| MAGNIFICENT gold jewels from the age of the Queen of Sheba are among
treasures from the ancient civilisation of Yemen that go on display at
the British Museum this week. Of about 325 objects, most have never been
seen in Britain before.
Exhibits from the museum’s own collections will be shown alongside recent discoveries from Yemen, such as a spectacular multicoloured glass bowl. The exhibition will inspire the visitor’s imagination by exploring the mystery and myth evoked by the Queen of Sheba. The earliest reference to her, in the Bible (II Chronicles ix), tells of a mysterious queen travelling to Jerusalem with a great camel caravan laden with gold, spices and precious stones to visit King Solomon, around 950BC. St John Simpson, assistant keeper in the British Museum’s Department of Ancient Near East, said: “She is variously viewed as a figure of beauty and seduction, the propounder of riddles to King Solomon (the Old Testament), a convert to Islam (the Koran), and a precursor of the Magi (Western Christian artistic tradition).” Alexandra Porter, assistant curator of the exhibition, questioned the accuracy of the Bible’s account: “The story states that the Queen made the journey to Jerusalem to test the wisdom of King Solomon. But the gift exchange between the two rulers and the huge caravan of produce suggests that the underlying motive for the visit was to establish or maintain trade.” Decorative religious iconography, pottery and metalwork, in the exhibition reflect the splendour of the kingdoms of southern Arabia that prospered through a lucrative trade in incense and other precious commodities to the Near East and Roman Empire. The multicoloured glass bowl dates from the first century AD. Experts think it was imported from the Roman Empire, supporting accounts in classical sources of the sea trade between the Empire and the East via the Red Sea. Surprisingly little is known about the incense trade from which South Arabia earned its fame and fortune. An Alexandrian merchant reported, around 40-70 AD, that frankincense was brought by camel as well as by rafts and boats. Frankincense is the resin of a tree, Boswellia sacra, which grows in inland areas of Arabia from the Hadramawt to Dhofar. It produces a fragrant white smoke when burned and was used as an offering to the gods, as perfume and as a medicine. Myrrh is the resin of another tree, Commiphora myrrha, that is found in the Yemeni mountains west of Hadramawt, but grows widely as far east as Dhofar and as far north as Asir, as well as in Somalia and elsewhere. Myrrh was used to flavour wine and as a perfume, but its primary use was in medicines and, in Egypt, for embalming. Recent excavations by Russian archaeologists at the port-city of Qani on the Gulf of Aden have revealed large quantities of incense, sometimes in palm baskets, in the remains of large multi-roomed storage structures on the seafront. Exhibits will include extravagant incense burners, while the evocative scent of incense will waft through the gallery to set the scene. Queen of Sheba: Treasures from Ancient Yemen runs from June 9 to October 13. |