Makeda

Makeda, known throughout the Christian highlands as the Queen of Sheba, is the central heroine of the Kebra Nagast, the fourteenth-century national epic of Ethiopia. Drawn by her merchant Tamrin's account of Solomon's wisdom, she journeys to Jerusalem, is won by a stratagem into the king's bed, and conceives a son. Returning to her own land she abdicates in his favour and, in the epic's telling, turns her people from the worship of the sun to the God of Israel, becoming the ancestress of the Solomonic kings who claimed her descent until 1974.

Children

• Menelik I

Domains

• sovereignty
• wisdom

Powers

• founds the Solomonic royal line of Ethiopia

Epithets

• ንግሥተ ሳባ — Queen of ShebaKebra Nagast, chapters 21–33; trans. Budge (1922). (primary)

Relations

• lover: SolomonTheir single union at Solomon's court conceives Menelik.Kebra Nagast, chapters 25–30; trans. Budge (1922). (primary)
• child: Menelik IKebra Nagast, chapters 32–34; trans. Budge (1922). (primary)
• companion: TamrinHer chief merchant, whose report of Solomon's glory prompts her journey.Kebra Nagast, chapters 22–24; trans. Budge (1922). (primary)

Sources

• Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, journeys to Solomon, bears him a son, and returns to Ethiopia to found the Solomonic dynasty in the national epic Kebra Nagast.: E. A. Wallis Budge (trans.), The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelek (Kebra Nagast) (London: Oxford University Press, 1922), chs. 21–34. (primary); Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, s.v. 'Kebra Nagast' and 'Makǝda' (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007). (secondary)