The Kebra Nagast Chronicles contain the history of
the origins of the line of Ethiopian kings who
claimed descent from Solomon. The text is widely
perceived to be the authority on the history of the
conversion of the Ethiopians from their indigenous,
animistic worship to Christianity.
The book opens with the origins of the Christian
religion, beginning with the decision of the
Trinity to make Adam. It asserts that the Trinity
lived in Zion, the Tabernacle of the Law of God.
The foremost purpose of the Chronicles is to legitimize
the authority of the Solomon line of the
Ethiopian kings. They were credited with the
bringing of Christianity to the eastern kingdom of
Ethiopia, or Axum, as it was known in those days.
The text suggests that Christ descended from
Solomon. The main theme deals with the legendary
relationship between Queen Makeda of
Sheba and King Solomon of Jerusalem.
The Chronicles describes Makeda as a beautiful,
intelligent, and wealthy queen who lives in the
southern regions of the African continent. She desires
to meet King Solomon after hearing about his
power and wisdom. Makeda leaves her kingdom
and travels to Jerusalem, where she is won over by
the king’s wisdom and his staunch faith. She decides
that her descendants will abandon their worship
of the sun and adopt Christianity as their new
religion. After frequent visits with the king,
Makeda eventually sends a message informing
Solomon of her impending return to her country.
The king invites her to a banquet and requests that
the queen spent the night on his couch. Makeda
agrees on the condition that the king promises not
to take her by force. In return, she grants
Solomon’s request not to take anything that is in
his house. The richness of the meats of the banquet
unfortunately made the queen extremely thirsty,
and when she seizes a vessel of water to drink, the
king surprises her by accusing her of breaking her
promise. Unable to suppress her thirst, Makeda
agrees to sleep with Solomon, and from their
union springs a line of Ethiopian kings.
The Kebra Nagast Chronicles became known to
the Western world through European excursions
into Africa during the 16th century.Many sources
indicate that P. N. Godinho (a traveler, historiographer,
or writer) was probably the first European to
publish accounts of King Solomon and his son,
Menyelek, in the first quarter of the 16th century. In
the following century, Baltazar Teilez (1595–1675),
author of the Historia General de Etiopia Alta
(1660), incorporated stories from the Chronicles
into his text. Later authors, including Alfonson
Mendez and Jerónimo Lobo (1595–1678), used information
from the Kebra Nagast in their histories.
The most complete and possibly least-known of the
translations is the History of the Kings of Ethiopia by
Enrique Cornelio Agrippa, published in 1528.
Manuel Almeida (1580–1646), a Jesuit priest who
went to Ethiopia as a missionary, learned about the
Kebra Nagast and translated the chronicles in his
History of Ethiopia.
The original text remained unknown until explorer
James Bruce’s travels to Ethiopia near the
close of the 18th century. Bruce (1730–94), who
went to Ethiopia in search of the Nile, received several
valuable Ethiopian manuscripts from King
Takia Haymanot of Gondar. Among these was a
copy of the Kebra Nagast. The third volume of
Bruce’s Travels in Search of the Sources of the Nile
(1790) contained a detailed description of the contents
of the original text. The documents obtained
during Bruce’s expeditions now reside in the
Bodleian Library at Oxford University.
The various versions of the Kebra Nagast and
generations of copying and recopying by scribes
have made the task of dating and ascertaining the
identity of the compilers exceedingly difficult.
Scholars such as Almeida and E. A.Wallis Budge
were nonetheless fully aware of the value of this
text. As Budge writes in his preface to his translation,
“This work has been held in peculiar honour
in Abyssinia for several centuries, and throughout
that country it has been, and still is, venerated by
the people as containing the final proof of their descent
from the Hebrew Patriarchs, and of the kinship
of their kings of the Solomonic line with
Christ, the son of God.”
An English Version of the
Kebra Nagast Chronicles
Budge, E. A.Wallis. The Queen of Sheba and Her Only
Son Menyelek (I). London: Oxford University
Press, 1932.
A Work about the Kebra Nagast Chronicles
Brooks,Miguel F. A Brief History of the Kebra Nagast.
Lawrenceville, N.J.: Red Sea Press, 1996.