by
Damien F. Mackey
Given King Solomon’s special love for “Pharaoh’s daughter”, it would figure that she was the same as the beautiful “Shunammite” of the Song of Solomon (6:13).
Victor Sasson has come to this same conclusion, that the “Pharaoh’s daughter” was the desirable lady of the Song of Solomon (“King Solomon and the Dark Lady in the Song of Songs”, Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 39, Fasc. 4, Oct., 1989, pp. 407-414). Sasson describes her as being “Dark”, but I have already argued that this was due to her exposure to the sun, as she herself attested (Song 1:6), and not to her ethnicity – and were Egyptian women necessarily darker than Israelite ones, anyway?
On. p. 413, though, Sasson will make the point that: “In the Song the lady’s explanation … is best interpreted … to mean that her skin complexion was not black but that it was to a great extent the result of too much exposure to the sun. ...”.
Sasson begins on pp. 1-2:
One of the mysteries in the Song of Songs that have roused my curiosity for some time is the identity - or, rather, the poetic identity - of the lady who calls herself šěḥôrâ and šěḥarḥōret in i 5-6. Increasingly, I have come to conclude that the woman in question was Pharaoh's daughter whom Solomon loved and took for a wife. Since the Song has elicited so much amount of published discussion over the ages, I was not greatly surprised when I discovered that this theory was already put forward a long time ago by Theodore of Mopsuestia (5th century C.E.). ….
…
The Bible credits Solomon with being a great lover of women. The following verses from the books of Kings deserve to be quoted and examined. ….
Now King Solomon loved many foreign women: the daughter of Pharaoh, and Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women. …. Solomon clung to these in love.
Revised Standard Version, 1 Kgs xi 1-2). ….
What is of significance here is that, while other foreign women whom Solomon loved are lumped together, Pharaoh's daughter is specially singled out.
The importance of Pharaoh's daughter in the personal history of Solomon is indicated by the fact that she is mentioned four times in 1 Kings (iii 1, vii 8, ix 24, xi 1-2).
In 1 Kgs iii 1 we are told of Solomon's marriage to her. The part of the verse that is of relevance here is: wybyʼh ʼl ‘yr dwd, “He brought her to the City of David”. (New English Bible). The significant element is, more specifically, the word wybyʼh. In the Song i 4 we read: "The King has brought me (hbyʼ ny) into his chambers”. (RSV). The occurrence of the verb hbyʼ cannot be merely coincidental. In fact, the verb is one of a number of literary links to the story of Solomon’s love for Pharaoh’s daughter (cf Song ii 4).
‘yr dwd mentioned in 1 Kings iii 1 is, of course, Jerusalem. In the Song the lady frequently addresses bnwt yrwšlm ("the daughters of Jerusalem") and they, in turn, address her or respond to her. This may be interpreted may be interpreted to mean that the woman was not a native of. Jerusalem. She appears to have been a foreigner, probably Pharaoh’s daughter whom Solomon brought to ‘yr dwd (Jerusalem). ….
The “Shunammite”
I have multi-identified her:
Abishag: “… a beautiful young woman … a Shunammite” (I Kings 1:3).
Tamar: “Now David’s son Absalom had a beautiful sister named Tamar” (2 Samuel 13:1).
Shunammite: “… fairest among women” (Song of Solomon 1:8).
Queen of Sheba: “King Solomon gave the queen of Sheba all she desired and asked for …” (I Kings 10:13).
Pharaoh’s Daughter: “Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter” (I Kings 3:1).
Hatshepsut: Whose name means “foremost of noble women”.
Israel and Egypt were now united as one, with vast cultural exchanges occurring between the two.
Victor Sasson, whose article deserves to be read in its entirety, will make another point most relevant I think (from a geographical point of view) to my view that the Shunammite would become, for a period of time, the Queen of (Beer)sheba, of the southern kingdom of Geshur fronting on Egypt (p. 409, my emphasis):
In the Song iii 6 we read:
Who is this coming from the wilderness,
like a column of smoke,
perfumed with myrrh and frankincense,
with all the fragrant powders of the merchant? ….
The word midbār in the present context appears to be the major wilderness in the southern part of Palestine adjoining Egypt. Pharaoh’s daughter [the Queen of Sheba at this stage] would then be poetically visualized as emerging from the desert … on her way to the fragrant pastures of Palestine, to meet her lover, Solomon.
