Kebra Nagast

Kebra Nagast — Budge — Section 25

gast to him. Yet he was evidently not merely a scribe or copyist, and when he speaks of the greatness of the toil which he undertook for the sake of the glory of the heavenly Zion, and Ethiopia and her king, he seems to suggest that he was the general redactor or editor who directed the work of his devoted companions Yam- harana-’ab, Hezba-Krestos, Andrew, Philip, and Ma¬ li ari-’ab. Now, however important the Kebra Nagast may have been considered by the Ethiopians in bygone cen¬ turies, and notwithstanding the almost superstitious awe with which the book is still regarded in Abyssinia, we are hardly justified in accepting it as a connected historical document. But it is undoubtedly a very fine work, and many sections of it merit careful considera¬ tion and study. For many of the statements in it there are historical foundations, and the greater part of the narrative is based upon legends and sayings and tradi¬ tions, many of which are exceedingly ancient. The legends and traditions are derived from many sources, and can be traced to the Old Testament and Chaldean Targums, to Syriac works like the “ Book of the Bee,” to Coptic lives of saints, to ancient Kur’anic stories and commentaries, to apocryphal books like the “ Book of Adam and Eve,” the “ Book of Enoch,” “ Kufale,” the “ Instructions of St. Peter to his disciple Clement ” (■ i.e . the Kalementos), the “ Life of Hanna, the Mother of the Virgin Mary,” the “ Book of the Pearl,” and the “ Ascension of Isaiah,” etc. Side by side with the ex¬ tracts from these works we have long sections in which works attributed to Gregory Thaumaturgus, to Dama- thius (?), Patriarch of Constantinople, and to Cyril are- quoted at great length. The object of the author, or compiler, and the later editors of the Kebra Nagast (no matter what its original form may have been), was to glorify Ethiopia by narrat- c XXXlll Introduction