Customer Reviews

The Queen of Sheba & Her Only Son Menyelek

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The only currently available edition of Sir E A Wallis Budge's translation of the famed 'KEBRA NAGAST' combining Budge's eruditon with a poetic sense which the late colonial British were sometimes noted for. Budge's introductory essay alone is worth the price of the book, even if containing some outdated and offensive references to 'Negro savages' and the like. Note: the edition herein is a photo-reproduction of a volume in the Library of Congress, and is missing several pages which, using interlibrary loan services, I have found missing from original copies of the 1922 edition east of the Mississippi; the missing material has been forwarded to African Islamic Mission, but I have no data on whether it has been included since my correspondence. The missing parts include, always, "How Solomon Recognized His Firstborn Son" and "The Plot to Steal the Ark From the Temple in Jerusalem". The book evinces an origin during a perhaps-apocryphal time when Judaism was the dominat religion in Ethiopia, and shows further evidences of a somewhat-tortuous rewrite when Christianity became dominant; but the story may have been all an invention from the time of the 'Restoration' of the Solomonic Dynasty under Yekuno Amlak in the 13th Century.

The only currently available edition of Sir E A Wallis Budge's translation of the famed 'KEBRA NAGAST' combining Budge's eruditon with a poetic sense which the late colonial British were sometimes noted for. Budge's introductory essay alone is worth the price of the book, even if containing some outdated and offensive references to 'Negro savages' and the like. Note: the edition herein is a photo-reproduction of a volume in the Library of Congress, and is missing several pages which, using interlibrary loan services, I have found missing from original copies of the 1922 edition east of the Mississippi; the missing material has been forwarded to African Islamic Mission, but I have no data on whether it has been included since my correspondence. The missing parts include, always, "How Solomon Recognized His Firstborn Son" and "The Plot to Steal the Ark From the Temple in Jerusalem". The book evinces an origin during a perhaps-apocryphal time when Judaism was the dominat religion in Ethiopia, and shows further evidences of a somewhat-tortuous rewrite when Christianity became dominant; but the story may have been all an invention from the time of the 'Restoration' of the Solomonic Dynasty under Yekuno Amlak in the 13th Century.

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