Richard Collins: The hoopoe even made it to Ireland - but not into this famous painting

This bird’s flamboyant crest made it a solar symbol to the ancient Egyptians and Minoans. Its image adorned their temples and monuments

A Eurasian Hoopoe (Upupa epops) pecking at a branch

According to the Qur’an, a hoopoe arrived with a message for Solomon. ‘I have come from Sheba with important news’, the bird declared,’ I found the queen and her people prostrating to the sun instead of God, and Satan has made their deeds pleasing to them’. In ’give up your auld sins’ mode, Solomon sent the hoopoe back to the queen, with a letter begging her to mend her idolatrous ways.

The Bible account does not mention the hoopoe. It says that the Queen of Sheba ‘came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare spices and very much gold’. Her arrival at Solomon’s court is depicted in Lavinia Fontana’s magnificent painting, which is the centre-piece of an exhibition of her work at The National Gallery.