(b)
figure 2: (a) mahram bilqis in marib (yemen), also known as temple awwam. This temple was dedicated to ilmaqah (or almaqah), the national god of the kingdom of sheba. Although in the popular literature, it is referred to as "temple of the moon-god", ilmaqah was actually a sun god! (b) ground plan of the mahram bilqis.[31]

along with the main god ‘attar, each of the major kingdoms venerated its own national god. In saba this was the god named almaqah (or ilmuqah), whose principal temple was near marib, the capital of saba, a federal shrine of the sabaean tribes. According to the widely contested old theory of the danish scholar d. Nielsen, who reduced the whole south arabian pantheon to a primitive triad: Father moon, mother sun (sun is feminine in arabic) and son venus, almaqah was until recently considered a moon god, but garbini and pirenne have shown that the bull's head and the vine motif associated with him are solar and dionysiac attributes. He was therefore a sun god, the male counterpart of the sun goddess Šams, who was also venerated in saba, but as a tutelary goddess of the royal dynasty.[34]

for the period down to the early 4th century a.d., few would now agree with the excessive reductionism of d. Nielsen, who in the 1920s held that all the many deities in the pagan pantheon were nothing more than varying manifestations of an astral triad of sun, moon and venus-star; yet it is certainly the case that three deities tend to receive more frequent mention than the rest....
But just as the greek local patron deities such as athene in athens, artemis in ephesus, etc., figure more prominently than the remoter and universal zeus, so in south arabia the most commonly invoked deity was a national one, who incorporated the sense of national identity. For the sabaeans this was 'lmkh (with an occasional variant spelling 'lmkhw). A probable analysis of this name is as a compound of the old semitic word 'l "god" and a derivative of the root khw meaning something like "fertility" (cf. Arabic kahā "flourish"); the h is certainly a root letter, and not, as some mediaeval writers seem to have imagined, a tā marbūta, which in south arabian is always spelt with t...
Many european scholars still refer to this deity in a simplistic way as "the moon god", a notion stemming from the "triadic" hypothesis mentioned above; yet garbini has produced cogent arguments to show that the attributes of 'lmkh are rather those of a warrior-deity like greek herakles or a vegetation god like dionysus.[35]

among the federal deities, the case for syn being a moon god rests on identifying him with akkadian su-en, later sin; an equation which, attractive though it may seem, is not without problems. At all events, even if this was so with the hadramite deity, it is unlikely that it tells the whole story. In the case of ilmqh, ‘amm and wadd, there is nothing to indicate lunar qualities. Garbini has presented a devastating critique of such a view in relation to ilmqh, for whom he claims (much more plausibly) the attributes of a warrior-god and of a dionysiac vegetation deity, with solar rather than lunar associations. In the case of wadd, the presence of an altar to him on apollo's island of delos points rather to solar than lunar associations. For ‘amm we have nothing to guide us except his epithets, the interpretation of which is bound to be highly speculative.[36]

almaqah was the god of agriculture and irrigation, probably for the most part of the artificial irrigation which was the basis of successful farming in the oasis of ma'rib. The god's animal attributes were the bull and, in later times, the vine. Almaqah was a masculine sun god; the divinity shams (sun), who was invoked as protector of the sabaean dynasty, was his feminine counterpart.[37]

next to ‘athtar, who was worshiped throughout south arabia, each kingdom had its own national god, of whom the nation called itself the "progeny" (wld). In saba' the national god was almaqah (or ilmuqah), a protector of artificial irrigation, lord of the temple of the sabaean federation of tribes, near the capital ma'rib. Until recently almaqah was considered to be a moon god, under the influence of a now generally rejected conception of a south arabian pantheon consisting of an exclusive triad: Father moon, mother sun (the word "sun" is feminine in arabic), and son venus. Recent studies underline that the symbols of the bull's head and the vine motif that are associated with him are solar and dionysiac attributes and are more consistent with a sun god, a male consort of the sun goddess.[38]