- [Narrator] Jerusalem, Kingdom of Israel, circa 950 BC.
Her name, as the book claims, was Queen Makeda of Ethiopia.
But the Bible called her the Queen of Sheba.
Gaining the throne at a young age,
she found herself inexperienced and unready.
So hearing about the wisdom of King Solomon,
the queen has come bearing fabulous gifts,
along with the request that he teach her statecraft.
He agrees, provided she can pay her own way
and take nothing that belongs to him without asking.
Though it's a trick, for Solomon has his eye
on more than the gifts of gold, ivory,
and spices Makeda has brought.
He wants the queen herself.
And what happens next will not only determine the fate
of two kingdoms, but also who will be God's chosen people.
(bright music)
Thanks so much to World Anvil
for helping us forge today's historical tale.
Last episode, we talked about how in 1270,
Yekuno Amlak defeated the last king
of the Zagwe dynasty in battle,
then pursued and killed him in a church.
But as you probably can imagine,
there's a problem beginning your new dynasty this way.
Namely, if the only reason that your king
is that you managed to kill the previous guy,
wouldn't it be fair game to murder and overthrow you, right?
In other words, you need legitimacy.
You can't start a new line without doing something
to show why you and your family deserve the crown.
And Yekuno Amlak's solution was to pitch his family
as the Solomonic dynasty, not only the survivors
of the Aksumite royals,
but direct descendants of King Solomon,
and possessors of the Ark of the Covenant,
kept out of sight in a chapel.
For a while, that story was told orally.
But by 1314, the Emperor Amda Seyon I
decided the claim should be more formal.
And to uphold it,
he commissioned a book called the "Kebra Nagast"
or "Glory of Kings", a national epic explaining
the origin of the dynasty.
And while normally, I'd say that due to its contents
not fitting neatly into the historical record,
it might be more at home over in our mythology show.
The story it tells is important
to understanding how both medieval and modern Ethiopians
conceived themselves as a nation.
In fact, many Ethiopians consider the "Kebra Nagast"
not only historical, but holy.
The second most sacred book behind the Bible.
To vastly oversimplify,
the "Kebra Nagast" begins with the frame story
of a debate among clerics about the nature of royal glory.
Then when the Ark of the Covenant comes up,
one cleric reads from a book he discovered
about the meeting of Makeda the Ethiopian queen
and King Solomon.
This story makes up the bulk of the "Kebra Nagast",
and begins, as we stated at the top of this episode,
with Makeda visiting Solomon.
But after studying with the king,
the night before she's due to leave,
Solomon throws a feast in Makeda's honor
and plies her with alcohol.
Now, a quick warning at this point,
as the next part deals with an act of sexual coercion.
So if you'd like to skip that bit,
just jump ahead to this time code here.
Becoming drunk, Makeda passes out,
and Solomon moves her to a chamber
where she's surrounded with jugs of water inscribed
with the king's name.
Eventually waking up, incredibly thirsty,
she gulps down the water before realizing
it will break her vow
of not taking anything Solomon owns without asking.
And for breaking the rules, Solomon then argues
that he gets to sleep with her.
Which to be clear, is something he just made up,
but it happens.
Dreaming that Makeda is pregnant and will bear his son,
Solomon tells her that when the child is grown,
he must be sent to Jerusalem to study religion and law.
Then when the queen departs the next day,
Solomon has another dream where the golden disc
of the sun has left Israel.
And when Makeda arrives back in Ethiopia,
she does so carrying a royal child,
born while on the journey.
Christening him Menelik I,
she raises him in the Jewish faith.
And upon becoming a man, she sends him to Jerusalem,
where Solomon welcomes him warmly,
gives him a fine education,
and tries to persuade Menelik to stay and become his heir.
But Menelik is Ethiopian and wishes to return home,
and asking only for a tassel from the cloth
that covered the Ark of the Covenant
before he parts company with his father.
Overwhelmed by his son's modest request,
Solomon ends up giving him the whole cloth,
as well as an entourage of young men
from the finest families of Israel to become his court.
And with that, Menelik leaves.
But as he approaches the Red Sea,
Menelik learns that Solomon's army is chasing
him for some reason.
Yeah, turns out that those fine young men
were pretty upset about being sent
so far from Holy Jerusalem,
and had taken it upon themself to steal the Ark
and take it to Ethiopia.
Though, just as Solomon's troops close in,
the Ark miraculously flies Menelik and his entire party
back to Ethiopia where the young prince
is welcomed by his mother.
She abdicates the throne on his behalf,
and he expands the realms of Ethiopia,
marching on wars of conquest with the Ark
at the head of his army.
The rest of the "Kebra Nagast"
is largely genealogy connecting Menelik with Yekuno Amlak,
and arguing that the Jewish population,
a religious minority that had existed in Ethiopia
since well before Christianity should convert.
It also closes with several prophecies.
The largest of which is that Ethiopia
will eclipse the power of Rome.
Now we need to acknowledge what an enormous effort
the "Kebra Nagast" was to create,
and what a masterpiece of world literature it is.
It combined and synthesized an incredible number of sources,
including Ethiopian oral traditions,
biblical stories,
Islamic and Judaic commentaries, apocryphal gospels,
and parts of previous books from multiple languages.
In other words, it's a piece of literature
that sits at the center of multiple linguistic, religious,
and historical traditions,
much like Ethiopia itself does.
Written in the local dialect of Ge'ez.
One account says it took seven years to produce
and that time was well worth it
since the "Kebra Nagast" laid down three major arguments.
First, that the Solomonic line established
by Yekuno Amlak was not just legitimate,
but also backed by God.
To overthrow them would be a religious offense.
Second, that Ethiopia, not Jerusalem or Rome,
was the home of God's chosen people
and the successor of Israel.
This created a sense of national identity.
And third, the book tied Ethiopia's church
and state together.
As heirs of Solomon, the emperors had one foot in the world
of secular power and the other in the world
of religious power,
all of which was very useful to emperor Amda Seyon I
who commissioned the book and had made it his mission
to finally entrench Solomonic power
and win Ethiopia some security.
You see, after the initial expansions of Yekuno Amlak,
things hadn't gone that well for the Solomonic dynasty.
A series of succession crises meant
that by the time Amda Seyon came to the throne in 1314,
there had been seven emperors in the 29 years
since Yekuno Amlak's death.
The country was also still without a bishop.
A legacy left by Yekuno Amlak
attempting to conquer the Ifat Sultanate to its east.
How is that connected?
You might hear Ethiopian Orthodox,
and think that the Ethiopian church
reported to Constantinople.
However, you'd be mistaken.
The Ethiopian church was a branch
of the Coptic Orthodox church in Egypt.
And the patriarch of Alexandria appointed their bishops.
But Ethiopia was a Muslim country ruled
by the Mamluk Sultanate,
which didn't particularly like Ethiopia
trying to conquer Ifat.
So for over 40 years, the Mamluks
essentially held Ethiopia's bishop hostage,
refusing to let anyone appointed
to the role leave Alexandria.
But when Amda Seyon came to the throne,
he decided he was done with that.
He needed a bishop badly,
not just to help Solomonic legitimacy,
but also to serve as a missionary
to his still largely un-Christian country.
A hard-nosed military man and charismatic leader,
Amda Seyon decided to send an ultimatum to Cairo.
Stop persecuting Christian cops and give us our bishop,
or we'll raid Muslim towns
in Ethiopia and surrounding states.
Oh, and the Nile, you know that river
that keeps you all alive,
well, its source is in our territory.
So maybe we'll just divert its flow for kicks.
You know, what do you say?
Despite that convincing argument,
the Mamluks blew Amda Seyon off.
And Ifat Sultanate raided Ethiopia in response.
As a result to this, Amda Seyon spent the rest
of his reign at war.
He aggressively expanded Ethiopia,
harried Muslims within and outside his borders,
and slapped down rebellions.
However, he also built some bridges with Muslim communities
who were tied to the trade networks.
In his reign, Ethiopia regained access to ports
on the Red Sea, and once again began to join
the Red Sea trade.
And after 20 years of fighting and diplomacy,
Amda Seyon dominated the Horn of Africa.
And he'd shown the region that the Solomonic dynasty
was not to be trifled with.
He even got the Mamluks to finally cough up a bishop,
which was just in time
because not only did this self-proclaimed Christian nation
need to missionize its own subjects.
Its next task was to keep the Ethiopian church
from tearing itself apart.
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(bright music)