To relax after campaigning: Handel's "Arrival of the Queen of Sheba"

Tonight's "Music to relax after campaigning" is the Sinfonia which introduces Act III of the oratorio "Solomon" which is invariably known as the "Arrival of the Queen of Sheba."

To the best of my knowledge Handel never gave it that title, but it emerged because the section of the oratorio which relates to the visit of the Queen of Sheba follow immediately on from, this and the nickname has stuck.

I've always wondered who the Queen of Sheba really was. Most modern scholars agree that Sheba was the South Arabian kingdom of Saba, centered around the oasis of Marib, in present-day Yemen.

An alternative view was put forward by Immanuel Velikovsky. Many of his ideas appear to be somewhere between way out and completely bonkers, but I've always been intrigued by his suggestion that the Queen of Sheba was actually Pharaoh Hatshepsut and that the Egyptian records of her making a visit to the "Land of Punt" refer to a visit to Israel - to Solomon's court.

The "Land of Punt" was a trading partner of Ancient Egypt for centuries: nobody has ever conclusively proved where it actually was with possible locations suggested from East Africa to the Arabian peninsular.

On the conventional chronology the idea that the Queen of Sheba could have been Hatshepsut would be a few centuries out. However, other people such as David Rohl have put forward much less wacky and more evidence-based ideas than those of Velikovsky which also challenge the current conventional wisdom about the chronology of Egyptian and Israeli ancient history.

Regardless, it's a great piece of music !




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