Helena of Adiabene - Biography

Biography

She was noted for her generosity; during a famine at Jerusalem she sent to Alexandria for corn (grain) and to Cyprus for dried figs for distribution among the sufferers from the famine. In the Talmud, however (Bava Batra 11a), this is laid to the credit of Monobaz; and though Brüll regards the reference to Monobaz as indicating the dynasty, still Rashi maintains the simpler explanation—that Monobaz himself is meant. The Talmud speaks also of important presents which the queen gave to the Temple at Jerusalem. "Helena had a golden candlestick made over the door of the Temple," to which statement is added that when the sun rose its rays were reflected from the candlestick and everybody knew that it was the time for reading the Shema'. She also made a golden plate on which was written the passage of the Pentateuch which the high priest read when a wife suspected of infidelity was brought before him. In Yerushalmi Yoma iii. 8 the candlestick and the plate are confused. The strictness with which she observed the Jewish law is thus instanced in the Talmud: "Her son having gone to war, Helena made a vow that if he should return safe, she would become a Nazirite for the space of seven years. She fulfilled her vow, and at the end of seven years went to Judah. The Hillelites told her that she must observe her vow anew, and she therefore lived as a Nazirite for seven more years. At the end of the second seven years she became impure, and she had to repeat her Naziriteship, thus being a Nazarite for twenty-one years. Judah ha-Nasi, however, said she was a Nazirite for fourteen years only." "Rabbi Judah said: 'The sukkah of Queen Helena in Lydda was higher than twenty ells. The rabbis used to go in and out and make no remark about it'."

Helena moved to Jerusalem, where she is buried in the pyramidal tomb which she had constructed during her lifetime, three stadia north of Jerusalem. The catacombs, known as "Tombs of the Kings." A sarcophagus with the inscription Tzara Malchata, in Hebrew and Syriac, found in the nineteenth century by Louis Felicien de Saulcy, is supposed to be that of Helena.