Solomon child Rehoboam
Death, succession of Rehoboam, and kingdom division
King Solomon is a central biblical figure, who, according to the Hebrew Bible, was the builder of the First Temple in Jerusalem and the last ruler of a united Kingdom of Israel. After a reign of forty years, he died of natural causes at around 60 years of age. Upon Solomon's death, his son, Rehoboam, succeeded him, but ten of the Tribes of Israel refused him as king, splitting the monarchy into the northern Kingdom of Israel under Jeroboam, while Rehoboam continued to reign over the much smaller southern Kingdom of Judah. Henceforth the two kingdoms were never again united.
Solomon is associated with the peak "golden age" of the independent Kingdom of Israel and is a legendary source of judicial and religious wisdom.
According to Jewish tradition, King Solomon wrote three books of the Bible:In literature, art, and music
Literature
In H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines (1885) the protagonists discover multiple settings said to have belonged to or to have been built at the request of King Solomon, such as 'Solomon's Great Road' and the mines themselves. Also, the two mountains which form the entrance to Kukuana Land (where the mines are located in the novel) are referred to as 'Sheba's Breasts' which could be an allusion to the Queen of Sheba, with whom King Solomon had a relationship, or Solomon's mother, who was named Bathsheba. When in the mines, the characters also contemplate what must have occurred to prevent King Solomon from returning to retrieve the massive amounts of diamonds, gold and ivory tusks that were found buried in his great 'Treasure Chamber'.
In The Divine Comedy, the spirit of Solomon appears to Dante Alighieri in the Heaven of the Sun with other exemplars of inspired wisdom.
In Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Die Physiker, the physicist Möbius claims that Solomon appears to him and dictates the "theory of all possible inventions" (based on Unified Field Theory).
Solomon appears in Kipling's Just So Stories.
In Neal Stephenson's three-volume The Baroque Cycle, 17th-century alchemists like Isaac Newton believe that Solomon created a kind of "heavier" gold with mystical properties and that it was cached in the Solomon Islands where it was accidentally discovered by the crew of a wayward Spanish galleon. In the third volume of The Baroque Cycle, The System of the World, a mysterious member of the entourage of Czar Peter I of Russia, named "Solomon Kohan" appears in early 18th-century London. The czar, traveling incognito to purchase English-made ships for his navy, explains that he added him to his court after the Sack of Azov, where Kohan had been a guest of the Pasha. Solomon Kohan is later revealed as one of the extremely long-lived "Wise," such as Enoch Root, and compares a courtyard full of inventors' workstations to "an operation I used to have in Jerusalem a long time ago", denominating either facility as "a temple". Stephenson's sequel to Reamde, 2019's Fall; or, Dodge in Hell was also a surprise sequel to the Baroque Cycle novels and Cryptonomicon. In the mid- to late-21st century span of Fall, Solomon Kohan has joined the faculty of Princeton University, going by Solly Pesador, and is described by a student as "one of those guys who had been around forever and played roles in tech companies going at least as far back as Hewlett-Packard" and as an "old-school tech geek turned neuro-hacker."
In Bartimaeus: The Ring of Solomon, both King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba are featured prominently.
Solomon, King of Urushalim, is a significant character in The Shadow Prince, the first novel of Philip Armstrong's epic historical fantasy, The Chronicles of Tupiluliuma. His Ring is an Atalantaën Relic, by which is he able to command daemons. He uses it to summon a daemon army, thereafter called the Cohort of Free Daemons, to oppose the forces of the Chaos God, Sutekh, thus allowing the young Hittite musician, Lisarwa, to repair the Veil that separates the physical world from the dangerous wild energies of the Netherworld, using another of the relics, the Harp of Daud, once owned by his father (King David). Solomon's son, Rehoboam also appears in a minor capacity.
In the Japanese manga series Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic, Solomon was a powerful magician who united all of the world under his peaceful rule. However, when this world was destroyed by a calamity, he created the world Magi is set in and saved mankind by sending them there. A special power originated from him, the "Wisdom of Solomon", allows the main character Aladdin to talk directly with the soul of a person, alive or dead.
In Makai Ouji: Devils and Realist, Solomon is a friend of Lucifer and is the "Elector"—the one who can choose the interim ruler over Hell as its emperor rests to regain his strength and had powers over demons known as his seventy-two pillars. He's also known as the one who can control Hell or Heaven with the power of his ring.
Chapter 14 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ends with Huck and Jim debating over how wise Solomon really was.
In Francis Bacon's Essay 'Of Revenge', Solomon is paraphrased: "And Solomon, I am sure, saith, It is the glory of a man, to pass by an offence."
In DC Comics, Solomon is one of the Immortal Elders of the hero Captain Marvel.
In a subject called in art the Idolatry of Solomon, the foreign wives are depicted as leading Solomon away from Yahweh toward idolatry because they worshiped gods other than Yahweh (1 Kings 11:1–3). This forms part of the Power of Women topos in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, showing the dangers women posed to even the most virtuous men.
Naamah, a princess of Ammon, (part of present-day Jordan) who arrives in Jerusalem at age fourteen to marry King Solomon and tells of their life together, is the narrator of Aryeh Lev Stollman's novel published by Aryeh Nir/Modan (Tel Aviv) in Hebrew translation under the title Divrei Y'mai Naamah (דברי ימי נעמה).
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