Shcba to Jerusalem

The caravan of the lush, black Queen of Sheba crawled down 3,000 years ago from the mountains of what is now Abyssinia and made for Jerusalem's plateau. The wilful Queen had a fancy to prove the great King Solomon "with hard questions." Legend tells how Solomon fed skeptical Sheba heavily salted dishes. When she grew thirsty in the night, she was obliged to pass through Solomon's chamber to reach the fountain. Said she afterward. "The half was not told me: thy wisdom and prosperity exccedeth the fame which I heard" (I Kings 10: 7). From that thirst, according to Abyssinian legend, sprang the line of the present Emperor Haile Selassie ("Power of Trinity") of Abyssinia. From it too sprang his wife and second cousin once removed, the present Empress Waizeru Menen. Last week she followed her ancestress Sheba to Jerusalem.

Emperor Haile Selassie, who looks like an Old-Testament-bearded Spanish Jew, is a great fixer. He is said to have poisoned his way to the throne (TIME, Oct. 8, 1928). As he tyrannically and ably rules his hot-blood-swilling Abyssinians (meaning "mixed peoples") he is careful to keep always on his gaudiest full-dress behavior toward the Occident. By way of reminding Europe of his highly Biblical pedigree he sent Empress Waizeru Menen to the Holy Land last week to visit its chief Christian shrines.

Her Majesty is chocolate brown and waddles like an ambulating lump of cocoa butter, but fatness is a mark of aristocratic birth in Abyssinia. Mother of six and a voracious reader of Western classics, she heaved herself from a special train onto Jerusalem's railroad station platform while a British band blared "The Lion of the Tribe of Judah is Victor!" --Abyssinia's national anthem. No pagan but a Coptic Christian, Her Majesty had come not only to visit Christian shrines but also to dedicate an Abyssinian Coptic Christian Church. Jerusalem's handful of Abyssinians excitedly waved date palms. A crowd of Coptic priests, Abyssinian officials and Palestine's Acting High Commissioner Mark Aitchison Young, all tried to make the fat brown beauty feel as happy as the Queen of Sheba. Only a 20th Century Solomon was lacking. Jerusalem's present ruler, stiff Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope, British High Commissioner of Palestine, was at home in England.

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