[Sidenote: Years before Christ, about 892.]
This celebrated princess is said to have visited Solomon, "to prove him with hard questions," by which have generally been understood enigmatical puzzles. Some of these are to be found in sacred writ, of which the riddle which Samson proposed to the young men of Timnath, is a very ancient and curious specimen. It appears from the writings of the ancients, that the Greeks and all the Eastern nations, were singularly attached to enigmas. Plutarch, in his Feast of the Seven Sages, introduces the following questions proposed by Amasis, the king of Egypt, to the king of Ethiopia: "What is the most ancient thing--what the most beautiful--what the largest--what the wisest--what the most common--what the most useful--what the most hurtful--what the strongest--and what the most easy?" To which the king of Ethiopia replied, "The most ancient thing is time--the most beautiful is light--the largest is the world--the wisest is truth--the most common is death--the most useful is God--the most hurtful is the devil--the strongest is fortune--and the most easy, to follow one's own inclination." In the book of Proverbs, we find several series of this description, which originally might have been answers to questions of a similar nature. Among others, we have this very curious and beautiful statement: "There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise; the ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer; the conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks; the locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands; the spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces." To the same class may be referred the following paragraph in the third chapter of Ecclesiastes: "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a 'time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal: a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace."