The writers who contribute to this nameless strand of often bizarre literary creativity necessarily also take interest in the relation of the Imperial centuries down through the period of Late Antiquity to modernity, which seems to them likewise imperial, fugacious, and overripe. The nameless, promiscuous, un-generic genre nevertheless succeeds in constituting itself through its specific fascination with the breakdown of Classical Civilization and the growth of the successor-civilization that articulated itself through the codification of Christian orthodoxy and the establishment of a new central institution, the Church, with its precepts and rites. The genre has no name it is a hybrid in that it assimilates drama, epic, the novel, the essay, and perhaps even lyric, without distinction and therefore quite promiscuously and un-generically. Haile Selassie was not, however, the first Emperor to publicly declare the importance of the Kebra Nagast.Gustave Flaubert’s La tentation de Saint-Antoine ou la révélation de l’âme (first version 1848 final version 1874), its sui generis character notwithstanding, belongs in a recognizable, yet largely unrecognized, genre of mid- and late-Nineteenth Century literature that includes, among other items, Charles Kingsley’s Hypatia (1850), Henrik Ibsen’s Kejser og Galileer (1871), Richard Wagner’s incomplete Jesus von Nazareth (1849) and his libretto for Parsifal (1882), Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean (1885), General Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur (1880), Anatole France’s Thaïs (1890), and Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis (1895). Emperor Haile Selassie even had that fact enshrined in the Ethiopian Constitution of 1955. Thus, Sheba is the mother of their nation, and the kings of the land have divine right to rule because they are directly descended from her. Through their reading of the Kebra Nagast, Ethiopians see their country as God's chosen country, the final resting place that he chose for the Ark - and Sheba and her son were the means by which it came there. The importance of the queen, the Ark of the Covenant and the Kebra Nagast in Ethiopian history cannot be overstated. He took it back to Aksum, where it still resides today, in a specially built treasury in the courtyard of St Mary's Church. Under cover of darkness he left the city - taking with him its most precious relic, the Ark of the Covenant. But Menelik refused and decided to return home. The story goes that years later Menelik travelled to Jerusalem to see his father, who greeted him with joy and invited him to remain there to rule after his death. Here, the queen returns to her capital, Aksum, in northern Ethiopia, and months later gives birth to Solomon's son, who is named Menelik, meaning 'Son of the Wise'.

The stories are immortalised in the Ethiopian holy book - the Kebra Nagast - where we find accounts of the queen's hairy hoof, her trip to Solomon and her seduction. Of all the stories of the Queen of Sheba, those of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa are those that probably retain the most resonance today with the people who tell them. Historians believe this kingdom was located in what is now Ethiopia. Temple of Hatshepsut, whose walls show a 15th-century BC trade mission to the land of 'Punt'.

Colloquy of the queen of sheba pdf