Queen Makeda hears of Solomon

At a Glance

• Central figures: Queen Makeda, ruler of a kingdom in the south; Tamrin, her chief merchant; King Solomon of Israel.
• Setting: The royal court at Aksum and the trade routes leading north to Jerusalem, as told in the Kebra Nagast.
• The turn: Tamrin returns from Jerusalem and cannot stop speaking of Solomon’s wisdom, his temple, and his judgment - until Makeda decides she must see for herself.
• The outcome: Makeda assembles a great caravan of gifts and sets out on the long road north to Jerusalem, staking her kingdom’s honor on the meeting.
• The legacy: Makeda’s journey established the bond between Ethiopia and Israel that the Kebra Nagast traces through Menelik I and the Solomonic dynasty of the Ethiopian throne.

Tamrin came home rich. That was ordinary. He always came home rich - he was the queen’s merchant, and he moved ivory and gold and the dark fragrant wood of the south along routes that took him as far as the great sea. But this time he came home changed in a way that had nothing to do with what his camels carried.

He had been to Jerusalem.

Tamrin’s Report

Makeda received him in her hall at Aksum, where the stone pillars rose high and the smoke of incense moved slowly through the upper air. Tamrin stood before her and gave his accounting - the prices, the goods exchanged, the ships he had hired and the roads he had taken. All of this was expected. But when the accounting was finished he did not stop.

He told her about Solomon’s temple. He described the cedar pillars, brought from Lebanon, each one the height of ten men. He described the gold - not merely gold ornaments but gold layered on the walls, gold on the altar, gold on the vessels from which the priests poured oil. He described the courtyard where Solomon sat in judgment, and the men who came before him with their disputes, and the way the king listened to each man and then spoke with such precision that both sides left the court satisfied or at least silenced.

He described the animals. Solomon, Tamrin said, could speak to beasts and birds. They came when he called them. The hoopoe brought him messages. The lions in the palace courtyard lay down and did not trouble the servants.

He described the food. The bread, the wine, the meat from the royal herds - not the quantity, though that was staggering, but the order of it. Every servant knew his place. Every dish came at its appointed time. No voice was raised. The palace operated like the interior of a body, each part performing its work in silence.

Makeda listened. She did not interrupt. This was her way - she heard a thing completely before she judged it. When Tamrin finished she asked him one question.

Is his wisdom greater than mine?

Tamrin was quiet for a moment. Then he said: I cannot judge the queen’s wisdom, for I am only a merchant. But I have never seen anything in any country that equals what I saw in Jerusalem.

The Queen’s Silence

Makeda dismissed him and sat alone. Her counselors waited in the outer hall. The guards stood at the doors. The incense burned down to ash.

She thought about what Tamrin had said. She was a queen who prized wisdom above wealth, though she had plenty of both. Her kingdom stretched south into lands where the rivers ran heavy and the soil gave up its harvest without complaint. Her treasury was full. Her people feared her and honored her. But Tamrin had described a kind of knowledge she did not possess - a king who could render judgment so cleanly that the truth of a matter lay exposed like a stone at the bottom of clear water.

She wanted to see this. Not because she doubted Tamrin. Because she was Makeda, and she did not accept reports when she could have the thing itself.

She sat through the evening and into the night. The lamps were lit and then burned low. When the first light came through the high windows of the hall she called her chief steward and told him to begin preparations.

The Caravan

The preparations took many weeks. Makeda was not going to arrive in Jerusalem as a petitioner. She was a queen of the south, and she would present herself as one.

She ordered six hundred donkeys loaded with provisions for the road. She ordered camels beyond counting - the chroniclers say their number filled the plain outside Aksum from the palace gate to the river. Gold was packed in sealed chests. Spices - myrrh, cassia, the best frankincense from the lowlands - were wrapped in cloth and loaded onto the strongest animals. Precious stones were gathered from the royal storehouse: sapphires, garnets, the green stones that came from the eastern hills.

She chose her attendants with care. Her finest counselors, her personal guard, her women. She brought Tamrin, because he knew the roads. She brought interpreters who spoke the languages of the lands between Aksum and Jerusalem.

The morning the caravan departed, the people of Aksum lined the road and watched in silence. They had never seen such a procession leave the city. Makeda rode at its head, and her face was set north, and she did not look back at the stone pillars of her palace or the obelisks that marked her ancestors’ graves.

The Road North

The journey was long. The caravan crossed the lowlands where the heat pressed down like a hand on the back of the neck. They forded rivers swollen with the rains. They passed through territories whose chiefs came out to stare at the size of the train and then stepped aside, because no one interfered with a queen traveling with that many armed men.

Tamrin rode ahead and arranged provisions at each stopping place. The camels were watered. The donkeys were rested. Makeda bore the journey without complaint, though the dust and heat were punishing. She had made her decision in the quiet of her hall, and she would not waver from it on the road.

At night, when the caravan halted and the fires were lit, she questioned Tamrin again. Tell me more about his judgments. Tell me what he said about God. Tell me how his servants address him. Tamrin told her everything he remembered, and some things he may have remembered more brightly than they had happened, because that is the nature of a witness who has been greatly impressed. But the core of what he said was true. Solomon’s wisdom was real, and it was waiting in Jerusalem.

The Approach

They came to the land of Israel after many weeks on the road. The country was different from the south - drier in some places, greener in others, with stone-terraced hills and olive trees older than any kingdom. Makeda looked at it and said nothing, but she noticed everything.

Word of her approach had reached Solomon. A queen from the south, traveling with a caravan so large it darkened the road, bearing gifts of gold and spice. Solomon sent messengers to greet her on the road and to escort her the final distance to Jerusalem.

Makeda received the messengers with courtesy and no surprise. She had expected Solomon to know she was coming. A king with the wisdom Tamrin described would have heard of her long before she arrived.

The walls of Jerusalem came into view on a morning when the air was clear and the sun struck the stone so that the city appeared to glow from within. Makeda looked at it for a long time. Then she turned to Tamrin.

You did not exaggerate, she said.

Tamrin bowed. The caravan moved forward, and the gates of Jerusalem opened.