The Kebra Negest "Book of the Glory of Kings"

WHEN the English translation of the "Book of the Glory of Kings" appeared in 1922 it received a generous welcome from the gentlemen of the Press, and the approval of it by the public generally was shown by the fact that within two months from the day of publication a reprint was called for. The amusing and interesting character of the book which piles up fancy tales, fables, legends, folk-lore, dogma, mysticism and pious remarks on a substratum of historical fact was frankly admitted by all the reviewers, but a few of them raised the question of the historicity of the Book of the Glory of Kings. It must be said at once that we shall never know whether the queen who visited SOLOMON was a pure-blooded ABYSSINIAN or an Arab queen from YAMAN or HADRAMAUT or some other part of the great Arabian peninsula. But the tradition that some "Queen of the South" did visit SOLOMON is so old and so widespread, that a kernel of historical fact, however small, must be hidden somewhere in it.