Kebra Nagast

The Kebra Nagast, var. Kebra Negast (Ge'ez: ክብረ ነገሥት, kəbrä nägäśt), or The Glory of the Kings, is a 14th-century^[1] national epic of Ethiopia, written in Geʽez by the nebure id Ishaq of Aksum. In its existing form, the text is at least 700 years old and is considered by many Orthodox Tewahedo Christians to be a historically reliable work.^[2] It is considered to hold the genealogy of the Solomonic dynasty, which followed the Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

The text contains an account of how the Queen of Sheba (Queen Makeda of Ethiopia) met King Solomon and about how the Ark of the Covenant came to Ethiopia with their son Menelik I (Menyelek). It also discusses the conversion of Ethiopians from the worship of the Sun, Moon, and stars to that of the "Lord God of Israel". As the Ethiopianist Edward Ullendorff explained in the 1967 Schweich Lectures, "The Kebra Nagast is not merely a literary work, but it is the repository of Ethiopian national and religious feelings".^[3]

It has been described as “an Abyssinian politico-religious epic” and "medieval-era mythology". Nadia Nurhussein wrote that "The Kebra Nagast gave textual authority to a then newly articulated mythology of Abyssinia’s long imperial history, legitimizing a “Solomonic” dynasty' that claimed to reach back three thousand years earlier to the union of King Solomon and the supposedly Ethiopian Queen of Sheba." It enabled the overthrow of the Zagwe Dynasty.^[4]