“In Malory and elsewhere there are numerous references to the Ship of Solomon, the mysterious vessel that carries the quest knights or even the Grail itself to and from the everyday world into the timeless, dimensionless place of the sacred. However, it does more than this, being in some ways not unlike a kind of mystical time machine, programmed to bear the message of the Grail through the ages, from the time of Solomon to the time of Arthur. It was built not by Solomon himself but by his wife, who is called Sibyl in the medieval Christian myth book known as The Golden Legend and may be identified with Bilquis, the Queen of Sheba.138 She, according to another Grail tradition, gave a vessel of gold to Solomon as a wedding gift—a cup that later became enshrined and supposedly resides to this day in the cathedral of Valencia as a type of Grail.”
- Arthurian Magic, John Matthews, Virginia Chandler
“According to the story related in La Queste del Saint Graal, certain objects were placed within the ship, which was then set adrift, unmanned, to sail through time as well as space to the era of the Grail Quest. These objects were Solomon’s Crown; the sword of King David; a great bed supposedly made from the Rood Tree; and three branches from the Edenic Tree of Knowledge, one of red, one of white, and one of green, which were arranged to form a triangle above the bed from which a canopy could be suspended. We should not be surprised to find images of paradise contained in the Solomonic ship, for the vessel is clearly an image of the temple, this time afloat on the sea of time, its destination the country of the Grail. But perhaps the most important detail is that it contains wood from the tree that supposedly grew from a branch taken out of Eden by Adam and Eve and planted in the earth. From this tree, it was widely believed in the Middle Ages, the cross of the crucifixion was constructed, and part of it was used to make the Ark of the Covenant. ”
- Arthurian Magic, John Matthews, Virginia Chandler