Meeting of King Solomon and Queen of Sheba (detail - traditional) -
Source: The National Museum of Ethiopia
[Note: This article is a minor revision of the original which I wrote in April 2016, and kept as a draft]
Ethiopia sits on the far northern corner of East Africa, in the region known as the Horn of Africa. It is an apt location for the fiercely independent Amhara, who secured a safe haven for the Ethiopian civilization they built over the centuries. These Amhara, true to their idiosyncratic and imaginative nature, have scripted their own history in the epic Kebra Nagast, to give glory and grandeur to their beloved land.
The legendary Queen of Sheba is in their story, traveling to Jerusalem to visit King Solomon. She returned to her domain, and soon gave birth to their son, Menelik, who would be the first in the dynasty of emperors that would reign ever since, and whose royal heritage would be referenced to these regal Biblical parents as the Solomonic Dynasty. If some dare venture to question God's judgment, then there is the case of Jesus, with his earthly father Joseph, who was betrothed to Mary, when Mary conceived. Ethiopian Christians, with their fierce adherence to God's word, took this the Queen of Sheba's Biblical story to be theirs. And left the rest to God.
And how right they were! And still are.
It is of no concern that there was no legitimate union between the Queen and the King. They had the blessing of God Himself, who surely does not err when building his land and his people. And the Ethiopians have always felt they had the grace of God in their lives, even as far back as this legendary encounter.
They are, therefore, descendants of Kings and Queens.
The Solomonic Dynasty would continue uninterrupted, save for two periods (the Zagwe dynasty, in the 12th and 13th centuries, and the reign of Emperor Twedros II from 1855 to 1868), until Haile Selassie's coronation in 1916.
It is significant that the Bible, or the Bible's characters, act as a historical source to what the Amhara believe is their origin. This small corner of land, at the tip of the northern part of Africa, across from the northern African desert, far away from the land of God and the land of Israel, had only, over the centuries, its legends and collective memory in order to keep alive the word of God, and to live in accordance with His Commandments.Less colorful accounts, adhering to dry facts and figures, place the origins of the Amhara in southern Arabia, who settled in the northern Ethiopia region several thousands of years ago. They are direct descendants and continuation of the Axumite civilization of northern Ethiopia (1st to 7th century A.D.). The Axumites' most significant influence was the development of Christianity in the early 4th century, which is in itself a semi-legend.
Around 316 AD, a shipwreck from an outpost of the Roman Empire landed in a small port on the Red Sea, on its way to trade with the Axumites. Two young men from Tyre, Frumentius and Edesius, survived the encounter, and quickly established themselves in the royal court, and became tutors to the crown prince Ezana. They converted to Christianity through Mediterranean merchants coming to Axum for trade. Ezana followed with his own conversion. Frumentius would become the first bishop this new Christian land. Ezana converted his people. He incorporated this new religion into his territory's governance, including minting one of the first coins which bore the sign of the cross. Ethiopia, or this ancient Ethiopian land, became one of the first to weave Christianity into its political, social and cultural fabric.
The mythical Prester John, believed to preside over a Biblical land in the forgotten depths of Africa, surfaced in medieval literature, propagated by the crusaders. He was linked to one of the Magi who had visited the infant Jesus, and who was believed to have originated from Ethiopia. Ethiopian pilgrims, traveling to Jerusalem, would also spur the legend, bringing stories of their kings and kingdom. Portuguese explorers in the 15th century began to search for this legendary king to seek his alliance against aggressive Muslims.
The fifteenth century emperor Zara Yaqob sent a mission to Sicily with Pietro Rombulo to the court of Alfonso V in 1450. Rombulo was a Sicilian merchant who had entered Ethiopia in 1407, and one of those fated foreigners who was destined never to leave. Zara Yaqob requested that the monarch send him skilled artisans and materials for his kingdom. The mission first visited Pope Nicholas V to issue them a pass to Naples to the court of Alfonso. At that time, the Catholic Ecumenical Council of Florence (1438–1445) declared that Zara Yaqob as the legendary rumored king Prester John.
One Portuguese explorer, Pêro da Covilhã, ventured into the Near East in search of this mythic ruler, and traveled into Ethiopia in 1493. He was greeted by King Eskender, who refused to let him leave, making him governor. Covilha nonetheless kept correspondence with his king in Portugal, giving life to the legend of an African Prester John.
The Portuguese would later arrive in Ethiopia at the invitation of Queen Eleni, wife of Zara Yaqob and step-grandmother of Eskender. Eleni had staged a coup to depose the council which was protecting the young Eskender, too immature to reign, and she continued to participate in the country's governance even during Eskender's reign. She asked the Portuguese for aid against the encroaching Muslim, and an Armenian named Mateus arrived in 1520 with a fleet from Portugal. A Father Francisco Alvarez, chaplain to King Manueal I of Portugal, was also dispatched with Mateus, whose account of his travels was published in 1540 entitled: Verdadeira Informação das Terras do Preste João das Indias ("A True Relation of the Lands of Prester John of the Indies"), and added more color to the myth of Prester John. Credence is given to Alvarez's somewhat fantastical account by historians C.F. Beckingham and G.W.B. Huntingford, who writes that it is "incomparably more detailed than any earlier account of Ethiopia that has survived; it is also a very important source for Ethiopian history, for it was written just before the country was devastated by the Muslim Somali and pagan Galla [Oromo] invasions of the second quarter of the sixteenth century."
The Muslims were eventually contained, and pushed into the peripheries of the country, and Ethiopians continued with their allegiance to God and their emperors. It was in the 18th century when Prester John's name re-surfaced in literature, when Emperor Iyasu II showed surprise at this appellation by a Czech Franciscan: "[he] told me that the kings of Abyssinia had never been accustomed to call themselves by this name." The Ethiopian emperors were most likely unaware that they, and their kingdom, had garnered such legendary attention.
It is not until Emperor Haile Selassie, in the 20th century, that these various legends and myths would coalesce to form the identity of the emperor and the country. "Haile Selsassie saw himself as the fabled Prester John, holding a Christian island in the sea of Muslim" writes Theodore M. Vestal in The Lion of Judah in the New World: Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and the Shaping of Americans' Attitudes toward Africa.
The new Portugal may be America, but the search for the legendary connection with God continues. And, true to the cautious nature of Ethiopians, Haile Selassie backed his vulnerable nation, and his leadership, with the full force of Biblical legends, combining the union of Sheba and Solomon together with that of Prester John, and adding his own affiliation to the tribe of Judah as referenced by the Kebre Nagast to connect with the Bible and to strengthen his stand in the world. This time, his Portugal, the land of where legends can form identities, is America, where Vestal's book title: The Lion of Judah in the New World: Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and the Shaping of Americans' Attitudes toward Africa shows once again the astute nature of Ethiopian rulers, where they knew that a combination of legend, fact, story and personal strength is what makes emperors successful rulers of their realm.
Haile Selassie is:
The mythical Prester John, believed to preside over a Biblical land in the forgotten depths of Africa, surfaced in medieval literature, propagated by the crusaders. He was linked to one of the Magi who had visited the infant Jesus, and who was believed to have originated from Ethiopia. Ethiopian pilgrims, traveling to Jerusalem, would also spur the legend, bringing stories of their kings and kingdom. Portuguese explorers in the 15th century began to search for this legendary king to seek his alliance against aggressive Muslims.
The fifteenth century emperor Zara Yaqob sent a mission to Sicily with Pietro Rombulo to the court of Alfonso V in 1450. Rombulo was a Sicilian merchant who had entered Ethiopia in 1407, and one of those fated foreigners who was destined never to leave. Zara Yaqob requested that the monarch send him skilled artisans and materials for his kingdom. The mission first visited Pope Nicholas V to issue them a pass to Naples to the court of Alfonso. At that time, the Catholic Ecumenical Council of Florence (1438–1445) declared that Zara Yaqob as the legendary rumored king Prester John.
One Portuguese explorer, Pêro da Covilhã, ventured into the Near East in search of this mythic ruler, and traveled into Ethiopia in 1493. He was greeted by King Eskender, who refused to let him leave, making him governor. Covilha nonetheless kept correspondence with his king in Portugal, giving life to the legend of an African Prester John.
The Portuguese would later arrive in Ethiopia at the invitation of Queen Eleni, wife of Zara Yaqob and step-grandmother of Eskender. Eleni had staged a coup to depose the council which was protecting the young Eskender, too immature to reign, and she continued to participate in the country's governance even during Eskender's reign. She asked the Portuguese for aid against the encroaching Muslim, and an Armenian named Mateus arrived in 1520 with a fleet from Portugal. A Father Francisco Alvarez, chaplain to King Manueal I of Portugal, was also dispatched with Mateus, whose account of his travels was published in 1540 entitled: Verdadeira Informação das Terras do Preste João das Indias ("A True Relation of the Lands of Prester John of the Indies"), and added more color to the myth of Prester John. Credence is given to Alvarez's somewhat fantastical account by historians C.F. Beckingham and G.W.B. Huntingford, who writes that it is "incomparably more detailed than any earlier account of Ethiopia that has survived; it is also a very important source for Ethiopian history, for it was written just before the country was devastated by the Muslim Somali and pagan Galla [Oromo] invasions of the second quarter of the sixteenth century."
The Muslims were eventually contained, and pushed into the peripheries of the country, and Ethiopians continued with their allegiance to God and their emperors. It was in the 18th century when Prester John's name re-surfaced in literature, when Emperor Iyasu II showed surprise at this appellation by a Czech Franciscan: "[he] told me that the kings of Abyssinia had never been accustomed to call themselves by this name." The Ethiopian emperors were most likely unaware that they, and their kingdom, had garnered such legendary attention.
It is not until Emperor Haile Selassie, in the 20th century, that these various legends and myths would coalesce to form the identity of the emperor and the country. "Haile Selsassie saw himself as the fabled Prester John, holding a Christian island in the sea of Muslim" writes Theodore M. Vestal in The Lion of Judah in the New World: Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and the Shaping of Americans' Attitudes toward Africa.
The new Portugal may be America, but the search for the legendary connection with God continues. And, true to the cautious nature of Ethiopians, Haile Selassie backed his vulnerable nation, and his leadership, with the full force of Biblical legends, combining the union of Sheba and Solomon together with that of Prester John, and adding his own affiliation to the tribe of Judah as referenced by the Kebre Nagast to connect with the Bible and to strengthen his stand in the world. This time, his Portugal, the land of where legends can form identities, is America, where Vestal's book title: The Lion of Judah in the New World: Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and the Shaping of Americans' Attitudes toward Africa shows once again the astute nature of Ethiopian rulers, where they knew that a combination of legend, fact, story and personal strength is what makes emperors successful rulers of their realm.
Haile Selassie is:
By the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, King of Kings of Ethiopia, Elect of God.He is referencing King Solomon, who was of the tribe of Judah, and asserting his conqueror's spirit, and declaring service to God, by whom he was elected to be emperor, Haile Selassie carefully, and genuinely, constructed his presence in the remote country in the far corner of Africa, to make sure that enemies were held at bay and friends greeted with caution, as he ruled over his confident and independent people.
