A chiefdom is a political economy that organizes regional populations through a hierarchy of the chief(s).

In anthropological theory, one model of human social development rooted in ideas of cultural evolution describes a chiefdom as a form of social organization more complex than a tribe or a band society, and less complex than a state or a civilization. The most succinct definition of a chiefdom in anthropology is by Robert L. Carneiro: "An autonomous political unit comprising a number of villages or communities under the permanent control of a paramount chief" (Carneiro 1981: 45).

Chiefdoms are characterized by centralization of authority and pervasive inequality. At least two inherited social classes (elite and commoner) are present. (The ancient Hawaiian chiefdoms had as many as four social classes.) An individual might change social class during a lifetime by extraordinary behavior. A single lineage/family of the elite class becomes the ruling elite of the chiefdom, with the greatest influence, power, and prestige. Kinship is typically an organizing principle, while marriage, age, and gender can affect one's social status and role.

A single simple chiefdom is generally composed of a central community surrounded by or near a number of smaller subsidiary communities. All of the communities recognize the authority of a single kin group or individual with hereditary centralized power, dwelling in the primary community. Each community will have its own leaders, which are usually in a tributary and/or subservient relationship to the ruling elite of the primary community.

A complex chiefdom is a group of simple chiefdoms controlled by a single paramount center, and ruled by a paramount chief. Complex chiefdoms have two or even three tiers of political hierarchy. Nobles are clearly distinct from commoners and do not usually engage in any form of agricultural production. The higher members of society consume most of the goods that are passed up the hierarchy as a tribute.

Reciprocal obligations are fulfilled by the nobles carrying out ritual that only they can perform. They may also make token, symbolic redistributions of food and other goods. In two or three tiered chiefdoms, higher ranking chiefs have control over a number of lesser ranking individuals, each of whom controls specific territory or social units. Political control rests on the chief's ability to maintain access to a sufficiently large body of tribute, passed up the line by lesser chiefs. These lesser chiefs in turn collect from those below them, from communities close to their own center. At the apex of the status hierarchy sits the paramount.

Anthropologists and archaeologists have demonstrated through research that chiefdoms are a relatively unstable form of social organization. They are prone to cycles of collapse and renewal, in which tribal units band together, expand in power, fragment through some form of social stress, and band together again. An example of this kind of social organization were the Germanic Peoples who conquered the western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE. Although commonly referred to as tribes, anthropologists classified their society as chiefdoms. They had a complex social hierarchy consisting of kings, a warrior aristocracy, common freemen, serfs and slaves.

Nikolay Kradin has demonstrated that an alternative to the state seems to be represented by the supercomplex chiefdoms created by some nomads of Eurasia. The number of structural levels within such chiefdoms appears to be equal, or even to exceed those within the average state, but they have a different type of political organization and political leadership. Such types of political entities do not appear to have been created by the agriculturists (e.g., Kradin 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004).

In prehistoric South-West Asia, alternatives to chiefdoms were the non-hierarchical systems of complex acephalous communities, with a pronounced autonomy of single-family households. These communities have been analyzed recently by Berezkin, who suggests the Apa Tanis as their ethnographic parallel (Berezkin 1995). Frantsouzoff (2000) finds a more developed example of such type of polities in ancient South Arabia in the Wadi Hadhramawt of the 1st millennium BCE.

Chiefdom in India[link]

Suhas Chatterjee, Mizo Chiefs and the Chiefdom, Publications Pvt. Ltd., 1995, ISBN 81-85880-72-7, ISBN 978-81-85880-72-3

See also[link]

• Tanistry
• Tribe
• Band society

Bibliography[link]

• Berezkin, Yu. E. 1995. "Alternative Models of Middle Range Society" and " 'Individualistic' Asia vs. 'Collectivistic' America?", in Alternative Pathways to Early State, Ed. N. N. Kradin & V. A. Lynsha. Vladivostok: Dal'nauka: 75–83.
• Carneiro, R. L. 1981. "The Chiefdom: Precursor of the State", The Transition to Statehood in the New World / Ed. by G. D. Jones and R. R. Kautz, pp. 37–79. Cambridge, UK – New York, NY: Cam-bridge University Press.
• Carneiro, R. L. 1991. "The Nature of the Chiefdom as Revealed by Evidence from the Cauca Valley of Colombia", Profiles in Cultural Evolution / Ed. by A.T. Rambo and K. Gillogly, pp. 167–90. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
• Earle, T. K. 1997. How Chiefs Came to Power: The Political Economy of Prehistory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Frantsouzoff S. A. 2000. "The Society of Raybūn", in Alternatives of Social Evolution. Ed. by N.N. Kradin, A.V. Korotayev, Dmitri Bondarenko, V. de Munck, and P.K. Wason (p. 258-265). Vladivostok: Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
• Korotayev, Andrey V. 2000. *Chiefdom: Precursor of the Tribe?, in Alternatives of Social Evolution. Ed. by N.N. Kradin, A.V. Korotayev, Dmitri Bondarenko, V. de Munck, and P.K. Wason (p. 242-257). Vladivostok: Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; reprinted in: The Early State, its Alternatives and Analogues. Ed. by Leonid Grinin et al. (р. 300-324). Volgograd: Uchitel', 2004.
• Kradin, Nikolay N. 2000. "Nomadic Empires in Evolutionary Perspective", in Alternatives of Social Evolution. Ed. by N.N. Kradin, A.V. Korotayev, Dmitri Bondarenko, V. de Munck, and P.K. Wason (p. 274-288). Vladivostok: Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; reprinted in: The Early State, its Alternatives and Analogues. Ed. by Leonid Grinin et al. (р. 501-524). Volgograd: Uchitel', 2004.
• Kradin, Nikolay N. 2002. "Nomadism, Evolution, and World-Systems: Pastoral Societies in Theories of Historical Development", Journal of World-System Research 8: 368-388.
• Kradin, Nikolay N. 2003. "Nomadic Empires: Origins, Rise, Decline", Nomadic Pathways in Social Evolution. Ed. by N.N. Kradin, Dmitri Bondarenko, and T. Barfield (p. 73-87). Moscow: Center for Civilizational Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences.

References[link]

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (October 2009)

External links[link]

• Characteristics of Chiefdoms
• Chiefdom: Precursor of the Tribe?
• Origins and Evolution of Chiefdoms
• Was the Chiefdom a Congelation of Ideas? by Robert L. Carneiro. In Grinin L. E. et al. Early State, Its Alternatives and Analogues. Volgograd, Uchitel, 2004.

A map showing approximate areas of various Mississippian and related cultures.

The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally.^[1]

The Mississippian way of life began to develop in the Mississippi River Valley (for which it is named). Cultures in the tributary Tennessee River Valley may have also begun to develop Mississippian characteristics at this point. Almost all dated Mississippian sites predate 1539-1540 (when Hernando de Soto explored the area).^{[citation needed]}

Cultural traits[link]

A Mississippian priest, with a ceremonial flint mace and severed head. Artist Herb Roe, based on a repoussé copper plate.

A number of cultural traits are recognized as being characteristic of the Mississippians. Although not all Mississippian peoples practiced all of the following activities, they were distinct from their ancestors in adoption of some or all of these traits.

1. The construction of large, truncated earthwork pyramid mounds, or platform mounds. Such mounds were usually square, rectangular, or occasionally circular. Structures (domestic houses, temples, burial buildings, or other) were usually constructed atop such mounds.
2. Maize-based agriculture. In most places, the development of Mississippian culture coincided with adoption of comparatively large-scale, intensive maize agriculture, which supported larger populations and craft specialization.
3. The adoption and use of riverine (or more rarely marine) shells as tempering agents in their shell tempered pottery.
4. Widespread trade networks extending as far west as the Rockies, north to the Great Lakes, south to the Gulf of Mexico, and east to the Atlantic Ocean.
5. The development of the chiefdom or complex chiefdom level of social complexity.
6. The development of institutionalized social inequality.
7. A centralization of control of combined political and religious power in the hands of few or one.
8. The beginnings of a settlement hierarchy, in which one major center (with mounds) has clear influence or control over a number of lesser communities, which may or may not possess a smaller number of mounds.
9. The adoption of the paraphernalia of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC), also called the Southern Cult. This is the belief system of the Mississippians as we know it. SECC items are found in Mississippian-culture sites from Wisconsin (see Aztalan State Park) to the Gulf Coast, and from Florida to Arkansas and Oklahoma. The SECC was frequently tied in to ritual game-playing, as with chunkey.

The Mississippians had no writing system or stone architecture. They worked naturally occurring metal deposits, such as hammering and annealing copper for ritual objects like Mississippian copper plates and other decorations,^[2] but did not smelt iron or make bronze metallurgy.

Chronology[link]

Stone effigies found at the Etowah Site

The Mississippi stage is usually divided into three or more chronological periods. Each of these periods is an arbitrary historical distinction that varies from region to region. At one site, each period may be considered to begin earlier or later, depending on the speed of adoption or development of given Mississippian traits. The "Mississippi period" should not be confused with the "Mississippian culture". The Mississippi period is the stage, while Mississippian is referred to as the cultural similarities that characterize this society.^{[citation needed][clarification needed]}

• Early Mississippi cultures had just transitioned from the Late Woodland period way of life (500–1000 C.E.). Different groups abandoned tribal lifeways for increasing complexity, sedentism, centralization, and agriculture. The Early Mississippi period was from c. 1000 to 1200 C.E. Production of surplus corn and attractions of the regional chiefdoms led to rapid population concentrations in major centers.

• The Middle Mississippi period reflects the high point of the Mississippi era. The expansion of the great metropolis and ceremonial complex at Cahokia (in present-day Illinois), the formation of other complex chiefdoms, and the spread and development of SECC art and symbolism are characteristic changes of this period. The Mississippian traits listed above came to be widespread throughout the region. In most places, this period is recognized as occurring c. 1200–1400 C.E.

• The Late Mississippi period, usually considered from c. 1400 to European contact, is characterized by increasing warfare, political turmoil, and population movement. The population of Cahokia dispersed early in this period (1350–1400), perhaps migrating to other rising political centers. More defensive structures are often seen at sites, and sometimes a decline in mound-building and ceremonialism. Although some areas continued an essentially Middle Mississippian culture until the first significant contact with Europeans, the population of most areas had dispersed or were experiencing severe social stress by 1500.^[3][4][5] Along with the contemporary Anasazi, these cultural collapses coincide with the global climate change of the Little Ice Age. Scholars have theorized that drought and the collapse of maize agriculture, together with possible deforestation and overhunting by the concentrated populations, forced them to move away from major sites.

Regional variations[link]

Middle Mississippian[link]

Hollow ceramic jug showing the underwater panther from the Mississippian culture, found at Rose Mound in Cross County, Arkansas, U.S., 1400-1600. height: 8 inches (20 cm).

The Kincaid Site as it may have looked at its peak

The term Middle Mississippian is also used to describe the core of the classic Mississippian culture area. This area covers the central Mississippi River Valley, the lower Ohio River Valley, and most of the Mid-South area, including western and central Kentucky, western Tennessee, and northern Alabama and Mississippi. Sites in this area often contain large ceremonial platform mounds, residential complexes and are often encircled by earthen ditches and ramparts or palisades.^[6]

Middle Mississippian cultures, especially the Cahokia polity located near East St. Louis, Illinois, was very influential on neighboring societies. High status artifacts, including stone statuary and elite pottery associated with Cahokia, have been found far outside of the Middle Mississippian area. These items, especially the pottery, were also copied by local artists.

• Cahokia: The largest and most complex Mississippian site and the largest Pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico, Cahokia was possibly the first, and is considered to have been the most influential of the Mississippian culture centers.
• Angel Mounds: A chiefdom in southern Indiana near Evansville. It is thought by some archaeologists that the Late Mississippian Caborn-Welborn culture developed from the Angel Phase people around 1400 CE and lasted to around 1700 CE.^[7]
• Kincaid Site: A major Mississippian mound center in southern Illinois across the Ohio River from Paducah, Kentucky.
• Moundville: Ranked with Cahokia as one of the two most important sites at the core of the Mississippian culture,^[8] located near Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
• The Parkin Site: The type site for the "Parkin phase", an expression of Late Mississippian culture, believed by many archaeologists to be the province of Casqui visited by Hernando de Soto in 1542.^[9]

South Appalachian Mississippian[link]

The term South Appalachian Province was originally used by W. H. Holmes in 1903 to describe a regional ceramic style in the southeast involving surface decorations applied with a carved wooden paddle. By the late 1960s archaeological investigations had shown the similarity of the culture which produced the pottery and the midwestern Mississippian pattern defined by the Midwestern Taxonomic System in 1937. In 1967 James B. Griffin coined South Appalachian Mississippian to describe the evolving understanding of the peoples of the Southeast.^[10] South Appalachian Mississippian area sites are distributed across a contiguous area including Alabama, Georgia, northern Florida, South Carolina, and central and western North Carolina and Tennessee. Chronologically this area became Mississippianized later than the Middle Mississippian area (about 1000 CE as compared to 800 CE) to its northwest and is believed that the peoples of this area adopted Mississippian traits from their northwestern neighbors.^[6]

Typical settlements were located on riverine floodplains and included villages with defensive palisades enclosing platform mounds and residential areas.^[6] Etowah and Ocmulgee(both located in Georgia) are prominent examples of the South Appalachian Mississippian settlements.

Caddoan Mississippian[link]

Map of the Caddoan Mississippian culture and some important sites

The Caddoan Mississippian area, a regional variant of the Mississippian culture, covered a large territory, including what is now Eastern Oklahoma, Western Arkansas, Northeast Texas, and Northwest Louisiana. Archaeological evidence that the cultural continuity is unbroken from prehistory to the present, and that the direct ancestors of the Caddo and related Caddo language speakers in prehistoric times and at first European contact and the modern Caddo Nation of Oklahoma is unquestioned today.^[11]

The climate in this area was drier than areas in the eastern woodlands, hindering maize production, and the lower population on the plains to the west may have meant fewer neighboring competing chiefdoms to contend with. Major sites such as Spiro and the Battle Mound Site are in the Arkansas River and Red River Valleys, the largest and most fertile of the waterways in the Caddoan region, where maize agriculture would have been the most productive.^[12] The sites generally lacked wooden palisade fortifications often found in the major Middle Mississippian towns. Living on the western edge of the Mississippian world, the Caddoans may have faced fewer military threats from their neighbors. Their societies may also have had a somewhat lower level of social stratification.

The Caddoan people were speakers of one of the many Caddoan languages.^[13] The Caddoan languages once had a broad geographic distribution, but many are now extinct. The modern languages in the Caddoan family include Caddo and Pawnee, now spoken mainly by elderly people.

The Hernando de Soto led an expedition into the area in the early 1540s, he encountered several Native groups now thought to have been Caddoan. Composed of many tribes, the Caddo were organized into three confederacies, the Hasinai, Kadohadacho, and Natchitoches, which were all linked by their similar languages.

Plaquemine Mississippian[link]

Map showing the geographical extent of the Plaquemine cultura and some of its major sites

The Plaquemine culture was an archaeological culture in the lower Mississippi River Valley in western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana. Good examples of this culture are the Medora Site (the type site for the culture and period) in West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, and the Anna, Emerald Mound, Winterville and Holly Bluff sites located in Mississippi.^[14] Plaquemine culture was contemporaneous with the Middle Mississippian culture in the Cahokia site in St. Louis, Missouri. It is considered ancestral to the Natchez and Taensa Peoples.^[15]

• Emerald Mound: A Plaquemine Mississippian period archaeological site located on the Natchez Trace Parkway near Stanton, Mississippi. The site dates from the period between 1200 and 1730 CE. The platform mound is the second-largest Pre-Columbian earthwork in the country, after Monks Mound at Cahokia.
• Grand Village of the Natchez: The main village of the Natchez people, with three mounds. The only mound site to be used and maintained into historic times.

Known Mississippian chiefdoms[link]

Although the Mississippian culture was heavily disrupted before a complete understanding of the political landscape was written down, many Mississippian political bodies were documented and others have been discovered by research.

Related modern nations[link]

Mississippian peoples were almost certainly ancestral to the majority of the American Indian nations living in this region in the historic era. The historic and modern day American Indian nations believed to have descended from the overarching Mississippian Culture include: the Alabama, Apalachee, Caddo, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Guale, Hitchiti, Houma, Kansa, Missouri, Mobilian, Natchez, Osage Nation, Quapaw, Seminole, Tunica-Biloxi, Yamasee, and Yuchi.^{[citation needed]}

Contact with Europeans[link]

A map showing the de Soto route through the Southeast

At Joara, near Morganton, North Carolina, Native Americans of the Mississippian culture interacted with Spanish explorers of the Juan Pardo expedition, who built a base there in 1567 called Fort San Juan. Expedition documentation and archaeological evidence of the fort and Native American culture both exist. The soldiers were at the fort about 18 months (1567–1568) before the natives killed them and destroyed the fort. (They killed soldiers stationed at five other forts as well; only one man of 120 survived.) Sixteenth-century Spanish artifacts have been recovered from the site, marking the first European colonization in the interior of what became the United States.^[16]

Scholars have studied the records of Hernando de Soto's expedition of 1539–1543 to learn of his contacts with Mississippians, as he traveled through their villages of the Southeast. He visited many villages, in some cases staying for a month or longer. The List of sites and peoples visited by the Hernando de Soto Expedition chronicles those villages. Some encounters were violent, while others were relatively peaceable. In some cases, de Soto seems to have been used as a tool or ally in long-standing native feuds. In one example, de Soto negotiated a truce between the Pacaha and the Casqui.

De Soto's later encounters left about half of the Spaniards and perhaps many hundreds of Native Americans dead. The chronicles of de Soto are among the first documents written about Mississippian peoples, and are an invaluable source of information on their cultural practices. The chronicles of the Narváez expedition were written before the de Soto expedition; the Narváez expedition that informed the Court of de Soto about the New World.

After the destruction and flight of the de Soto expedition, the Mississippian peoples continued their way of life with little direct European influence. Indirectly, however, European introductions dramatically changed native societies in the Eastern United States. Because the natives lacked immunity to new infectious diseases, such as measles and smallpox, epidemics caused so many fatalities that they undermined the social order of many chiefdoms. Some groups adopted European horses and changed to nomadism.^[17] Political structures collapsed in many places.

By the time more documentary accounts were being written, the Mississippian way of life had changed irrevocably. Some groups maintained an oral tradition link to their mound-building past, such as the late 19th-century Cherokee^[18]. Other Native American groups, having migrated many hundreds of miles and lost their elders to diseases, did not know their ancestors had built the mounds dotting the landscape. This contributed to the myth of the Mound Builders as a people distinct from Native Americans, which was rigorously debunked by Cyrus Thomas in 1894.

See also[link]

• List of Mississippian sites
• List of burial mounds in the United States
• Southeastern Ceremonial Complex

Notes[link]

External references[link]

• Bense, Judith A. Archaeology of the Southeastern United States: Paleoindian to World War I. Academic Press, New York, 1994. ISBN 0-12-089060-7.
• Cheryl Anne Cox; and David H. Dye, eds; Towns and Temples along the Mississippi University of Alabama Press 1990
• Hudson, Charles; The Southeastern Indians. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1976. ISBN 0-87049-248-9.
• O'Conner, Mallory McCane. Lost Cities of the Ancient Southeast. University Press of Florida, Florida A & M University, Gainesville, Fla., 1995. ISBN 0-8130-1350-X.
• Pauketat, Timothy R.; The Ascent of Chiefs: Cahokia and Mississippian Politics in Native North America. University of Alabama Press, 1994, ISBN 978-0-8173-0728-8.
• Pauketat, Timothy R.; “The History of the Mississippians” in North American Archaeology Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2005.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mississippian culture

• The Mississippian and Late Prehistoric Period, National Park Service Southeastern Archaeology Center
• Mississippian World, Texas Beyond History
• Cahokia Mounds
• Etowah Indian Mounds State Historic Site
• Indian Mounds of Mississippi, a National Park Service Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary
• Moundville Archaeological Park
• Chucalissa Museum and Archaeological site
• Encyclopedia of Alabama: Mississippian Period
• Animation: Towns and Temples of the Mississippian Culture-5 Sites

v t e    Mississippian and related cultures List of Mississippian sites Mound builder (people) Timeline of Mississippi valley Middle Mississippian American Bottom and Upper Mississippi Aztalan Big Eddy Site Cahokia Cloverdale archaeological site Dickson Mounds Emmons Cemetery Site John Roy Site Kuhn Station Site Mitchell Site Monks Mound Orendorf Site Sugarloaf Mound Steed-Kisker culture Lower Ohio River and Confluence area Adams Site Kincaid Mounds Marshall Site Millstone Bluff Rowlandton Mound Site Towosahgy Turk Site Twin Mounds Site Wickliffe Mounds Middle Ohio River Angel Mounds Angel Phase Annis Mound Site Bone Bank Site Caborn-Welborn culture Hovey Lake Murphy Archaeological Site Prather Site Slack Farm Tolu Site Welborn Village Archeological Site Tennessee and Cumberland Beasley Mounds Site Brentwood Library Site Brick Church Mound and Village Site Castalian Springs Dunbar Cave Fewkes Group Archaeological Site Mound Bottom Sellars Indian Mound Obion Mounds Old Town Archaeological Site Swallow Bluff Island Mounds Central and Lower Mississippi Belle Meade Phase Boyd Mounds Site Campbell Site Chucalissa Eaker Site Menard-Hodges Site Murphy Mound Archeological Site Parkin Site Nodena Phase Nodena Site Tipton Phase Tunica Walls Phase South Appalachian Mississippian Avery Site · Beaverdam Creek Site · Bell Field Mound Site · Bessemer Site · Bussell Island  · Chauga Mound · Chiaha · Chota · Citico · Coosa chiefdom · Dallas Phase · Dyar site · Etowah Mounds · Garden Creek site · Hoojah Branch Site · Irene Mound Site · Jere Shine Site · Joara · Joe Bell Site · King Archaeological Site · Lamar Mounds and Village Site · Lamar Phase · Liddell Archeological Site · Little Egypt · Mabila · Mandeville Site · McMahan Mound Site · Moccasin Bend · Moundville Site · Mouse Creek Phase · Mulberry Site · Muscogee (Creek) · Nacoochee Mound · Nikwasi · Ocmulgee · Pisgah Phase · Punk Rock Shelter · Rembert Mounds · Roods Landing · Rucker's Bottom Site · Savannah Archaeological Site · Shiloh Indian Mounds Site · Sixtoe Mound · Summerour Mound Site · Toqua Site · Town Creek Indian Mound · Waddells Mill Pond Site · Wilbanks Site Fort Walton culture Anhaica · Apalachee · Apalachee Province · Cayson Mound and Village Site · Corbin-Tucker Site 8CA142 · Fort Walton Mound · Lake Jackson Mounds · Leon-Jefferson Culture · Letchworth Mounds · Velda Mound · Yon Mound and Village Site Pensacola culture Bottle Creek Indian Mounds · Dauphin Island · Fort Walton Mound · Hickory Ridge Cemetery Site · Naval Live Oaks Cemetery · Pensacola people Plaquemine Mississippian Anna Site · Emerald Mound Site · Fitzhugh Mounds · Flowery Mound · Foster's Mound · Ghost Site Mounds · Grand Village of the Natchez · Holly Bluff Site · Jaketown Site · Jordan Mounds · Julice Mound · Mangum Mound Site · Mazique Archeological Site · Medora Site · Mott Mounds · Natchez · Pocahontas Mounds · Routh Mounds · Scott Place Mounds · Sims Site · Taensa · Transylvania Mounds · Venable Mound · Winterville Site · Caddoan Mississippian Battle Mound Site · Belcher Mound Site · Bluffton Mound · Caddo · Caddoan Mounds · Gahagan Mounds · Ka-Do-Ha Indian Village · Spiro Mounds Upper Mississippian cultures Oneota Beattie Park Mound Group Blood Run Site Hartley Fort State Preserve Roche-a-Cri Petroglyphs Fort Ancient culture Alligator Effigy Mound Clover Site Dodge Site Leo Petroglyph Serpent Mound SunWatch Indian Village Culture Artwork Emmons mask Long-nosed god maskette Mississippian copper plates (Rogan plates, Spiro plates, Wulfing cache) Mississippian culture pottery Mississippian stone statuary Shell gorget Languages Caddoan languages Central Algonquian languages Cherokee language Mobilian Jargon Muskogean languages Natchez language Siouan languages Timucua language Tunica language Yuchi language Religion Ballgame Black drink Calumet (pipe) Chunkey Earth/fertility cult Green Corn Ceremony Horned Serpent Platform mound Southeastern Ceremonial Complex Stone box grave Thunderbird Underwater panther Related topics  · Chevron bead · Clarksdale bell · Maize · Mill Creek chert · de Soto Expedition ·

v t e    Pre-Columbian North America Archaeological cultures North American pre-Columbian chronology – Adena – Alachua – Ancient Pueblo (Anasazi) – Baytown – Belle Glade – Buttermilk Creek Complex – Caborn-Welborn – Calf Creek – Caloosahatchee – Clovis – Coles Creek – Deptford – Folsom – Fort Ancient – Fort Walton – Fremont – Glades – Glacial Kame – Hopewell (List of Hopewell sites) – Hohokam – Leon-Jefferson – Mississippian (List of Mississippian sites) – Mogollon – Monongahela – Old Cordilleran – Oneota – Paleo-Arctic – Paleo-Indians – Patayan – Plano – Plaquemine – Poverty Point – Prehistoric Southwest – Red Ocher – Santa Rosa-Swift Creek – St. Johns – Steed-Kisker – Tchefuncte – Tocobaga – Troyville Archaeological sites Angel Mounds – Bandelier National Monument – The Bluff Point Stoneworks – Cahokia – Chaco Canyon – Casa Grande – Coso Rock Art District – Eaker – Effigy Mounds National Monument – Etowah Indian Mounds – Eva – Folsom Site – Fort Ancient – Fort Center – Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument – Holly Bluff Site – Hopewell Culture National Historical Park – Kincaid Mounds – Kolomoki – Manitou Cliff Dwellings – Marksville – Meadowcroft Rockshelter – Mesa Verde – Moorehead Circle – Moundville – Mummy Cave – Nodena Site – Ocmulgee National Monument – Old Stone Fort – Parkin Park – Pinson Mounds – Portsmouth Earthworks – Poverty Point – Pueblo Bonito – Rock Eagle – Rock Hawk – Salmon Ruins – Serpent Mound – Spiro Mounds – SunWatch – Taos Pueblo – Toltec Mounds – Town Creek Indian Mound – Winterville Miscellaneous Ballgame – Black drink – Buhl woman – Calumet – Chunkey – Clovis point – Container Revolution – Eastern Agricultural Complex – Eden point – Effigy mound – Falcon dancer – Folsom point – Green Corn Ceremony – Horned Serpent – Kennewick man – Kiva – Metallurgy – Mi'kmaq hieroglyphic writing – Medicine wheel – Mound builders – N.A.G.P.R.A. – Norse colonization of the Americas – Piasa – Pueblo dwellings – Southeastern Ceremonial Complex – Three Sisters agriculture – Thunderbird – Underwater panther Related: Genetic history · Indigenous Portal of North America · Pre-Columbian era

For the Charles Gounod opera, see La reine de Saba.

This article contains Ethiopic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Ethiopic characters.

The Queen of Sheba (Hebrew: מלכת שבא‎, Malkaṯ Šəḇâ in Biblical Hebrew; Malkat Sh'va in Modern Hebrew; Ge'ez: ንግሥተ ሳባ, Nigiste Saba (Nəgəstä Saba); Arabic: ملكة سبأ‎, Malikat Sabaʾ) was a monarch of the ancient kingdom of Sheba and is referred to in Ethiopian history, the Bible, the Qur'an, Yoruba customary tradition, and Josephus. She is widely assumed to have been a queen regnant, although there is no historical proof of this; in fact, she may have been a queen consort.^[1] The location of her kingdom is believed to have been in Ethiopia and Yemen.

Diverse references[link]

The queen of Sheba has been called a variety of names by different peoples in different times. To King Solomon of Israel she was the Queen of Sheba. In Islamic tradition she was called Bilqis or Balqis by the Arabs, who say she came from the city of Sheba, also called Mareb, in Yemen or Arabia Felix. The Roman historian Josephus calls her Nicaule. The Ethiopian people claim her as Makeda or Maqueda. She is thought to have been born sometime in the 10th century BC. Her lineage was part of the Ethiopian dynasty established in 1370 BCE by Za Besi Angabo, which lasted 350 years; Makeda's grandfather and father were the last two rulers of this dynasty. Makeda's mother was known as Queen Ismenie. In 1005 BCE, Makeda's father appointed her as his successor from his deathbed.^[2]

To the early ancient Greeks, Ethiopia referred to an empire that encompassed a vast territory, extending to Arabia, Syria, Armenia, and the territory between the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf. This is the empire that the Queen of Sheba was said to have reigned over. In the Ethiopian Book of Aksum, she is described as establishing a new capital city at Azeba, while the Kebra Negast refers to her building a capital at Debra Makeda, or "Mount Makeda". The Yemenite kingdom of Himyar refers to her in its histories as well.^[3]

In the Hebrew Bible, a tradition of the history of nations is preserved in Genesis 10. In Genesis 10:7 there is a reference to Sheba, the son of Raamah, the son of Cush, the son of Ham, son of Noah. In Genesis 10:26-29 there is a reference to another person named Sheba, listed along with Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Obal, Abimael, Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab as the descendants of Joktan, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Arphaxad, the descendant of Shem, another son of Noah.

Aharoni, Avi-Yonah, Rainey, and Safrai placed the Semitic Sheba in Southern Arabia in geographic proximity to the location of the tribes descended from their ancestor, Joktan. In addition to Sheba, Hazarmaveth and Ophir were identified. Semitic Havilah was located in Eastern Africa, modern day Ethiopia. Semitic Havilah (Beresh't 10:29) is to be distinguished from Cushite Havilah (Beresh't 10:7), the descendant of Cush, descendant of Ham; both locations for Havilah are thought by these scholars to have been located in present day Ethiopia.^[4]

Narratives concerning the Queen of Sheba[link]

Hebrew biblical accounts[link]

Claude Lorrain, The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba

According to the Hebrew Bible, the unnamed queen of the land of Sheba heard of the great wisdom of King Solomon of Israel and journeyed there with gifts of spices, gold, precious stones, and beautiful wood and to test him with questions, as recorded in First Kings 10:1-13 (largely copied in 2 Chronicles 9:1–12).

It is related further that the queen was awed by Solomon's great wisdom and wealth, and pronounced a blessing on Solomon's God. Solomon reciprocated with gifts and "everything she desired." Solomon offered to give her everything his kingdom had to offer except the "royal bounty." Therefore, according to the Bible, "she turned and went to her country, she and her servants." The queen apparently was quite rich, however, as she brought four and a half tons of gold with her to give to Solomon (1 Kings 10:10).

In the biblical passages which refer explicitly to the Queen of Sheba there are no hints of love or sexual attraction between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The two are depicted merely as fellow monarchs engaged in the affairs of state.

Account in the New Testament[link]

The Queen of Sheba is believed^[who?] to be the Queen of the South referenced in Matthew 12:42 and Luke 11:31 in the New Testament, where Jesus indicates that she and the Ninevites will judge the generation of Jesus' contemporaries who rejected him. (Some arguments believe that The Queen of Sheba was not the Queen of the South, because she did not come from the Ends of the Earth.)

Qur'anic and other Middle Eastern accounts[link]

The Queen of Sheba, Bilqis, shown in a Persian miniature reclining in a garden - tinted drawing on paper c. 1595

The Qur'an, the central religious text of Islam, mentions the kingdom of the Queen by name (Sheba) in the 34th Chapter. Arab sources name her Balqis, Bilqis or Bilquis. The Qur'anic narrative, from sura 27 (An-Naml),^[5] has Suleiman (Salomon) getting reports from the Hoopoe bird about the kingdom of Saba (Sheba), ruled by a queen whose people worship the sun instead of God. Suleiman sends a letter inviting her to submit fully to the One God, Allah, Lord of the Worlds according to the Islamic text. The Queen of Sheba is unsure how to respond and asks her advisors for counsel. They reply by reminding her that they are "of great toughness" in a reference to their willingness to go to war should she choose to. She replies that she fears if they were to lose, Suleiman may behave as any other king would: 'entering a country, despoiling it and making the most honorable of its people its lowest'. She decides to meet with Suleiman in order to find out more. Suleiman receives her response to meet him, and asks if anyone can bring him her throne before she arrives. A jinn under the control of Suleiman proposed that he will bring it before Suleiman rises from his seat. One who had knowledge of the "Book" proposed to bring him the throne of Bilqis 'in the twinkling of an eye' and accomplished that immediately.^[6] The queen arrives at his court, is shown her throne and asked: does your throne look like this? She replied: (It is) as though it were it. When she enters his crystal palace she accepts Abrahamic monotheism and the worship of one God alone, Allah.

Ethiopian accounts[link]

An Ethiopian fresco of the Queen of Sheba travelling to Solomon.

The imperial family of Ethiopia claims its origin directly from the offspring of the Queen of Sheba by King Solomon.^[7] The Queen of Sheba (ንግሥተ ሣብአ nəgəśtã Śāb'ã), is named Makeda (ማክዳ Mākədā) in the Ethiopian account.

Story[link]

An ancient compilation of Ethiopian legends, Kebra Negast ('the Glory of Kings'), is dated to seven hundred years ago and relates a history of Makeda and her descendants. In this account King Solomon is said to have seduced the Queen of Sheba and sired her son, Menelik I, who would become the first Emperor of Ethiopia.

The narrative given in the Kebra Negast - which has no parallel in the Hebrew Biblical story - is that King Solomon invited the Queen of Sheba to a banquet, serving spicy food to induce her thirst, and inviting her to stay in his palace overnight. The Queen asked him to swear that he would not take her by force. He accepted upon the condition that she, in turn, would not take anything from his house by force. The Queen assured that she would not, slightly offended by the implication that she, a rich and powerful monarch, would engage in stealing. However, as she woke up in the middle of the night, she was very thirsty. Just as she reached for a jar of water placed close to her bed, King Solomon appeared, warning her that she was breaking her oath, water being the most valuable of all material possessions. Thus, while quenching her thirst, she set the king free from his promise and they spent the night together.

Other Ethiopian accounts make her the daughter of a king named Agabo or Agabos, in some legends said to have become king after slaying the mythological serpent Arwe; in others, to have been the 28th ruler of the Agazyan tribe. In either event, he is said to have extended his Empire to both sides of the Red Sea.^{[citation needed]}

The tradition that the Biblical Queen of Sheba was a ruler of Ethiopia who visited King Solomon in Jerusalem, in ancient Israel, is supported by the first century CE. Roman (of Jewish origin) historian Flavius Josephus, who identified Solomon’s visitor as a "Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia".^[8]

While there are no known traditions of matriarchal rule in Yemen during the early first millennium BC, the earliest inscriptions of the rulers of Dʿmt in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea mention queens of very high status, possibly equal to their kings.^[9]

Etymology of Makeda[link]

The etymology of her name is uncertain, but there are two principal opinions about its Ethiopian source. One group, which includes the British scholar Edward Ullendorff, holds that it is a corruption of "Candace", the Ethiopian queen mentioned in the New Testament Acts; the other group^[who?] connects the name Makeda with the Ethiopic version of the Alexander romance, which, like other translations, holds that 'Iskinder' (Alexander the Great) of Macedonia (Ethiopic Meqédon) met with Queen Candace (Kandake) of Nubia (c. 332 BCE), and that she dissuaded him from invading her realm.

The Italian scholar Carlo Conti Rossini, however, was unconvinced by either of these theories and, in 1954 stated that he believed the matter unresolved.^[10]

Other traditions[link]

In addition to the above cited accounts, at least one other traditional reference to the queen exists. The Yoruba Ijebu clan of Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria, claim that she was actually a noblewoman of theirs known as Oloye Bilikisu Sungbo. They also assert that a medieval system of walls and ditches, known as the eredo, that was built by their ancestors over the course of the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, was a monument to the greatness of this personage by her people. After excavations in 1999 the archaeologist Patrick Darling was quoted as saying "I don't want to overplay the Sheba theory, but it cannot be discounted...The local people believe it and that's what is important...The most cogent argument against it at the moment is the dating."^[11]

Later receptions[link]

Christian interpretations[link]

Christian interpretations of the scriptures mentioning the Queen of Sheba in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, typically have emphasized both the historical and metaphorical values in the story. The account of the Queen of Sheba is thereby interpreted by Christians as being both a metaphor and an analogy: the Queen's visit to Solomon has been compared to the metaphorical marriage of the Church to Christ where Solomon is the anointed one or the messiah and Sheba represents a Gentile population submitting to the messiah; the Queen of Sheba's chastity has also been depicted as a foreshadowing of the Virgin Mary; and the three gifts that she brought (gold, spices, and stones) have been seen as analogous to the gifts of the Magi (gold, frankincense, and myrrh). The latter is emphasized as being consistent with a passage from Isaiah 60:6; And they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring forth gold and incense; and they shall show forth the praises of the Lord.^[12] This last connection is interpreted^[who?] as relating to the Magi, the learned astronomers of Sheba who saw a new star and set off on a journey to find a new ruler connected to the new star, that led them to Bethlehem.

Medieval depictions[link]

Art in the Middle Ages depicting the visit of the Queen of Sheba includes the Portal of the Mother of God at the 13th century Amiens Cathedral, which is included as an analogy as part of a larger depiction of the gifts of the Magi.^[13] The 12th century cathedrals at Strasbourg, Chartres, Rochester and Canterbury include artistic renditions in such elements as stained glass windows and door jamb decorations.^[12]

Renaissance account[link]

Renaissance relief of the Queen of Sheba meeting Solomon - gate of Florence Baptistry

Boccaccio's On Famous Women (Latin: De Mulieribus Claris) follows Josephus in calling the Queen of Sheba, Nicaula. Boccaccio goes on to explain that not only was she the Queen of Ethiopia and Egypt, but also the queen of Arabia. She also is related to have had a grand palace on "a very large island" called Meroe, located someplace near the Nile river, "practically on the other side of the world." From there Nicaula crossed the deserts of Arabia, through Ethiopia and Egypt, and up the coast of the Red Sea, to come to Jerusalem to see "the great King Solomon".^[14]

Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies continues the convention of calling the Queen of Sheba, Nicaula. Piero della Francesca's frescoes in Arezzo (ca 1466) on the Legend of the True Cross, contain two panels on the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon. The legend links the beams of Solomon's palace (adored by Queen of Sheba) to the wood of the crucifixion. The Renaissance continuation of the metaphorical view of the Queen of Sheba as an analogy to the gifts of the Magi also is clearly evident in the Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi (c. 1510), by Hieronymus Bosch. Bosch chooses to depict a scene of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon in an ornately decorated collar worn by one of the Magi.^[15]

Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus refers to the Queen of Sheba as Saba, when Mephistopheles is trying to persuade Faustus of the wisdom of the women with whom he supposedly shall be presented every morning.^[16]

Theories concerning the origin of the account[link]

Possible Egyptian derivation[link]

Josephus says in his Antiquity of the Jews, book 8 chapter 6, that it was the "queen of Egypt and Ethiopia" who visited King Solomon.

Recent archaeological discoveries[link]

Recent archaeological discoveries in Mareb, Yemen support the view that the Queen of Sheba ruled over southern Arabia, with evidence suggesting that the area was the capital of the Kingdom of Sheba.

A team of researchers funded by the American Foundation for the Study of Man (AFSM) and led by University of Calgary archaeology professor, Dr. Bill Glanzman, has been working to "unlock the secrets of a 3,000-year-old temple in Yemen." "We have an enormous job ahead of us," said Glanzman in 2007. "Our first task is to wrest the sanctuary from the desert sands, documenting our findings as we go. We're trying to determine how the temple was associated with the Queen of Sheba, how the sanctuary was used throughout history, and how it came to play such an important role in Arab folklore."^[17]

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Queen of Sheba

Look up Queen of Sheba in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Sheba
• Minaean
• King Solomon
• Old Testament
• Teleportation in Islam
• Bilocation
• Biblical narratives and the Qur'an

Bibliography[link]

References[link]

• Budge, E. A. Wallis, The Queen of Sheba and her only son Menelik, London 1932.
• Jankowski, A., Die Königin von Saba und Salomo, Hamburg 1987.
• Joseph, Antiquitates iudaicae, viii.6.2.
• Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, vi.32.154.
• Makeda, Queen of Sheba by Torrey Philemon.
• Queen of Sheba Temple restored (2000, BBC)
• The Queen Of Sheba by Michael Wood and the BBC.
• The Queen of Sheba, web directory with thumbnail galleries
• Jewish Encyclopedia with information on Jewish and Muslim traditions
• "Queen of Sheba mystifies at the Bowers" — Gladys Rama's review of a museum exhibit for UC Irvine's 'New U' publication
• Alessandro de Maigret. Arabia Felix, translated Rebecca Thompson. London: Stacey International, 2002. ISBN 1-900988-07-0
• Andrey Korotayev. Ancient Yemen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-19-922237-1.

Footnotes[link]

Not to be confused with Robert de Pinho de Souza.

Roberto Pinto (born August 22, 1978 in Stuttgart) is a Portuguese-German footballer. He currently plays for SV Sandhausen.

Football career[link]

He was released by Hertha BSC in summer 2004. In January 2005, he signed a 18 months deal with Arminia Bielefeld, having been without club for 6 months and signed in summer 2007, a two years deal with Grasshopper-Club Zürich.

Honours[link]

• DFB-Ligapokal winner: 2001, 2002.

External links[link]

• Kicker Profile
• Official Site
• Roberto Pinto - Fussballdaten - Die Fußball-Datenbank

This biographical article related to a German association football midfielder born in the 1970s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e