NOT AT HOME

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26605, 15 December 1951, Page 6

NOT AT HOME

[Bj/

WHIM WHAM]

An expedition to find and excavate the tomb of the Queen of Sheba will leave New York soon, said Dr. Robert Bell, of the University of Oklahoma . . . Archaeologists believe that the ancient city of Marib, whence the Queen set forth on her visit to the ✓ fabulous court of King Solomon, is buried under the sand in the southwest of the Arabian Desert. —News item. Some People may recall the Story How Solomon in All his Glory Received the Queen of Sheba, who Had heard about his Wisdom too. Perhaps the Children hear about it In Social Studies—though I doubt It —Or Classic Comics—wnod require That Education go much Higher? At all Events, this famous Queen Whose Beauty and whose Wit have been A Byword down the Ages, shone Momentarily, and was gone From History, and from Solomon: So Little known, besides her Name After three thousand Years of Fame, That Fancy conjures up a Scene Of Splendour—Something in between The Festival of Britain, say, And a Hollywood Roman Holiday. It can’t have been like That at All: King Solomon’s Effects were small, His Wisdom, we’ll suppose, was great By contrast with his modest State. Nor would the Queen’s Arrival fill - The Screen for Cecil B. de Mille. She lived, she died, the Desert swept Over the Tomb where Sheba slept Under Arabian Sands, while Many a Century passed, and then Millennia, Till Nineteen Fifty-one, A.D.

—Say. Folks! Let’s dig her up and see! A Voice from out the Middle West Summons the Savants to the Quest. With Helicopters. Excavators,

Canned Succotash. Refrigerators, Bulldozers and**What Not. they'll base Their Business on the Desert’s Face, And find eventually What

Ever there is beneath the Spot. But Sheba’s Queen? Good Heavens, No! She left the District long ago.