Kebra Nagast

Kebra Nagast — Budge — Section 5

mitted the line to be broken, and allowed the Zague kings to reign over Ethiopia until the reign of Yekuno 5Amlak, who restored the Solomonic line in 1270, and he makes no attempt to justify God’s action in this matter, or to explain it. We learn, however, from the first section of the colophon, that he wondered why God had neglected to have the Arabic version of the Kebra Nagast translated into the “ speech of Abyssinia ” at an earlier date, and why ’Abu’l-‘Izz and ’Abu’l-Faraj, who made the Arabic translation from the Coptic, did not make a rendering into Ethiopic also. In the explana¬ tion which he attempts to give, he reminds us that the Arabic translation appeared whilst the Zague kings were still reigning. As the Kebra Nagast was written to glorify the Solomonic line of kings, and its editors and translators regarded the Zague kings not only as non- Israelites, but as “ transgressors of the Law,” the ap¬ pearance of a translation of it in the vernacular whilst the Zague were still on the throne would be followed by the torture and death of its producers, and the destruction of their work. There is extant in Ethiopian literature a legend to the effect that when God made Adam He placed in his body a “ Pearl,” which He intended should pass from it into the bodies of a series of holy men, one after the other, until the appointed time when it should enter the body of Hanna,1 and form the substance of her daughter the Virgin Mary. Now this “ Pearl ” passed through the body of Solomon, an ancestor of Christ, and Christ and Menyelek, the son of Solomon by the Queen of Sheba, were sons of Solomon, and according to Ethiopian ideas they were akin to each other. But Christ was the Son of God, and, therefore, being the kinsman of Christ, Menyelek was divine. And Isaac the Ethiopian, holding 1 See the History of Hanna , edited and translated by myself, in Lady MeuxMSS. 2-5, p. 164. X Preface this view, maintains in the Kebra Nagast that the kings of Ethiopia who were descended from Menyelek were of divine origin, and that their words and deeds were those of gods.