I'm not sure I understand the viewpoint you're exactly pushing here.
More than any other game in the franchise, VI seemed quite deliberately trying to fit civs into modern nationalist pride, presumably to appeal to gamer markets they hadn't fully tapped into before. Including very large modern civs like Canada and Australia, choosing folk music for themes, and personifying the leaders as quirky yet still uniformly pleasant caricatures really pushed a sort of "celebration of the diversity of global heritage (and YOU, you gamer from...wherever" vibe, rather than the typical rote running down of big empires. I think things like the addition of Scotland, Vietnam, a very Belgian Gauls, selecting "personifications" of countries like Tamar and Tomyris, really solidify the notion that they were using modern national borders and mythos to guide the overall design.
So, naturally, if VI was a pleasant, Disneyfied party of modern nationalism, it had very little incentive to choose problematic leaders. Indeed, we didn't get many and most of the usual tyrants were completely avoided.
So, basically, disregard the source of the figure, and double down on bad pop culture tropes, pretending they're a superior choice? I don't at all agree with that.
I feel like you are being belligerent AND misreading me? I said I don't care for Biblical references (which aren't a great source), and implied that I think for that reason she would be a pop culture trope.
What I AM saying, is that in VII, "Ethiopia" (Aksum, Abyssinian, Empire, whatever) technically doesn't need any leader. Even if, imo, it probably deserves one and will likely get one for surviving in some form across all three eras.
But under VII's separation of leaders from civs, we could have a totally different leader representing a totally different civ or paradigm that is used to unite the region. The idea of an antiquity "Arabian peninsula" leader being used to coalesce civs like Aksum, Nabataea, Ajuran into a historical throughline is on the table, and it needn't necessarily come from any of them (ala the Zhou, Yamatai, and Hausa leaders already revealed).
For example, I am totally expecting things like Alexander without a Macedon civ, Maria Teresa without an Austrian civ, Simon Bolivar without a Gran Colombia civ. The figure's regional impact, particularly if it helps glue together some of these historical pathways, will be more important than giving each of them a civ (though some will have civs anyway).
And that of course opens the possibility of leaders, like Sheba-lady, who never really worked under the old concept of Civ because they didn't really have a strong concept of a civ to lead. All I am saying is that she is now technically an option. An option I don't really want, but I could see her sneaking in like Gilgabro did if the devs really wanted her to. If we wanted a female leader from that region, I think she compares favorably to Arwa (who could just be represented by a wonder), but honestly to my mind they should skip a female leader from that part of Arabia and just go with Zenobia over vague figures like Sheba or Semiramis.