00:16:55.820Even the Renaissance period, they didn't think of dark skin and Black people the same way that the modern way, modern society thought about Black people.
00:17:10.900I mean, the Tudors in the Tudor dynasty, they were rich Black people.
00:17:16.460Even before that, they were rich Black people.
00:17:18.160I think one of the English princes, Edward the Black Prince's mother, is said to have been of a different ethnicity.
00:17:29.740We don't know, but people say it's a legend, but you never know.
00:17:32.980And back then, everybody was trading with Asia, East Asia, North Africa, Ethiopia.
00:17:40.180It wasn't, I mean, of course there was issues of maybe racism.
00:17:48.920I'm not saying there was no racism or whatever, but not in the way that we know it now.
00:17:54.500So you see a lot of them in evil depictions and even the Renaissance depictions of Black people.0.96
00:18:01.460If you go to the Catholic Church, you see the Vatican has people of color in there that date back from generations.1.00
00:18:09.300so i think for us in the 20th and 21st centuries it's a shock to see people of color depicted like
00:18:19.300that but for the medieval artist medieval artist or the renaissance might not have necessarily
00:18:25.260been a shock to depict a woman of that color yeah because it was um this is something that
00:18:32.860i come across when i'm reading about i don't know say pre 1700s history everything was about where
00:18:40.760are you from what is your culture so it's like you're from this country you're from this country
00:18:45.020and that's where it's not quite racism but it's it's just kind of like that's how people were
00:18:49.100judged so it's not specifically the color of the skin it's just oh you're from that country you're
00:18:53.580from that country and so it's a different a different way of looking at things from how we
00:18:58.340look at things now. Racism as we know it entered post 1700s so with slavery the the enslavement
00:19:08.080of West Africans. Yeah so it's interesting again it's just sort of like I need to sort of change
00:19:13.760the way my brain is thinking to try and imagine how people thought in these earlier periods.
00:19:20.100There's something I wanted to bring up that I saw because I follow you on Instagram and we'll talk
00:19:24.480about all that later but um there is a you just shared somebody else's post and it really stuck
00:19:30.480with me and it said black history did not start with slavery yes and i thought because like it's
00:19:36.300february it's black history month and that's why i'm excited to talk to you about the queen of
00:19:39.840sheba and just to have this conversation about people with a darker complexion have always existed
00:19:45.760Yes, we have always existed. Africa is not poor and starving people. I mean, I hate when people portray Africa on the media of starving children and poor poverty.
00:20:04.740I mean, in the U.S., Canada, Europe, there are thousands of people who have thousands of children starving and thousands of people in poverty.
00:20:16.160And there are great cities, just like in Africa, there are great cities, too.
00:20:20.440So why is, I just don't understand, well, I do understand anti-Blackness to show that Africa is poor and starving children and women, and the West Europe, the United States, Canada is great cities, even though that you can, you probably can go or walk down the streets in one of those major cities in these places and see children starving and poverty.
00:20:48.540and it relates back to i would think it's similar to how history is looked at and we talked about
00:20:55.280this a bit in the the last time you're on this podcast with the story of a man arenas like
00:20:59.900because there's not a written record about it so the history is less known but so i think if
00:21:05.920if there's a common perception that african history the black history kind of started
00:21:11.140with the slave trade it's like no no no no no like there was it's the oldest civilizations
00:21:17.220on earth were from africa so like yeah and again to bring back the rastafarians and hilo silasii
00:21:24.900this queen this woman if it is true that she and solomon did conceive a child this woman raised
00:21:34.400this baby and sent him well he decided to go according to the legend he decided to go to
00:23:37.360And an Ethiopian eunuch came to see, in Acts 9, I can't remember whether it was Peter or Philip, came to see, Philip was one of the disciples, or Jesus and the queen of Ethiopia, they didn't say her name, sent her eunuch to meet Philip.
00:24:57.420Actually, it was the Europeans who were in the 19th century
00:25:01.940The 19th century, the 18th century went and divide Africa and remember the scramble for Africa. So those countries and boundaries are Western constructs.0.59
00:25:17.940So, so this, this queen taught her son and which he decided to teach his descendants that women are equal.
00:25:35.560That's part of what I find really important about this story is that sense of like that
00:25:41.420she is a queen ruling in her own name.
00:25:49.120Because again, in terms of ancient history, the most famous cultures we know about are
00:25:55.220like ancient Rome, ancient Greece, ancient Egypt.
00:25:58.560And those are places where women did not have as much autonomy and as much rights.
00:26:02.380And so there is a people like me can assume like, oh, in the ancient times, everywhere was like that women haven't had rights. But in fact, like these cultures like Ethiopia and wherever Sheba was like, it was different. We just don't know the details about it.
00:26:18.620And I think that's important, especially today, just looking at the situation with women's rights all around the world to show that, no, there's always been places where women have rights.0.82
00:26:30.940It's not a modern idea. In fact, it's an ancient idea.
00:26:34.880Yeah. And the fact is, if she was not a queen, really in her own right, they would have said, the Bible would have said she was the wife of so-and-so of Sheba.
00:26:43.880So she definitely is a queen in her own right.
00:26:46.420Because usually when it's a wife of a king, the Bible say Jezebel, the wife, Phoenician princess, wife, or Ahab, or whoever.0.65
00:26:54.820They would have said that she was a wife of a king.0.67
00:27:00.620So she was a ruling queen in her own right.
00:27:04.440I assume that she was because I believe the biblical writer will have made sure that she was, that they, he, I think that he would have said that she is the wife of stones.
00:27:15.840Sorry, I was just going to say, because things like the temp year that I study a lot is like the Tudor history.
00:27:22.060And, you know, when Elizabeth became queen, people were unsure about that.
00:27:25.620They're like, oh, a queen being in charge. I don't know. This is pretty weird.
00:27:29.480But literally in the Bible, which is a text that they looked at and took very seriously
00:27:33.960back then, there's examples like this of women were queens.
00:29:07.760I can't remember the details of how it came to be, but that's where God's spirit resigned, lived.
00:29:17.260But that's where God's spirit lived at the time.
00:29:23.720And then that was something that Solomon had and potentially Malachi took after they had this bad meeting.
00:29:30.780Yes. I think if I remember the story, the story of the bad meeting was that, of course, the Bible says that foreign women led to the downfall of Solomon.0.64
00:30:07.000I feel like that happens every day today still.
00:30:10.680Yeah, it does. It has happened. I mean, Alexander the Great wasn't impressed with his father, and he grew up with the man.
00:30:19.240So I think it's also a motif in the ancient world that they have these long-lost heirs to the throne or whatever, princes, who are mama's boys.
00:30:33.580and they end up going back to meet up with their father
00:30:38.140or they meet their father for the first time
00:30:39.940and they're not impressed with their dads.
00:30:43.080And now we're just going to take a break
00:31:30.740Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube.com slash the glass cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day.
00:31:41.320See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.
00:31:48.520Welcome to the realms of peril and glory.
00:31:54.100Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale,
00:31:57.760the paranormal mysteries of liminal London,
00:33:16.300and this is Moms and Mysteries. We're two Florida moms obsessed with true crime,
00:33:20.860from infamous cases like Ellen Greenberg to shocking Florida stories like the Dan Markell
00:33:25.240killing. With 55 million downloads, we bring you new deep dives every Tuesday and Thursday.
00:33:30.380Listen to Moms and Mysteries on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:33:36.160And we're back. So in terms of cultural significance, the Queen of Sheba, like again,
00:33:42.900I said at the beginning, I thought, oh, was this was this a real person?
00:33:47.100Because I think you hear people say, oh, who are you, the queen of Sheba?
00:33:50.720Like you say that to somebody who's very fancy or somebody who seems to be very elegant.
00:33:56.180What's the cultural significance of this figure in your experience or in your research?
00:34:01.220Well, my experience, I've experienced people say, like you said, if you feel like if you're a woman, you feel like you're wealthy and you're fancy and you're sexy and whatever.
00:34:09.840the people will call you oh oh you think that you're the queen of shiva that you think you
00:34:14.240you you you're smart you think you're sexy you think you're all that content which i feel like
00:34:19.240sometimes it can be used for positive in a positive light you know because it shows that
00:34:26.120their interpretation of her between four to six thousand years later is not necessarily bad
00:34:33.600light and actually i feel like it'd be i would take it as a compliment if somebody said oh you
00:34:40.940think you're a queen of sheila oh so in my experience i haven't necessarily seen anything
00:34:47.340negative or heard anything negative interpretations about her but hollywood likes to play on the love
00:34:54.480story of she and solomon were lovers and it may might have may possibly be that she and solomon
00:35:01.840were lovers because Solomon was known for marrying and sleeping with foreign women so it it's possible
00:35:10.420that they probably did commune so that's what I'm going to say commune and had a child and
00:35:19.360Malachi was not interested in his father and so he went so it's highly possible but she's not she
00:35:26.380has never I haven't in my research I have never seen her be interpreted in such a bad light
00:35:32.840like other women you know like Jezebel we know that she's she is interpreted as a bad light but
00:35:39.240the Queen of Sheba she's not that not it's just that I feel like that her interpretation the0.53
00:35:45.760interpretation of her also diminished that the fact that she is a smart independent wealthy
00:35:52.280confident woman on her own she doesn't where people interpret the story the bible stories
00:35:58.680it's in second kings 10 chapter 10 that when she goes to solomon and she realizes solomon is the
00:36:06.680smartest man the wisest man in the world and she's pleased but my interpretation of the story is that
00:36:13.640this woman just left she actually she gave the fruit the riddles i feel like she felt like
00:36:20.920As Stallman failed, and she just picked up herself and left.
00:36:24.760She wanted to go and be impressed, and she was not impressed.
00:36:27.920Yeah, so my interpreter is not that she was impressed with Stallman,
00:36:31.740that she was not impressed with Stallman.
00:36:46.460Now, I'm saying that it's actually surprising that in the 21st century and even the 20th century past, that this black woman, woman of color, even if she wasn't black, but she probably was an Arab or a Berber, I mean, a woman called for trade, be interpreted in such a great light.
00:37:07.340because i don't think most people take the fact that if oh do you think you're queen of shiba as
00:37:13.520an insult i don't necessarily i don't necessarily take it as an insult i take it as a compliment
00:37:20.040because queen of shiba was wealthy she was smart she was wise my only problem is with hollywood
00:37:27.440yes yes yes and just making her seem like just the the lover yeah yeah i just i don't know i'm0.97
00:37:35.280picturing this very just this very wealthy fabulous woman who maybe she's a little you know0.99
00:37:40.880when you have so much wealth maybe she's a little bored maybe she just wants to be entertained and1.00
00:37:45.380she hears maybe this will challenge me this man you know i'll tell him my riddles and she goes
00:37:50.720there and she's kind of like okay and it's not that interesting and she uh peace out you know
00:37:57.280i'm gonna leave like she has other things to do and then the one minute points out to think that
00:38:03.620she was not impressed to me she would have left more gold and stuff for some but she left with1.00
00:38:10.680wealthy wealth more wealth so true yeah she just came with all for wealth and then yeah0.96
00:38:20.240left with it all and left with more because all men gave her some0.98
00:38:23.520that's great good for her honestly i mean if she was impressed she would have left him gold
00:38:32.740she did bring him some gold and stuff but she left with more gold and stuff so
00:38:40.740i don't necessarily um that points that story points out that yeah she was not impressed i
00:38:48.700don't interpret it as a lot of people other people interpreted that that she was impressed
00:38:53.760with solomon oh it's so interesting i i would love to see a hollywood movie about her and what
00:39:00.680she did before and what she did after and how interesting her own life was because i think
00:39:06.520it's it's so intriguing just to have this one incident to know about her yeah but she didn't
00:39:13.900bring on but surprisingly that the biblical writer didn't say that she brought around the fall
00:39:20.000of solomon usually in the story when he's bringing foreign women into his life whether it is to talk
00:39:27.680to or sleep with or marry the babica writer says that he they bring down the downfall of solomon
00:39:35.700so here it's she's like an equal she's an equal she's a ruler in her own rights so i had sent you
00:39:43.780the um and we did this last time as well the the score and this is going to be it's interesting and
00:39:50.560i don't think just because we know very little about her i think she's such a fabulous figure
00:39:55.120I want to be able to include her in my list of people. So the first category, and these are all
00:40:01.760scores of zero to five, wait, no, zero to 10, zero to 10. So the first one is the
00:40:10.580scandalousness. How scandalous do you think she was? Well, since she is a ruler in her own right1.00
00:40:19.320in a patriarchal world, especially in a patriarchal Israel,0.61
00:40:24.740Indian Israel, who only had male kings, I think she's scandalous.0.90
00:40:28.660And because of the story by the Ethiopians and the Arabs1.00
00:40:33.720that she and Solomon would love us and they had a son0.99
00:40:37.160who got to be married, that's scandalous.
00:40:40.760Well, and I think too, you're saying that the way that many people
00:40:44.780interpret this story as saying that she went there
00:40:47.740and she was sort of, she saw him and she was impressed by him.
00:41:45.480So to stay in that role and to be as confident in the role that she could leave Sheba and just for this kind of fun little trip kind of means that she must have been successful.
00:41:56.540People must have regarded her as somebody that you're not going to betray, somebody that you're not going to cross.
00:42:04.280And the fact that she was able to leave and give Solomon riddles.
00:42:31.220Yeah. And it sounds like she did not. So significance. And this is, I'm curious to
00:42:37.100see what you're going to say about this, because it's not just the significance at the time,
00:42:40.760Like she was a queen, she was notable, but also the fact she's in the Bible and the fact that people today still know like, oh, you're the Queen of Sheba.
00:42:47.600Like her name is still known, even though we don't know much about her.
00:42:51.100Like, where do you put her for significance?
00:42:53.500I put her nigh just because the people still say, if you think you're Queen of Sheba and the fact that her descendants are still around and they were on a throne of Ethiopia until 1970 and 79, somewhere around there.
00:43:09.420they were on the throne of Ephraim.1.00
00:43:38.980just fine she's doing great being the queen of sheba but i think where the sexism might come in
00:43:44.100is again what we've said about how scholars have interpreted her being like oh they must have been
00:43:48.400lovers oh she must have been so in awe of his intellect so people are interpreting her in a
00:43:54.840sexist way yes they are they think oh she and some are lovers oh she's in awe of someone maybe
00:44:01.660that fact that no she's not in awe they're probably interpreting that she's not in awe of1.00
00:44:06.560she could probably felt like it was done so stupid um he was not wise so yeah so if on a0.83
00:44:14.360zero to ten how much do you think sexism applies to her story nine i guess yeah yeah yeah i'm just0.75
00:44:24.240gonna do some quick math so so her total score is a 31 out of 40 how bad which is which is great
00:44:33.700for somebody about we know so little but because what we know is so impressive i just want to see
00:44:39.520where a man arena is yeah and a man arena sorry i forgot how to pronounce her name but who we
00:44:44.960talked about before she got a 32 yeah so they're very close to each other which also we know very
00:44:49.860little about her but what we know is really cool but the thing about a marina is the fact that
00:44:55.660if we are able to decipher the christianite language we probably would find it right the
00:45:01.580information is there we just haven't translated it yet yeah and that's the thing too about a lot
00:45:06.580of the history that we know depends on finding written records or being able to translate the
00:45:13.560written records so we know so much about ancient rome for instance because they wrote everything
00:45:17.860and they were using latin and that's a language that people are able to translate
00:45:22.340but yeah other cultures it doesn't mean that they weren't there doing impressive things it just means
00:45:28.000We haven't been able to find the records or learn about them.
00:45:32.220We know about ancient Egypt because they were down everything, but then we were able to decipher the ancient Egypt language.
00:45:41.940Yeah. And so it's, that's just a thing that I think I sometimes need to remind myself about.
00:45:48.420There's so many cultures that must have done so many things that were just as interesting and just as important, but we just don't know because there's not the records.
00:45:57.040yeah and so princess i want you to let everybody know about all the things you've been doing since
00:46:03.660the last time you came on this podcast um so people like you've i've been keeping up and
00:46:09.700you're you're keeping busy well i'm in this phd program i'm a phd student at dublin city university
00:46:17.140in dublin ireland i'm getting a phd in biblical studies but my focus is on um sexual violence
00:46:25.740and gender and consent and bodily autonomy i have a podcast that has women of history
00:46:33.720you can follow me on instagram at isles theologian and i'm on twitter also twitter is now x i still
00:46:42.000don't know what to say at isles isles theologian and i have a patreon yeah yeah so i think it was
00:46:50.120you were on the podcast i forget what it even was a year or two ago um and since then i'm glad to
00:46:55.280you back so you can tell people that you have your own podcast now too so people can yeah hear
00:47:00.020your takes on so talk about the sorts of people or just the approach you have on your podcast to
00:47:05.660talking about the women who you talk about well i'm i'm still new at this so um i'm trying to get
00:47:13.340better at it my approach is basically give the history and just insert my opinion
00:47:19.000yeah basically i talk about i talk about women from the ancient world and i also talk about women
00:47:28.420um and um in the medieval and early morning i'm not going past 1600 i'm not interested
00:47:37.620there are women who are very interested in post 1700 but i kind of like the women before that
00:47:48.400no exactly it's it's it's overwhelming looking at history i i need to that's why when i do
00:47:56.540sort of a project i take a season and i just do an era because otherwise it's just overwhelming
00:48:01.240how do you choose it's less known about the women pre-1700 than there they are post-1700
00:48:10.240because there's now there's a lot of written resources there's not by the time the photography
00:48:15.620was um maybe a century later after 1700 photography was um taken um in the so yeah
00:48:24.100now then in the modern era telephone computers so you know type right so now there's lots of
00:48:31.100documents about these women i i do enjoy looking at the older i guess for me it's like i like having
00:48:40.480guests like you on to talk about the ancient world because that's not i don't know as much
00:48:44.880about researching that but i do i also like that sort of earlier era because you just have a couple
00:48:52.000you need to kind of read between the lines of what sources there are and i like that you can
00:48:57.340sort of interpret why did people write this down and what does that mean about this person
00:49:01.880and you have to kind of guess and fill in i find that fun yeah basically i find that fun too because
00:49:07.620Like I said, we know a lot about the women post-1700s.0.94
00:49:13.040There's not much, unless we're in a part of the world where people destroy stuff.0.90
00:49:20.240But most times, because of the communication inventions, we do have a lot of resources on women post-1700s.0.69
00:49:33.420And I think that's also why it's important.
00:49:35.460And I'm really glad that you're doing this work because a lot of times women from this
00:49:41.280older time period, we don't know a lot about them.
00:50:05.460And so I think making people remember that women were there also in these historical societies where you'd almost think it was only men because that's what all the records are.
00:50:15.600And if they do have records of the women, they probably do like the Romans, writing bad things about the women.
00:50:23.780Yeah, just to sort of show like, don't be like this. But then I read those stories and I think, oh, that sounds great.
00:50:29.440but yeah and even if they're good qualities they always want to put a spin on the good
00:50:34.480cause to make it look bad the romans oh the romans oh the romans i just wanted to ask you
00:50:43.800one more question and that's just because we're recording this in february and it's going to come
00:50:47.980out later in february and just about black history month um and in terms of well we mentioned before
00:50:55.460you know the black history is more than just the history of the slave trade and stuff just do you
00:51:00.940have any thoughts you want to share about black history month and what things are remembered
00:51:04.820well what i realized things are remembered by non-black people is martin luther king malcolm
00:51:15.100eds post-slavery the people franker douglas harvard harriet silber i mean all these people
00:51:23.380are great to remember but um back history month is not only about slavery and civil rights and
00:51:31.920post all that but before that there were ancient kingdoms in africa if european push egypt you know
00:51:40.600west africa had breaking things too so it's not only about west africans coming into the so-called
00:51:50.480new world as enslaved people who have to fight for the right stuff. And it's not about the
00:51:56.460scramble for Africa, for Europeans, for white imperialists to go to these places and cause
00:52:04.220chaos. It's not about that. It's about the history. We have a great history just like0.68
00:52:13.620any other culture. I mean, you can find Black people have existed in Europe since before
00:52:19.640the roman empire i mean the tutors there were black people in the tutors in the tuner um to the0.93
00:52:28.080era um they were rich middle class wealthy um poor they i'm just like they were rich wealthy
00:52:37.980poor middle class white people so when people see and even though bridgerton is i'm bringing
00:52:47.140at Bridgerton, even though Bridgerton is post 1700s, people, when they see, and even though
00:52:52.960it's not necessarily true that Charlotte was black, when people see they had a black upper
00:52:58.200class, they, um, people got offended, but in reality, they were black people that were
00:53:04.840in the upper class in, um, in the UK at the time.
00:53:10.020There were people of color who were rich and wealthy, but it was not a lot, not a great1.00
00:53:15.600deal of people but they were there it's all about poverty and enslavement and everything1.00
00:53:23.220black is number one black history started before before the roman empire0.98
00:53:30.060started before anything the first civilization i think was on the african continent
00:53:36.540in egypt and genetically we all came from uh eve in east africa no thank you because again i saw
00:53:47.560just you had reposted this thing on instagram and i thought i wanted to get you to talk about that
00:53:51.200exactly what you just said yeah the black history is human history it's from the beginning of of
00:53:58.480humans yeah and i wish people would stop and even hollywood will stop doing these white savior
00:54:08.480movies or this um slave and i mean of course there were white people that helped out i'm not saying
00:54:15.420no but black people took on their own liberation and white saving with entire scene movies that
00:54:21.640make out um so if you look at the oscars and who won the black people who won the oscars
00:54:30.060halle berry won the oscar because she portrayed a whole sorry denzel washington won an oscar
00:54:38.360um it wasn't even for malcolm nx he won the oscar for i think he would portray a criminal
00:54:43.120and then the other person who won the oscar um was a slave i think
00:54:49.480get Lupita Nyong'o yeah yeah and that's where I think Hollywood okay so things like Bridgerton is0.99
00:54:58.160an extreme example but it's a good example of you know when when a major project puts black people0.73
00:55:04.580in a historical setting then people get mad they're saying like oh you're being woke you're
00:55:08.940like making it it's fake but that's because there's been however long Hollywood has been
00:55:14.200around all of the 20th century most of the 21st century they made movies with just white
00:55:19.380people in them because it was a racist system. And then generations of people saw those and
00:55:26.940thought, okay, history is all white people because they saw these movies, they were so0.55
00:55:30.680influential. So now when people try to correct that by putting people of color in historical0.55
00:55:36.360settings and people are like, it makes some people confused and angry. They think they're
00:55:41.960being fake. They think they're lying. We're actually, no, they're actually correcting it.
00:55:45.560they're actually making it how it closer to what it was but it's so pervasive the old like you know
00:55:52.680the old when you're talking about the queen of sheba and solomon and hollywood i'm like yeah all
00:55:56.600those movies like um she's white i don't know if she's in this but yeah but like the ten commandments
00:56:00.940all those ancient those movies with charlton heston about the ancient world it's all white
00:56:04.960people exactly so then people imagine everyone in the bible was all where it's just like no
00:56:10.080oh i'm gonna guess almost no one in the bible was a white person it all took place well the0.79
00:56:15.620only people that were white people were the the evil people the greeks the romans the persians
00:56:20.140yeah exactly exactly so then you see these portrayals of charlton heston and people in
00:56:26.780bible times and then it just made people even if you're not aware that you're being sort of
00:56:32.020manipulated it makes people think okay that's what people looked like then and then they those
00:56:38.660people get mad when you see a more correct portrayal of the skin tone of those people
00:56:43.420yeah yeah and hollywood portrays the queen as white that's what we would consider white in our
00:56:50.440present-day modern context yeah when when she might have when most likely she was an arab or
00:56:58.800burber or amazian i shouldn't say burber because burber is a western colonized