Kebra Nagast

The Kebra Nagast , or The Glory of the Kings, is a 14th-century <a href="/facts/National_epic/oXswKDzk">national epic</a> of Ethiopia, written in <a href="/facts/Ge%25CA%25BDez/8ks8q9Hm">Geʽez</a> by the <a href="/facts/Ethiopian_ecclesiastical_titles/WmnjRhM2">nebure id</a> Ishaq of <a href="/facts/Aksum/R2UL6zAT">Aksum</a>. In its existing form, the text is at least 700 years old and purports to trace the origins of the <a href="/facts/Solomonic_dynasty/40A5B3Hw">Solomonic dynasty</a>, a line of <a href="/facts/Ethiopian_Orthodox_Tewahedo_Church/l46wvlRq">Ethiopian Orthodox Christian</a> monarchs who ruled the country until 1974, to the biblical king, <a href="/facts/Solomon/UEW5JoNU">Solomon</a> and the <a href="/facts/Queen_of_Sheba/neqhV5qe">Queen of Sheba</a>. 
Modern scholarly opinion holds that there is no historical evidence supporting the pseudohistorical assertions in the Kebra Negast. There is no credible basis to the claims that the Aksumite royal house was descended from Solomon (or that any Aksumite king even claimed such an ancestry) or that Yekuno Amlak, the 13th century founder of the dynasty, was descended from the Aksumite royal house. Solomon is dated to the 10th century BCE, hundreds of years before the founding of Aksum. Despite this, many Ethiopian Christians continue to believe it is a historically reliable work.
The text contains an account of how the Queen of Sheba (Queen <a href="/facts/Makeda/neqhV5qe">Makeda</a> of Ethiopia) met king Solomon of Jerusalem and about how the <a href="/facts/Ark_of_the_Covenant/SUzFGIM0">Ark of the Covenant</a> came to Ethiopia with their son <a href="/facts/Menelik_I/T5EFeF9h">Menelik I</a> (Menyelek). It also discusses the conversion via colonialism of Ethiopians from the worship of the Sun, Moon, and stars to that of the "Lord God of Israel". As the Ethiopianist <a href="/facts/Edward_Ullendorff/vBEqw8zU">Edward Ullendorff</a> explained in the 1967 <a href="/facts/Schweich_Lectures_on_Biblical_Archaeology/kMvURxEz">Schweich Lectures</a>, "The Kebra Nagast is not merely a literary work, but it is the repository of Ethiopian national and religious feelings".
It has been described as “an Abyssinian politico-religious epic” and "medieval-era mythology". <a href="/facts/Nadia_Nurhussein/HB7dulUS">Nadia Nurhussein</a> wrote that "The Kebra Nagast gave textual authority to a then newly articulated mythology of Abyssinia’s long imperial history, legitimizing a “Solomonic” dynasty' that claimed to reach back three thousand years earlier to the union of King Solomon and the supposedly Ethiopian Queen of Sheba." It enabled the overthrow of the <a href="/facts/Zagwe_Dynasty/Vuuuy8UD">Zagwe Dynasty</a>.

Kebra Nagast open-in-new

Kebra Nagast