Queen of Sheba (and her son?)

      The story of "The Queen of Sheba and her only Son Menyelek" is an Ethiopian spin on the story that appears in the Christian Bible in which the Queen of Sheba visits Solomon to learn from his wisdom (the New International Version of the story can be found here). Once again we see religions morphing as they are adapted in different cultures and fit to that culture. The Ethiopians took the Biblical information and expanded on it from their own perspective.The Ethiopian version of the story is from the perspective of the Queen of Sheba (Ethiopians claim that Sheba is in Ethiopia)  rather than from the Solomon perspective as it appears in the Bible. In this way, the Ethiopians made the bible story their own and incorporated their own ideas and traditions into the story. They turned a thirteen verse blip into a twenty page adventure. In essence, they used the Queen of Sheba's visit to King Solomon as an explanation of how Ethiopians abandoned worship of the sun and how Christianity and Judiasm and heirs of Solomon found their way to Ethiopia. It also gives an explanation of how the Ethiopians would have obtained the ark of the covenant. This sort of sharing and molding of existing stories is very prevalent in religions especially when different cultures are geographically close together. The Ethiopians made the story of the Queen of Sheba into a story that explains something that may not have had a very good explanation in their historical records.

       In the Biblical version of the story, there is no mention of Solomon sleeping with the Queen of Sheba or of her having Solomon's son but in the Kebra Negast, the Queen of Sheba having a son by Solomon is vital to the plot of this version. The Queen of Sheba having King Solomon's son explains the "Solomonic line of Kings" in Ethiopia following this queen's rule. The Ethiopians also use the story as a vehicle for explaining how the ark of the covenant supposedly got transported to Ethiopia where the Ethiopians believe the ark of the covenant still resides today. The Kebra Negast version is an elaboration on the version found in the Bible which sought to provide answers to how Christianity found its way to Ethiopia. While it may or may not be accurate historically, it certainly provides answers to some of the basic questions that may puzzle Ethiopians. As we have seen before, people try to explain phenomena in their world through stories in religion. Also, since these two regions are close geographically, they tend to exchange information and engage in some cultural sharing whether purposefully or just as a result of mutual contact.

     Ultimately the Kebra Negast story explains phenomena found in Ethiopian culture through expanding on an already existing religious scripture of a neighboring religion.