Solomon’s Egyptian Bride: Artful Alliance or Biblical Boast?

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King Solomon was famous for his wisdom and, among other things, his many marital and extramarital relationships. His harem is numbered at 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3)—surely an exaggeration. According to 1 Kings 11, he also took foreign wives, some of whom, claim the biblical writers, led him to idolatry. It is not remarkable that Solomon should ally himself with queens from the lands around him. Such had been royal policy for many kings throughout ancient Near Eastern history. Yet what was remarkable was for Solomon to have married into the Egyptian royal family (1 Kings 3:1). […]

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Footnotes

1. See Chris McKinny et al., “The Millo: Jerusalem’s Lost Monument,” BAR, Fall 2023.

2. Yigal Levin, “Did Pharaoh Sheshonq Attack Jerusalem?” BAR, July/August 2012.

Endnotes

1. EA 4 in The Amarna Letters, William L. Moran, trans. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1992), pp. 8–9.

2. Abraham Malamat, “The Kingdom of David and Solomon in Its Contact with Egypt and Aram Naharaim,” Biblical Archaeologist 21.4 (1958), p. 98.

3. William G. Dever, “Solomon, Scripture, and Science: The Rise of the Judahite State in the 10th Century BCE,” Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology 1 (2021), pp. 102–125.