Disney has put a Queen of Sheba a one hour scripted drama series is in development.
Sheba, is also exec co produced by actress-writer-producer Azie Tesfai who came up with the idea (Tesfai was born and raised in California, the daughter of Eritrean immigrants who grew up in Ethiopia). The drama explores the rise to power of the first queen on the continent of Africa as she seeks to unite the nation (now known as Ethiopia), making it one of the richest, most formidable kingdoms in the world. Inspired by true events, the potential series follows Makeda into a world of danger, deceit and political intrigue as she is forced to step into a role that no one, including her, ever imagined, as the Queen of Sheba.
The story of the Queen of Sheba appears in religious texts sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Described in the Bible as simply a Queen of the East, modern scholars believe she came from the Kingdom of Axum in Ethiopia, the Kingdom of Saba in Yemen, or both. Their main clue is that she brought bales of incense with her as a gift; frankincense only grows in these two areas. The Queen of Sheba is a seeker of truth and wisdom and she has heard that King Solomon of Israel is a very wise man. She travels on camel to Jerusalem to meet him and with her she brings frankincense, myrrh, gold and precious jewels. King Solomon has heard of Sheba and her great kingdom. Queen of Sheba tests Solomon’s wisdom, asking him many questions and giving him riddles to solve. They spend the night together and when she returns home from his kingdom, she is pregnant with a son. She raises her son Menelik on her own. When he grows up, Menelik decides that he wants to meet his father and travels to Israel to meet King Solomon. When he returns, he takes with him the Ark of the Covenant, the sacred container that contained the Ten Commandments. In Ethiopian legend, the Ark has remained in Ethiopia ever since and Ethiopians see Menelik as the first in an unbroken line of Ethiopian kings that stretches into the 20th century.
Sources: About Queen of Sheba: Historian Michael Wood “In Search of Myths and Heroes” Queen of Sheba
About Sheba production: Hollywood Reporter
Image: 17th-century AD painting of the Queen of Sheba from a church in Lalibela and now in the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa
