The Queen of Sheba visited King Solomon B.C. 992, to learn of his wisdom and “to prove him with hard questions.” Her kingdom was in that part of southeastern Arabia now called Yemen, bordering on the Red Sea. Her journey was a very long one and she “came with a very great train of camels that bare spices and very much gold and precious stones.” It will be observed that there were no horses in this “very great train.” It will be observed further, from the incidents above related, that whenever the Israelites met their neighbors north of them, whether in peace or war, they met horses with them; and whenever they met their neighbors south of them, they were mounted only on camels. When the dominions of Solomon had become vastly extended, embracing numbers of tributary kingdoms, as well as nomadic tribes, and when his ships had gathered in untold riches from all parts of the world, he found it prudent to reorganize his army for the defense of his kingdom and his wealth, and on a scale commensurate with the dangers that might arise from a combination of the jealous and envious neighbors with whom he was surrounded. Among the northern kingdoms of that day it had been often demonstrated in battle that the effective force of an army must be estimated by its strength in horsemen and chariots of war. Solomon, therefore, bought horses and chariots from Egypt, and horses from all lands that had them for sale. It is probable that the superiority of the Egyptian chariots was the special reason for buying them in that country, as he paid six hundred shekels of silver for the chariots and one hundred and fifty for the horses to bring them home. The reorganized army consisted of one thousand four hundred chariots and twelve thousand horsemen, and they were quartered in the different large cities in his dominions. In the interval of seven hundred and twenty-eight years that had elapsed since Joseph was Prime Minister, and horses introduced in Egypt, they had greatly multiplied. When Solomon died and his kingdom was divided into two hostile camps, Hiram, King of Tyre, his lifelong friend and associate, became virtually his successor to the trade of the world.