Menelik's return to Ethiopia
At a Glance
- Central figures: Menelik I, firstborn son of King Solomon of Israel and Queen Makeda of Ethiopia; King Solomon; Azaryas, son of the high priest Zadok; the sons of the elders of Israel who accompanied Menelik south.
- Setting: Jerusalem and the road south to Aksum, as told in the Kebra Nagast, the Ethiopian national epic compiled in Ge’ez from older sources.
- The turn: On the eve of Menelik’s departure from Jerusalem, Azaryas removed the Ark of the Covenant from the Temple and concealed it among the caravan’s baggage, and Menelik - upon discovering it - chose not to return it.
- The outcome: The Ark traveled south to Ethiopia, and with it the divine favor that had rested upon Israel passed to the Solomonic kingdom at Aksum.
- The legacy: The Ark is held at the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Aksum, guarded by a single monk who never leaves the precinct; every Ethiopian Orthodox church houses a tabot, a consecrated replica of the Ark, at its center.
Menelik had Solomon’s face. Everyone in Jerusalem said so. The cheekbones, the set of the eyes, the way he held silence before speaking - it was Solomon’s manner reproduced in a young man who had grown up far from the cedar-pillared halls of the Temple. He had come north to meet his father, and Solomon had received him with feasting and with joy. But now the visit was ending.
Solomon did not want his son to leave. He offered Menelik the throne of Israel itself. He offered him half the kingdom. Menelik refused. He said he had a mother and a country in the south, and he would return to them. Solomon saw that the young man could not be held, and so he made a different arrangement: he commanded the firstborn sons of his chief counselors and priests to go south with Menelik, so that the court of Ethiopia would mirror the court of Israel. The sons were chosen. They were not consulted.
The Sons Who Did Not Choose
The young men of Jerusalem wept. They tore their garments. They had not asked to leave their fathers’ houses, and the road to Ethiopia was long and unknown to them. Among them was Azaryas, son of the high priest Zadok, and it was Azaryas whose grief turned into something else.
Azaryas went to the other sons at night. He said: if we must leave the Temple and the city and the land of our fathers, then let us not leave empty-handed. He proposed what none of them would have spoken aloud. He proposed that they take the Ark of the Covenant with them.
The others were afraid. The Ark was the holiest object in the world. It sat in the innermost chamber of Solomon’s Temple, behind the veil, and no one entered that chamber except the high priest, and only once a year. To touch it was to die. To move it without the Lord’s permission was unthinkable.
Azaryas said: the Lord has already moved it. He said the Lord had shown him in a dream that the Ark would go south. He said the choosing of the firstborn sons, the command that they accompany Menelik - all of it was preparation. The Lord intended it.
The sons listened. They did not sleep that night.
The Night in the Temple
Azaryas entered the Temple at the hour when the guards changed. He knew the interior because he was a priest’s son and had assisted in the rituals since he was a boy. He passed through the outer court. He passed through the Holy Place. He came to the veil.
What happened behind the veil the Kebra Nagast does not describe in detail. The chronicle says only that Azaryas removed the Ark and replaced it with a wooden replica he had constructed. He wrapped the true Ark in cloth and carried it out through a side passage. The guards did not see him. The chronicle says the angel of the Lord made them heavy with sleep.
By dawn the Ark was hidden among the provisions of Menelik’s caravan, packed deep beneath bolts of Ethiopian cloth and casks of grain.
The Road South
The caravan departed Jerusalem. Solomon blessed his son and watched from the walls as the line of camels and mules stretched south toward the desert. He did not know what the baggage contained.
Menelik did not know either - not yet.
The caravan moved faster than any caravan should move. The Kebra Nagast says the wagons were lifted slightly above the ground, so that the wheels did not touch the earth but hovered the width of a cubit above the stones. The animals did not tire. The men did not hunger. The wind was behind them, always.
It was on the second or third day that Azaryas told Menelik the truth. He came to the young prince’s tent and said: the Ark of the Covenant is with us. It travels in the last wagon.
Menelik was afraid. He asked Azaryas what he had done. Azaryas repeated what he had told the other sons - that the Lord had ordained it, that the dream was clear, that the speed of the caravan was proof. Look at the wheels, Azaryas said. They do not touch the ground.
Menelik went out and looked. The wheels did not touch the ground.
He did not send the Ark back.
Solomon’s Discovery
In Jerusalem, Solomon learned what had happened. Some accounts say a priest entered the Holy of Holies and found the replica. Others say the king was told in a dream. However the knowledge came, it broke him.
Solomon sent riders after the caravan. The riders rode hard for many days. They could not close the distance. The caravan that floated above the earth outpaced the fastest horses in Israel. The riders returned to Jerusalem empty-handed and told the king it could not be done.
Solomon understood then what had happened. The glory of God had passed south. The covenant that had rested with Israel since the days of Moses now belonged to Ethiopia. He wept, and his counselors wept with him, but there was nothing to be done. The Lord had decided.
Aksum
Menelik crossed into Ethiopia with the Ark. The Kebra Nagast says the land itself recognized what was coming - the rivers rose, the trees put out new leaves, the birds of the air sang in patterns they had not sung before. Makeda came out from Aksum to meet her son, and when she saw him she knew that he had brought back more than Solomon’s blessing.
The Ark was placed in a sanctuary at Aksum. Around it Menelik built the first structures of what would become the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion. The sons of the elders of Israel became the first nobles of the Ethiopian court, their bloodlines woven into the highland families for generations after. The priesthood they established carried forward the rituals of the Temple, adapted now to the red earth and thin air of the Ethiopian plateau.
Menelik was anointed negusa nagast - king of kings. The Solomonic dynasty he founded would claim unbroken descent from Solomon and Makeda for nearly three thousand years. And the Ark remained at Aksum, behind walls, in the keeping of a single guardian who enters and does not leave. It is there still.