Why a Booktrail?
10th Century: The untold story of Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, and Bathsheba, wife and mother of Israel’s first kings.
Song of Songs: A Novel of the Queen of Sheba
What you need to know before your trail
When Makeda, the slave-born daughter of the chieftain of Saba, comes of age, she wins her freedom and inherits her father’s titles along with a crumbling earthwork dam that threatens her people’s survival. When she learns of a great stone temple being built in a land far to the north, Makeda leads a caravan to the capital of Yisrael to learn how to build a permanent dam and secure her people’s prosperity.
On her arrival, Makeda discovers that her half-sister Bilkis (also known as Bathsheba) who was thought to have died in a long-ago flash flood, not only survived, but has become Queen of Yisrael. Not content with her own wealth, Bilkis intends to claim the riches of Saba for herself by forcing Makeda to marry her son. But Bilkis’s designs are threatened by the growing attraction between Makeda and Yetzer abi-Huram, master builder of Urusalim’s famed temple. Will Bilkis’s plan succeed or will Makeda and Yetzer outsmart her and find happiness far from her plots and intrigue?
Travel Guide
Middle East and Yemen
Middle East and Yemen
The Queen of Sheba is a figure first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. In the original story, she brings a caravan of valuable gifts for the Israelite King Solomon. This account has undergone extensive Jewish, Islamic, Yemenite and Ethiopian elaborations, and it has become the subject of one of the most widespreadlegends in Asia and Africa.
Modern historians identify Sheba with the South Arabian kingdom of Saba which is in present-day Yemen and Ethiopia.
BookTrail Boarding Pass: Song of Songs
Destination: Middle East and Yemen Author/guide: Marc Graham Departure Time: 10th century
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