Three Mirrors for Two Biblical Ladies

The biblical episode relating the encounter of the Queen of Sheba with Solomon and the apocryphal tale of Susanna, a Jewish woman slanderously accused of adultery by two judges and saved by Daniel, have become part of the collective imagination in West and East. These two Old Testament women have been adapted in art throughout time and space to meet the changing cultural horizons of the community. Like mirrors, various periods and modes of late-Ancient and medieval Judaism, Christianity and Islam have each, in their own way, reflected the characteristics of the great Queen and the chaste Susanna.