00:30:01,247 --> 00:30:04,922
The Ark of the Covenant,
or the Tabot as they call it,

310
00:30:05,087 --> 00:30:08,602
is still here, protecting Ethiopia.

311
00:30:08,767 --> 00:30:15,605
No-one may see it and the guardian
can never leave the shrine until he dies.

312
00:30:15,767 --> 00:30:21,046
The closest you or I can get is to drink holy water
from his teapot.

313
00:30:30,967 --> 00:30:34,926
It's amazing how powerful
these mythologies are, isn't it?

314
00:30:35,087 --> 00:30:40,639
No Ethiopian doesn't believe
that this is a true story

315
00:30:40,807 --> 00:30:45,642
and that the Ark of the Covenant is not inside
that building.

316
00:30:50,647 --> 00:30:54,196
(SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE)

317
00:30:57,047 --> 00:31:01,518
At the period of King Menelik I,
he brought the Tabot to Ethiopia,

318
00:31:01,687 --> 00:31:05,646
Menelik, son of Solomon, son of David.

319
00:31:11,007 --> 00:31:14,682
How was it that such a sacred item
came back to Ethiopia?

320
00:31:24,527 --> 00:31:28,440
- (TRANSLATOR) God's will.
- (MICHAEL CHUCKLING) Great!

321
00:31:28,607 --> 00:31:34,557
The discretion of the priesthood everywhere.
''It was God's will that it came back here.''

322
00:31:38,087 --> 00:31:41,284
But does Aksum really go back to Bible times?

323
00:31:41,447 --> 00:31:46,237
All around you, there are traces
of an older, pre-Christian world.

324
00:31:48,847 --> 00:31:54,763
Everywhere you look, there's column tops,
great pieces of masonry,

325
00:31:54,927 --> 00:31:59,876
monolithic pieces of sculpture,
huge columns, here.

326
00:32:02,407 --> 00:32:08,357
Just look at this over here. It's all built
out of the remains of the ancient world.

327
00:32:12,687 --> 00:32:18,478
The giant stones of Aksum include
the biggest obelisk ever carved.

328
00:32:18,647 --> 00:32:23,038
The legend says they go back before
the Pyramids and Stonehenge.

329
00:32:23,207 --> 00:32:27,086
But in reality,
Aksum starts only in the 1st century,

330
00:32:27,247 --> 00:32:31,559
far too late for the Bible story.

331
00:32:31,727 --> 00:32:36,403
So where was the city of the Queen of Sheba?

332
00:32:37,927 --> 00:32:41,124
(AFRICAN MUSIC 0N CAR RADI0 )

333
00:32:43,247 --> 00:32:47,763
Where in Ethiopia can we get back
to the time of the Bible?

334
00:32:49,527 --> 00:32:54,157
In order to get back to that time,
say the 7th or 8th century BC,

335
00:32:54,327 --> 00:32:58,957
we've got to go now to an obscure village
on the road to the Red Sea.

336
00:33:04,967 --> 00:33:07,322
(CHILDREN SHOUTING)

337
00:33:08,407 --> 00:33:11,205
(MICHAEL) Hello, hello, hello, hello!

338
00:33:19,727 --> 00:33:23,083
This is the sacred hill of Yeha.

339
00:33:28,407 --> 00:33:35,358
According to a local legend, this, not Aksum,
was the palace of the Queen of Sheba.

340
00:33:39,887 --> 00:33:43,675
This is one of the most mysterious places
in Africa.

341
00:33:43,847 --> 00:33:49,604
A Portuguese missionary came here in the 1520s
and says inside this circle of walls

342
00:33:49,767 --> 00:33:54,283
were noble buildings
and the remains of a giant tower.

343
00:33:56,607 --> 00:33:59,167
But he was wrong: it's not a tower,

344
00:33:59,327 --> 00:34:02,558
it's actually the remains of an ancient temple,

345
00:34:02,727 --> 00:34:07,005
one of the most ancient buildings in Africa
south of the Sahara.

346
00:34:13,447 --> 00:34:20,922
The date of this amazing structure,
it's before 600BC, could just be right.

347
00:34:21,087 --> 00:34:26,844
This wasn't just a sort of provincial temple,
it's a great royal building, isn't it?

348
00:34:32,047 --> 00:34:37,644
But the other clues here are
a baffling, tantalising surprise.

349
00:34:38,807 --> 00:34:45,758
This is part of a frieze that ran around
the inside wall of the ancient temple

350
00:34:45,927 --> 00:34:49,681
and it shows ibex heads, stylised ibex heads.

351
00:34:52,487 --> 00:34:54,523
What does that mean?

352
00:35:00,887 --> 00:35:04,562
You see, those friezes are not African
but Arabian.

353
00:35:04,727 --> 00:35:06,922
Oh! Thank you, thank you.

354
00:35:07,087 --> 00:35:12,639
So was Yeha built by an Arabian empire?
Was Sheba herself an Arab?

355
00:35:14,567 --> 00:35:21,120
The next clue was shown to me inside
the storeroom by a very proud guardian.

356
00:35:21,287 --> 00:35:24,723
This... Oh, look at this! Look, look, look.

357
00:35:26,447 --> 00:35:29,917
Fantastic. Fantastic.

358
00:35:31,127 --> 00:35:35,518
- Where were these found?
- (SPEAKS NATIVE LANGUAGE)

359
00:35:35,687 --> 00:35:38,121
(TRANSLATOR) By the temple.

360
00:35:38,287 --> 00:35:40,596
These were found right by the temple.

361
00:35:40,767 --> 00:35:44,362
Just look at the wonderful cutting of these here.

362
00:35:47,207 --> 00:35:52,406
This is the Sabaean script, the script of
the ancient kingdom of Saba in the Yemen

363
00:35:52,567 --> 00:35:54,558
in south Arabia.

364
00:36:05,447 --> 00:36:08,519
It's turning out to be quite a detective story!

365
00:36:08,687 --> 00:36:14,842
Here we are in the middle of Africa with
a great temple built in the south Arabian style,

366
00:36:15,007 --> 00:36:18,397
with inscriptions in the ancient script
of the Yemen

367
00:36:18,567 --> 00:36:22,321
and cult images of the kingdom of Saba.

368
00:36:22,487 --> 00:36:28,357
At some point, these two lands were ruled
by the same dynasty

369
00:36:28,527 --> 00:36:34,124
and it suggests that the next stage of our journey
should take us to the Yemen.

370
00:36:59,087 --> 00:37:02,363
(PIL0T) Good morning and welcome...

371
00:37:02,527 --> 00:37:07,203
(MICHAEL) Modern borders
so often just divide us, don't they?

372
00:37:07,367 --> 00:37:11,485
You might think Arabia and Africa
are separate worlds

373
00:37:11,647 --> 00:37:16,516
but in fact their cultures have intertwined
for millennia.

374
00:37:16,687 --> 00:37:22,683
Just look at the map. At their closest, Arabia
and the Horn of Africa are 15 miles apart,

375
00:37:22,847 --> 00:37:27,477
less than the English Channel
between France and Britain.

376
00:37:27,647 --> 00:37:31,083
In ancient times, the Yemen ruled in Ethiopia

377
00:37:31,247 --> 00:37:33,238
and then Aksum ruled in Arabia

378
00:37:33,407 --> 00:37:39,004
and their people have shared myths and heroes
ever since.

379
00:38:01,807 --> 00:38:04,924
These old caravan cities of the Yemen

380
00:38:05,087 --> 00:38:09,126
have traded with the Near East overland
for 3,000 years.

381
00:38:15,127 --> 00:38:18,324
This is the Great Bazaar of old Sana'a

382
00:38:18,487 --> 00:38:21,047
and a fantastic place it is, too.

383
00:38:21,207 --> 00:38:25,519
And...I'm looking for the incense bazaar.

384
00:38:26,567 --> 00:38:31,118
This is Arabia Felix,
''Arabia the Happy'',

385
00:38:31,287 --> 00:38:36,600
and the Incense Coast here was
the great producer of myrrh and frankincense.

386
00:38:36,767 --> 00:38:39,918
We're going to try and find the incense market.

387
00:38:45,087 --> 00:38:49,000
And this rocky lump is what they coveted most.

388
00:38:49,167 --> 00:38:52,125
(LAUGHS) Instant testing!

389
00:38:52,287 --> 00:38:57,202
This is what the people of the ancient world
burned for their gods.

390
00:38:57,367 --> 00:38:59,198
Ah!

391
00:38:59,367 --> 00:39:02,677
So that's myrrh.

392
00:39:02,847 --> 00:39:06,157
And it's what the Queen of Sheba
brought to Solomon.

393
00:39:06,327 --> 00:39:08,795
Absolutely fantastic.

394
00:39:08,967 --> 00:39:13,165
It is the densest, drowsiest, thickest,

395
00:39:13,327 --> 00:39:16,205
perfumed scent that you ever imagined.

396
00:39:17,487 --> 00:39:21,446
There's one of the Roman writers,
he says that people here,

397
00:39:21,607 --> 00:39:27,045
so many incense caravans came through,
that the people became easy-going,

398
00:39:27,207 --> 00:39:31,519
drowsy with the beautiful scent of the incense.

399
00:39:33,767 --> 00:39:38,557
And here in the Yemen,
there's another tale of the Queen of Sheba.

400
00:39:41,927 --> 00:39:45,761
King Solomon could command
even the djinns and spirits

401
00:39:45,927 --> 00:39:48,885
and he could talk to the birds.

402
00:39:49,047 --> 00:39:54,246
One day, he was flying through the skies
on his magic carpet of green silk,

403
00:39:54,407 --> 00:39:57,444
a flock of birds wheeling around his head,

404
00:39:57,607 --> 00:40:01,395
when he realised his favourite lapwing
was missing.

405
00:40:01,567 --> 00:40:05,446
''Where were you?'' he asked the lapwing
when it returned.

406
00:40:05,607 --> 00:40:09,839
''I have come to you from the land of Sheba,''
the lapwing replied,

407
00:40:10,007 --> 00:40:16,958
''and listen to this, I'm telling the truth,
there I found a woman reigning over the people.

408
00:40:17,127 --> 00:40:22,963
''She is possessed of every virtue
and has a most splendid kingdom

409
00:40:23,127 --> 00:40:29,441
''but she and her people do not worship God.
They worship the sun.

410
00:40:29,607 --> 00:40:34,522
''Satan has seduced her
and taken her from the true path.''

411
00:40:47,327 --> 00:40:50,717
So in Arabia, there's a new slant on the tale.

412
00:40:50,887 --> 00:40:56,564
Sheba is a dangerous female spirit
from the land of djinns and genies,

413
00:40:56,727 --> 00:40:59,525
whose power must be contained.

414
00:41:04,367 --> 00:41:07,996
This is where the Yemeni knife comes in useful.

415
00:41:36,767 --> 00:41:40,999
And what a place to find
the best restaurant in the world.

416
00:41:42,487 --> 00:41:47,436
So we've been travelling all day,
we've had a breakdown, nothing to eat

417
00:41:47,607 --> 00:41:52,761
and you arrive in a place like this
and it's absolutely wonderful.

418
00:41:52,927 --> 00:41:56,203
This is Bir Ali on the Arabian Sea.

419
00:41:59,247 --> 00:42:02,717
It's the start of the incense route
into the interior

420
00:42:02,887 --> 00:42:06,766
and you can see the history
in the faces of the people,

421
00:42:06,927 --> 00:42:11,443
faces that look Malaysian and Indian,
faces that look Arabian.

422
00:42:15,367 --> 00:42:16,925
Oh, thank you.

423
00:42:34,127 --> 00:42:37,085
Well, we've been suitably fed.

424
00:42:38,167 --> 00:42:41,876
We're on the beach at Bir Ali
near to the ruins of Qana.

425
00:42:50,367 --> 00:42:56,476
Qana was the great port in the days when
Arabia's wealth was not oil but incense...

426
00:42:58,407 --> 00:43:02,798
..days recalled in the Holy Koran,
''the glittering kingdom of Saba,

427
00:43:02,967 --> 00:43:07,006
''whose queen worshipped
the moon and the stars. ''

428
00:43:13,447 --> 00:43:16,519
When the Queen of the South entered Jerusalem,

429
00:43:16,687 --> 00:43:21,203
Solomon had been warned
that she was no ordinary woman.

430
00:43:21,367 --> 00:43:26,441
Her face and body were beautiful
but she had a dark secret.

431
00:43:26,607 --> 00:43:33,922
Solomon had the glass floor of his palace
polished until it shimmered as if it were water.

432
00:43:34,087 --> 00:43:39,798
When the Queen entered his palace
and stood on the floor, she thought it was a pool

433
00:43:39,967 --> 00:43:44,961
and fearing that her silk skirts might become wet,
she lifted them up

434
00:43:45,127 --> 00:43:48,836
and the whole of Solomon's court
gasped with astonishment

435
00:43:49,007 --> 00:43:53,558
to see she had a hairy leg and a cloven hoof

436
00:43:53,727 --> 00:43:55,763
like a goat.

437
00:44:04,527 --> 00:44:07,644
- You just chew it slowly?
- Yeah.

438
00:44:07,807 --> 00:44:13,245
After a night dreaming of genies, we had
a morning pick-me-up, a mouthful of khat.

439
00:44:16,887 --> 00:44:20,197
Another custom shared by Arabia and Africa.

440
00:44:23,567 --> 00:44:25,797
An acquired taste, obviously.

441
00:44:27,367 --> 00:44:32,122
Chasing the Arabian story of Sheba,
we headed into the Wadi Hadramaut.

442
00:44:36,247 --> 00:44:40,320
I'm hoping to get to speak to an imam,
a religious scholar,

443
00:44:40,487 --> 00:44:44,196
to ask him about the Muslim legend
of the Queen of Sheba,

444
00:44:44,367 --> 00:44:47,723
the Queen of the South,
as the Holy Koran calls her.

445
00:44:47,887 --> 00:44:54,076
But it may take a bit of negotiation because
this is the heartland of Yemeni Islam

446
00:44:54,247 --> 00:44:58,923
and it's not easy for outsiders
to get to talk to key religious figures.

447
00:45:04,927 --> 00:45:07,600
Nice people, they have respect for you.

448
00:45:07,767 --> 00:45:11,601
The south people,
they're respectful of British people.

449
00:45:11,767 --> 00:45:18,605
Think of what's happening internationally
and there's still respect towards the British.

450
00:45:22,327 --> 00:45:25,399
We went to the great mosque in Shibam,

451
00:45:25,567 --> 00:45:31,244
hoping to find a scholar who would explain
the meaning of the Koran's story of Sheba.

452
00:45:41,407 --> 00:45:46,481
So it sounds as if this isn't the best place
to talk to a religious scholar,

453
00:45:46,647 --> 00:45:48,478
we can't go inside,

454
00:45:48,647 --> 00:45:54,916
so I think to find out more about
the Islamic legend, we need to look elsewhere.

455
00:46:05,607 --> 00:46:09,566
Shibam. It's one of the most beautiful
of ancient cities,

456
00:46:09,727 --> 00:46:15,245
with its skyscrapers of mud brick,
a Manhattan in the desert.

457
00:46:28,127 --> 00:46:30,641
Salaam, salaam.

458
00:46:31,727 --> 00:46:36,642
Finally, we were invited into the home
of Imam Jafar.

459
00:46:37,367 --> 00:46:39,801
(MICHAEL) What a beautiful room.

460
00:46:41,127 --> 00:46:45,359
The room of a scholar.
They're all the same, aren't they?

461
00:46:45,527 --> 00:46:48,758
A big mess with thousands of books everywhere!

462
00:46:48,927 --> 00:46:51,725
I love the wind-up gramophone.

463
00:46:51,887 --> 00:46:55,084
(IMAM CHANTING)

464
00:47:02,047 --> 00:47:07,917
And very sweetly, the Imam sang to me
the verses from the Koran about Sheba.

465
00:47:08,087 --> 00:47:10,681
(CONVERSATION IN ARABIC)

466
00:47:13,727 --> 00:47:17,402
Yeah. And her name is mentioned clearly
with the Koran,

467
00:47:17,567 --> 00:47:23,039
the Bilqis, or Queen of Sheba, in the Koran.

468
00:47:23,207 --> 00:47:25,675
- ''Balqa''.
- ''Balqa''.

469
00:47:25,847 --> 00:47:28,202
(MICHAEL) This is her name?

470
00:47:28,367 --> 00:47:33,566
And in the Koranic tradition,
she is from south Arabia, no question?

471
00:47:33,727 --> 00:47:38,198
Yes. (SPEAKS ARABIC)

472
00:47:41,207 --> 00:47:46,565
- Yes, yes, yes.
- So in sura 27 in the Holy Koran,

473
00:47:46,727 --> 00:47:53,565
isn't there some tradition that when she came
to Jerusalem her legs were hairy?

474
00:47:53,727 --> 00:47:57,163
For Jafar, it was a deformity cured by faith.

475
00:47:57,327 --> 00:48:01,400
She's like a genie and during the stay
with King Solomon,

476
00:48:01,567 --> 00:48:06,595
she becomes a worshipper of the one true God
and then she is cured.

477
00:48:06,767 --> 00:48:10,316
And the scholarly tradition, the imam is saying, is

478
00:48:10,487 --> 00:48:15,038
that this is not a symbolic narrative
but a literal narrative.

479
00:48:22,167 --> 00:48:27,116
So here in Arabia,
another name for the queen and another story.

480
00:48:27,287 --> 00:48:30,359
But here she's the queen of a real kingdom.

481
00:48:30,527 --> 00:48:36,796
For Arab scholars, the Koran shows
that she ruled in Saba, in the heart of the Yemen.

482
00:48:36,967 --> 00:48:41,358
To get there, we needed to follow
one of the great caravan routes,

483
00:48:41,527 --> 00:48:46,806
a route old when even the youthful prophet
Mohammed, peace be upon him,

484
00:48:46,967 --> 00:48:50,277
led his camels across the sands of Arabia.

485
00:48:52,007 --> 00:48:57,161
And the only way was to cross the edge
of the desert of the Empty Quarter.

486
00:49:19,127 --> 00:49:25,362
Just imagine it, a giant caravan
with 1,000 camels and 20,000 people

487
00:49:25,527 --> 00:49:29,122
looming out of the heat haze like a moving city.

488
00:49:49,647 --> 00:49:55,404
You can see how you can get lost in the desert
like you can get lost at sea.

489
00:49:55,567 --> 00:50:00,004
That's why we've taken a Bedouin guide,
Abdul Karim.

490
00:50:00,167 --> 00:50:03,364
Unfortunately, it's Abdul Karim who's screwed up.

491
00:50:27,367 --> 00:50:31,804
When you think that the Arabian desert is
as big as western Europe,

492
00:50:31,967 --> 00:50:37,485
you can see why the kingdom of Saba
remained hidden for so long.

493
00:50:39,207 --> 00:50:43,962
The further we go along this trail,
the closer we get to the history.

494
00:50:47,607 --> 00:50:52,522
And the next stop on this trail is
the real-life kingdom of Sheba.

495
00:51:02,767 --> 00:51:06,760
Now, because of its remoteness,

496
00:51:06,927 --> 00:51:10,237
the kingdom of Sheba had never suffered war

497
00:51:10,407 --> 00:51:13,399
and its people were fabulously wealthy.

498
00:51:13,567 --> 00:51:20,006
For according to the Holy Koran, God himself had
given a special sign of favour to its people,

499
00:51:20,167 --> 00:51:22,078
long ago.

500
00:51:22,247 --> 00:51:27,719
Eat of the sustenance provided by your lord
and be grateful to him.

501
00:51:27,887 --> 00:51:32,085
For you live in a land which is beautiful
and fortunate.

502
00:51:33,047 --> 00:51:39,316
And Sheba was so fertile
that it looked like an earthly paradise.

503
00:51:39,487 --> 00:51:44,641
Two great gardens, one on the right hand,
one on the left,

504
00:51:44,807 --> 00:51:48,846
and everywhere, the air was heavy

505
00:51:49,007 --> 00:51:52,841
with the scent of frankincense and myrrh.

506
00:52:07,527 --> 00:52:12,920
At dawn, we arrived at last
in the fertile valley of Marib,

507
00:52:13,087 --> 00:52:15,920
the ancient kingdom of Saba.

508
00:52:21,767 --> 00:52:25,237
Saba's wealth came from the incense trade

509
00:52:25,407 --> 00:52:30,083
but its secret was this giant dam,
the biggest in the world.

510
00:52:30,247 --> 00:52:35,446
This is what made Saba into the earthly paradise
remembered in the Koran.

511
00:52:39,687 --> 00:52:42,326
This is just one of the sluice gates.

512
00:52:50,607 --> 00:52:53,679
A stupendous piece of architecture, isn't it?

513
00:52:54,767 --> 00:52:58,726
It's 750 yards across to the northern end,

514
00:52:58,887 --> 00:53:02,004
the water would've been 50 yards deep.

515
00:53:02,167 --> 00:53:08,003
Just from this dam alone
they could create 100km of agricultural land

516
00:53:08,167 --> 00:53:11,603
that fed 50,000 people.

517
00:53:14,327 --> 00:53:16,716
So the story comes full circle.

518
00:53:16,887 --> 00:53:19,879
A search which began with a fairy tale

519
00:53:20,047 --> 00:53:26,122
has brought us to a real civilization
from the time of the Bible legend.

520
00:53:35,407 --> 00:53:40,276
In the fields near the city,
they found the temples of the gods of Saba,

521
00:53:40,447 --> 00:53:43,757
the moon god Almaqah, lord of the ibexes.

522
00:53:46,247 --> 00:53:50,081
And on the walls,
the same script we saw in Ethiopia.

523
00:53:52,847 --> 00:53:57,477
In around 700BC, growing in self-confidence,

524
00:53:57,647 --> 00:54:01,959
the civilization of Arabia reached out
to a wider world.

525
00:54:03,287 --> 00:54:09,442
The rulers of Saba began to send out embassies
to the Near Eastern world,

526
00:54:09,607 --> 00:54:14,761
sending treasure and spices and frankincense
to the powers of the day,

527
00:54:14,927 --> 00:54:18,317
just as in the Biblical story of the Queen of Sheba.

528
00:54:28,687 --> 00:54:30,564
(HORN HONKS)

529
00:54:34,887 --> 00:54:39,677
Now Marib is just a truck stop
on the road between Saudi and 0man.

530
00:54:46,167 --> 00:54:52,083
The fabulous civilization remembered by
the Bible, the Ancient Greeks and the Koran

531
00:54:52,247 --> 00:54:54,920
has been forgotten.

532
00:55:01,847 --> 00:55:05,476
Except, that is, for the Queen of Sheba herself.

533
00:55:05,647 --> 00:55:11,517
Alien and exotic, she is the eternal female,
fantasy mother and lover,

534
00:55:11,687 --> 00:55:15,566
woman of power, cloven-footed demon.

535
00:55:18,727 --> 00:55:22,436
She has passed beyond history
and become a myth.

536
00:55:40,567 --> 00:55:44,640
We've been on this extraordinary journey
around the Red Sea,

537
00:55:44,807 --> 00:55:50,439
searching for a legend
and trying to put that legend into a real history.

538
00:55:50,607 --> 00:55:57,524
But the final goal of our journey isn't the famous
monuments of Marib, it's this derelict hill,

539
00:55:57,687 --> 00:56:01,885
which is still inhabited after 3,000 years.

540
00:56:05,087 --> 00:56:08,238
0nly it's not a hill, it's a ruined city,

541
00:56:08,407 --> 00:56:11,479
built on top of the ruins of earlier cities...

542
00:56:13,887 --> 00:56:16,321
..layer upon layer of human life.

543
00:56:18,847 --> 00:56:22,886
These are the last people of ancient Saba.

544
00:56:24,127 --> 00:56:29,838
Does the little boy know where there are pieces
of stone with old Sabaean writing on?

545
00:56:30,007 --> 00:56:32,362
(MAN SPEAKING ARABIC)

546
00:56:40,127 --> 00:56:43,437
So further up? OK. Let's go and have a look.

547
00:56:45,247 --> 00:56:48,922
0ld Marib's days as a living city are almost over.

548
00:56:49,087 --> 00:56:52,443
Its crumbling towers are due for demolition.

549
00:56:52,607 --> 00:56:55,121
Oh, yes! Come and look at this!

550
00:56:55,287 --> 00:56:57,517
The archaeologists are waiting.

551
00:56:57,687 --> 00:57:00,599
Fantastic. How about that?

552
00:57:00,767 --> 00:57:06,842
It's the entire city. At Shibam, you see the houses
built in the traditional mud brick way,

553
00:57:07,007 --> 00:57:10,761
but here, there's so much stone
because this was the capital,

554
00:57:10,927 --> 00:57:13,077
the buildings were stone built.

555
00:57:13,247 --> 00:57:20,119
And so, even though what you're looking at is
the last 300 years of the existence of the city,

556
00:57:20,287 --> 00:57:24,200
it's built out of the remains of...

557
00:57:24,367 --> 00:57:27,484
more than 2,500 years of the city's past.

558
00:57:27,647 --> 00:57:33,199
And these are the last people living on the site.
When they're gone, that'll be it.

559
00:57:38,727 --> 00:57:41,036
How about this?

560
00:57:44,247 --> 00:57:47,080
But that's not the end of the story.

561
00:57:47,247 --> 00:57:49,920
For one thing this journey has taught me

562
00:57:50,087 --> 00:57:53,966
is that myths live on above all
in the hearts of the people.

563
00:57:54,127 --> 00:57:59,406
- So what is this here?
- (MAN SPEAKING ARABIC)

564
00:57:59,567 --> 00:58:01,956
(SPEAKING ARABIC)

565
00:58:02,127 --> 00:58:07,838
Down there, little Mohammed told me,
the Queen of Sheba had her palace

566
00:58:08,007 --> 00:58:10,760
and I think she probably did.