# Kebra Nagast ## Intro The *Kebra Nagast*, "The Glory of the Kings," is Ethiopia's national epic. Written in Ge'ez in the early fourteenth century, it tells how the Queen of Sheba, called Makeda, visited King Solomon in Jerusalem, bore him a son named Menelik, and how that son later brought the Ark of the Covenant from Jerusalem to Ethiopia. For almost seven hundred years it gave Ethiopia's emperors their claim to descend from Solomon, and it underlies the Ethiopian Orthodox belief that the Ark rests today in a chapel at Aksum. This page sets out what the book is, when and why it was written, what it claims, and what the evidence on each side shows. The visit of the Queen of Sheba is in the Bible ([1 Kings 10](/codex/1-kings-10/); [2 Chronicles 9](/codex/2-chronicles-9/)). That she was Ethiopian, that she bore Solomon a son, and that the Ark went to Ethiopia are later traditions. Historians treat the book as a medieval work with older material inside it. The Ethiopian church holds its central claims as sacred tradition. The codex gives the evidence and lets the reader weigh it. ![A domed stone chapel with tall blue windows behind a low fence at Aksum, with an old battlemented church beside it](/codex/assets/aksum-chapel-of-the-tablet.jpg) *The Chapel of the Tablet at Aksum (left), where the Ethiopian Orthodox Church holds that the Ark of the Covenant is kept, beside the old Church of Mary of Zion. Photo: A. Davey, CC BY 2.0 ([Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Chapel_Of_The_Tablet,_Axum,_Ethiopia_(2842610803).jpg)), resized.* ## In full The *Kebra Nagast* is a composite Ge'ez work in 117 chapters, framed as a discourse before the 318 fathers of the Council of Nicaea, in which a speaker identified as Gregory and an archbishop named Domitius expound the "glory of kings." Its centrepiece (chapters 19-94) narrates the visit of Makeda, queen of Ethiopia, to Solomon; her conversion from sun worship to the God of Israel; the birth of their son Menelik (Bayna Lehkem); Menelik's journey to Jerusalem at twenty-two; and the removal of the Ark of the Covenant (Zion) from the Temple by the sons of Israel's nobles, led by Azariah son of the high priest Zadok, so that the Ark, and with it God's favour, passed to Ethiopia, while a replica remained in Jerusalem. A colophon in most manuscripts says the text was translated from Coptic into Arabic in the "year of mercy" 409 (AD 1225) and from Arabic into Ge'ez by a group of clerics including Yeshaq, under the governor Ya'ibika Egzi of Enderta; on this basis Carlo Conti Rossini, Enno Littmann and Enrico Cerulli dated the Ge'ez composition to about 1314-1322. That date places it within half a century of the rise of the Solomonic dynasty (1270), and most scholars read it as legitimizing that dynasty against the preceding Zagwe kings. David Hubbard traced its sources in biblical, apocryphal, rabbinic, patristic and Islamic-era literature; Irfan Shahid argued that a core goes back to the sixth century and the age of [Kaleb of Aksum](/codex/kaleb-of-aksum/). The belief that Ethiopia possessed the Ark predates the text: the Coptic writer Abu al-Makarim, in the late twelfth century, reports that "the Abyssinians possess also the Ark of the Covenant." The book was edited by Carl Bezold (1905) and translated into English by E. A. Wallis Budge (1922). ## What the book claims, and what the evidence shows | Claim | Basis in Scripture | Evidence and assessment | |---|---|---| | The Queen of Sheba visited Solomon | 1 Kings 10:1-13; 2 Chronicles 9:1-12; Jesus calls her "the queen of the south" (Matthew 12:42; Luke 11:31) | Biblical; accepted by Christians on that basis | | She was queen of Ethiopia | Not stated in Scripture | Many scholars place Sheba (Saba) in South Arabia, where the Sabaean kingdom is well attested. Others note that Sabaean culture also reached the northern Ethiopian highlands in the first millennium BC. Josephus (*Antiquities* 8.165) already calls her "queen of Egypt and Ethiopia." See [Queen of Sheba](/codex/queen-of-sheba/) | | She bore Solomon a son, Menelik | Not in Scripture. Tradition reads 1 Kings 10:13 ("king Solomon gave unto the queen of Sheba all her desire, whatsoever she asked," 1 Kings 10:13, KJV) as hinting at it | Tradition only; no inscription or independent source | | The Ark was taken to Ethiopia in Solomon's son's time | Not in Scripture | See the Ark section below | | Ethiopia's kings descend from Solomon | Not in Scripture | A dynastic claim first written down under the Solomonic dynasty; historians treat it as legitimizing tradition | ## The Ark of the Covenant: evidence only The Ethiopian Orthodox Church teaches that the Ark is kept in the Chapel of the Tablet beside the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion at Aksum, guarded by a single monk appointed for life who alone may see it. The codex sets out the evidence without ruling on it. ### Evidence and arguments offered for the Ethiopian claim - **A long and deep tradition.** The belief is attested by Abu al-Makarim in the late twelfth century, more than a century before the *Kebra Nagast* was written, and is central to Ethiopian worship. - **The tabot.** Every Ethiopian Orthodox church has a *tabot*, a consecrated tablet representing the Ark or the tablets of the law, and the church is not consecrated without it. This practice, unique in Christendom, presupposes an exceptional bond with the Ark. - **Jewish-Christian roots.** Ethiopian Christianity preserves Sabbath observance, dietary laws and Temple-patterned church architecture, consistent with deep early contact with Judaism. See [Ethiopian Orthodox Church](/codex/ethiopian-orthodox-church/). - **Biblical silence about the Ark's end.** The Ark is not listed among the Temple furnishings the Babylonians took in 586 BC ([2 Kings 25:13-17](/codex/2-kings-25-13-17/)), so Scripture does not record its fate. - **The guardian tradition.** The church says the Ark is real and present, and that sacred restriction, not absence, is why it is not shown. ### Evidence and arguments offered against it - **Late written source.** The narrative of Menelik and the Ark is first written in the fourteenth century, more than two thousand years after the events it describes, and serves an obvious dynastic purpose. - **The Ark in Judah after Solomon.** The Bible places the Ark in the Temple at its dedication ([1 Kings 8:1-11](/codex/1-kings-8-1-11/)) and still in Judah under King Josiah, about three centuries later ([2 Chronicles 35:3](/codex/2-chronicles-35-3/)). The *Kebra Nagast* answers that a replica was left behind, but that answer is internal to the story. - **Other traditions of the Ark's fate.** [Jeremiah 3:16](/codex/jeremiah-3-16/) foresees a time when the Ark will no longer be remembered or made again; 2 Maccabees 2:4-8 says Jeremiah hid it on Mount Nebo; rabbinic tradition says it was hidden beneath the Temple. Josephus and Tacitus report that the Holy of Holies of the Second Temple was empty. - **No independent examination.** No outside scholar has been allowed to examine the object. Edward Ullendorff, a leading Ethiopianist, said he saw an Aksum *tabot* in 1941 and described it as an empty wooden box of medieval construction; it is not certain that what he saw was the object the church identifies as the Ark. - **Stuart Munro-Hay's study.** In *The Quest for the Ark of the Covenant* (2005) Munro-Hay traced the Aksum tradition and argued that the object venerated there is a sacred tablet whose identification with the Mosaic Ark developed in the medieval period. ### Popular theories Graham Hancock's *The Sign and the Seal* (1992) proposed that the Ark reached Ethiopia via Egypt and Lake Tana. Academic reviewers, including Ullendorff, rejected it. The codex notes it because readers will meet it, not because it carries scholarly weight. ### Where the evidence leaves the question The tradition is old, sincere and theologically rich. The historical case that the Mosaic Ark itself is at Aksum rests on the tradition alone, because the object cannot be examined and the earliest narrative is medieval. Christians of every tradition can agree on the theological point the New Testament makes: the true presence of God with his people is now in Christ and his church ([Hebrews 9:1-12](/codex/hebrews-9-1-12/); [Revelation 11:19](/codex/revelation-11-19/); [John 1:14](/codex/john-1-14/)). ## Why the book matters - **It shaped a Christian nation.** From 1270 to 1974 Ethiopia's emperors ruled as sons of Solomon, and the 1955 imperial constitution wrote that descent into law. See [Menelik II](/codex/menelik-ii/). - **It ties Ethiopia to Israel's covenant story.** The book argues that God's favour passed from Jerusalem to Ethiopia, a claim with strong anti-Jewish polemic in its closing chapters, which modern readers should recognize and reject. - **It influenced the African diaspora.** Through Haile Selassie and Ethiopianist movements, the Solomonic story fed Pan-African and Rastafari thought, which the codex distinguishes from historic Christianity. - **It explains Ethiopian worship.** The *tabot*, the feast of Timkat, and the honour given to Mary of Zion all draw on the tradition. ## Tensions - **Date of composition.** The colophon-based date (about 1314-1322) is standard; Shahid argued for a sixth-century core; others think parts were added as late as the sixteenth century. - **Location of Sheba.** South Arabia, Ethiopia, or a realm spanning both. The codex records the options; see [Queen of Sheba](/codex/queen-of-sheba/). - **The Ark.** The church's claim and the historians' doubts are both recorded above. The codex does not pronounce on an object no one outside the church may examine. ## Scholarship Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record. - Graham Hancock, *The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant* (1992). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15016016W) - David Allan Hubbard, *The literary sources of the Kebra nagast* (1957). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL42142238W) - S. C. Munro-Hay, *The quest for the Ark of the Covenant* (2005). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2048091W) - Edward Ullendorff, *Ethiopia and the Bible* (1968). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL5092932W) ## See also - [Queen of Sheba](/codex/queen-of-sheba/), the biblical queen at the root of the tradition - [Solomon](/codex/solomon/), the king of the story - [Ethiopian Orthodox Church](/codex/ethiopian-orthodox-church/), whose worship the tradition shapes - [Kingdom of Aksum](/codex/kingdom-of-aksum/), the city where the Ark is said to rest - [Menelik II](/codex/menelik-ii/), the emperor named for Menelik I - [Lalibela](/codex/lalibela/), the Zagwe king whose dynasty the Solomonic rulers displaced - [Kaleb of Aksum](/codex/kaleb-of-aksum/), who appears in the book's closing prophecy - [Africa and Christianity](/codex/africa-and-christianity/), master hub ## Common questions this page answers **Q: What is the Kebra Nagast?** A fourteenth-century Ge'ez book, "The Glory of the Kings," that tells how the Queen of Sheba bore King Solomon a son, Menelik, who brought the Ark of the Covenant to Ethiopia. It served as the charter of Ethiopia's Solomonic dynasty. **Q: Is the Kebra Nagast in the Bible?** No. It is not part of any biblical canon, including the Ethiopian Orthodox canon. It draws on biblical stories, chiefly the Queen of Sheba's visit in [1 Kings 10](/codex/1-kings-10/) and [2 Chronicles 9](/codex/2-chronicles-9/), and adds traditions not found in Scripture. **Q: Does Ethiopia really have the Ark of the Covenant?** The Ethiopian Orthodox Church says the Ark is kept in a chapel at Aksum, seen only by its guardian monk. No outside scholar has been allowed to examine it, the main narrative is medieval, and many historians doubt the claim. The evidence on both sides is laid out on this page. **Q: Was the Queen of Sheba Ethiopian?** The Bible does not say where Sheba was. Many scholars place it in South Arabia (ancient Saba), while Ethiopian tradition, already reflected in Josephus, identifies her as queen of Ethiopia. Sabaean culture reached both sides of the Red Sea. **Q: When was the Kebra Nagast written?** Its colophon points to a Ge'ez compilation around 1314-1322, under the early Solomonic dynasty, from earlier sources. Some scholars argue that parts are older, possibly from the sixth century. **Q: Did Ethiopian emperors descend from King Solomon?** The Solomonic dynasty, which ruled from 1270 to 1974, claimed descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba through Menelik I. The claim rests on tradition recorded in the Kebra Nagast, not on independent historical evidence.