Founding of the Solomonic line

At a Glance

• Central figures: Makeda, queen of Ethiopia; Solomon, king of Israel; Menelik I, their son and founder of the Solomonic dynasty; Tamrin, Makeda’s merchant; Azaryas, son of Zadok the high priest.
• Setting: The kingdom of Aksum and the court of Solomon in Jerusalem, as told in the Kebra Nagast, the Ethiopian national epic compiled in Ge’ez.
• The turn: Solomon tricked Makeda into breaking an oath not to take anything in his house, then claimed her in return; from their union a son was born who would carry the royal line south.
• The outcome: Menelik traveled to Jerusalem, received his father’s blessing, and returned to Aksum with the Ark of the Covenant, transferring the covenant of God from Israel to Ethiopia.
• The legacy: The Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopia, which claimed unbroken descent from Solomon and Makeda until the deposition of Haile Selassie in 1974, and the Ark of the Covenant housed at the Church of Mary of Zion in Aksum.

Tamrin was a merchant who dealt in gold, frankincense, and the red woods of the south. He traveled to Jerusalem with six hundred camels loaded with goods and stayed in Solomon’s city for months, selling and buying, but mostly watching. He watched the temple courts. He watched the cedar pillars. He watched the king sit in judgment, and he watched the way the servants moved without being told, as though they already knew what was needed.

When Tamrin returned to Aksum he went before Makeda and told her everything. Not the prices. Not the trade routes. He told her about the king. He told her about the wisdom - how Solomon answered riddles that had no answers, how he spoke to animals and they obeyed, how the nations sent their questions to him and he resolved them before the messengers had finished speaking. Makeda sat on her throne and listened until Tamrin had nothing left to say. Then she was quiet for several days.

Makeda’s Journey North

She assembled a caravan of seven hundred and ninety-seven camels, mules beyond counting, and wagons loaded with spices, sapphires, and gold. Her counselors came with her. Her guards came with her. The journey north took many weeks through desert country, and when the caravan reached Jerusalem the dust of its arrival could be seen from the walls.

Solomon received her with the honors due a sovereign. He gave her quarters in the palace and set a table for her each evening. Makeda came to him with questions - hard questions, the kind her own counselors could not untangle. Solomon answered them. She brought harder ones. He answered those too. She watched him closely, the way Tamrin had watched, and she began to understand what Tamrin had been trying to describe. It was not cleverness. It was something else - a kind of sight, as though Solomon could see the shape of a problem the way a mason sees the shape inside a stone.

Makeda stayed in Jerusalem for six months. She studied the temple worship, the administration of the kingdom, the ordering of the court. She told Solomon she would take his god back to her country - not his gold, not his armies, but his god.

The Oath and the Trick

On the night before Makeda was to depart, Solomon prepared a feast. The food was rich and heavily spiced. He had ordered salt and pepper in greater quantities than usual. After the meal, Solomon asked Makeda to swear an oath: she would take nothing from his house without his permission. Makeda agreed. She was a queen. She did not take what was not hers.

Solomon had a bed prepared for her in his chamber. He had a jar of water placed near his own bed, in plain sight.

In the middle of the night Makeda woke. Her mouth was dry from the spiced food. She looked at the jar of water and reached for it. Solomon’s hand caught her wrist.

You swore you would take nothing from my house.

It is water, she said.

There is nothing on earth more precious than water, Solomon said.

The oath was broken. Solomon claimed her, and Makeda did not resist, because the oath bound her and because - so the Kebra Nagast says plainly - she desired his wisdom and wished to carry it south in whatever form it would take.

The Birth of Menelik

Makeda returned to Aksum carrying Solomon’s child. She gave birth to a son and named him Menelik, which in the tradition means “son of the wise.” She raised him in the court at Aksum, and when he was old enough to ask, she told him who his father was.

Menelik grew into a young man who looked so much like Solomon that the people of Aksum remarked on it. When he reached the age of twenty-two he told his mother he would go north to see his father. Makeda gave him a ring that Solomon had given her and sent him with a retinue.

In Jerusalem, Solomon recognized his son at once. The resemblance was unmistakable. He embraced Menelik and offered him the throne of Israel. Menelik refused. He said his kingdom was in the south, with his mother. Solomon was grieved but he anointed Menelik king of Ethiopia and appointed the sons of the chief priests and nobles to return with him as counselors and companions.

Azaryas and the Ark

Among those assigned to go south was Azaryas, son of the high priest Zadok. Azaryas did not want to leave Jerusalem. But a vision came to him in the night, and in the vision he was told to take the Ark of the Covenant from the temple and carry it to Ethiopia.

Azaryas told Menelik. Menelik hesitated, but Azaryas said that God himself had commanded it. They went into the holy of holies by night and took the tabot - the Ark - and replaced it with a wooden replica. They wrapped the Ark and loaded it onto a cart and covered it with cloth. The caravan departed Jerusalem at dawn.

Solomon did not discover the theft until the caravan was far south. He sent riders after Menelik, but the riders could not catch them. The Kebra Nagast says the cart carrying the Ark was lifted by the wind and moved faster than any horse. The riders turned back.

The Ark at Aksum

Menelik entered Aksum with the Ark. Makeda received him and saw what he had brought. She understood then what had happened - that the covenant had moved. What had been given to Israel was now given to Ethiopia. The line of David continued not through Jerusalem but through Aksum, and the Ark of the Covenant would remain in her country.

She abdicated her throne in favor of her son. Menelik became negusa nagast - king of kings - and established the dynasty that would bear his name. The Ark was placed in a sanctuary, guarded and hidden, accessible to no one but its appointed keeper. Every church built afterward in the Ethiopian tradition would house its own tabot, a consecrated replica, so that every parish carried a fragment of the covenant within its walls.

The Kebra Nagast records these events not as legend but as history. The line of Solomon and Makeda continued through the centuries at Aksum, then at Gondar, then at Addis Ababa - king after king, each anointed, each claiming descent from the son who carried the Ark south. The single guardian monk at the Church of Mary of Zion in Aksum still keeps his watch. He does not leave the precinct. No one else enters.