Where did the Queen of Sheba come from?

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Most scholars place Sheba in south-western Arabia, the kingdom of Saba in today's Yemen, with its capital at Marib; the map point for Sheba stands in Yemen about 2,040 km south-south-east of Jerusalem in a straight line. From there the incense road ran north through the oases of the Hejaz to Dedan, some 1,400 km on, and on through Edom to Gaza and Jerusalem, a journey of months by camel. Ethiopia claims her too: its tradition names her Makeda and makes her the mother, by Solomon, of Menelik, the first of its kings. Josephus called her the queen of Egypt and Ethiopia. The Bible gives her no name and no city, and in the Gospels she is “The queen of the south”. Kings tells the visit: “And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the LORD, she came to prove him with hard questions. And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much gold, and precious stones”. She gave “an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices very great store, and precious stones: there came no more such abundance of spices as these which the queen of Sheba gave to king Solomon”, and “she turned and went to her own country, she and her servants”. Jesus says that she “came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon”. Sheba is elsewhere the land of gold and incense: Ezekiel's “merchants of Sheba and Raamah” traded “with chief of all spices, and with all precious stones, and gold”, and Isaiah's camels from Sheba “bring gold and incense”. Saba is well known from the great dam at Marib and from its inscriptions, but the inscriptions begin in the eighth century BC, two centuries after Solomon, and no Sabaean queen is recorded. In the eighth and seventh centuries Assyrian kings did receive tribute from Sabaeans and fought queens who ruled Arab tribes in the north, Zabibe and Samsi; some scholars think the story reflects such northern queens or a later age of Sabaean trade, others that Sabaean caravans were already reaching the north in the tenth century. The Ethiopian Kebra Nagast, compiled in the fourteenth century, carries her to Aksum with the ark. Genesis's table of nations lists Sheba twice, among the sons of Cush through Raamah and among the sons of Joktan in Arabia, which has fed both claims.