KEBRA NAGAST: The Ancient Ethiopian Epic of King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, and the Ark of the Covenant, Retold in Clear Modern English with a Historical Introduction
About this audiobook
The oldest story Ethiopia ever told
A queen travels north to test the wisest king alive. She leaves carrying his child.
Years later their son returns to Jerusalem, and when he goes home again the Ark of the Covenant goes with him.
For seven hundred years the Kebra Nagast has been read as the founding history of the Ethiopian nation and the sacred inheritance of its kings. Written in Ge'ez and preserved in the monasteries of Axum, it tells how Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, journeyed to the court of Solomon, how their son Menelik was born, and how the Ark of the Covenant came to rest in Ethiopia. It is scripture, chronicle, and national epic at once, and it still shapes how millions of people understand their own history.
Most English versions of this text are more than a century old. The language is dense, the sentences run long, and the story that made the work famous is buried under archaic phrasing. This edition changes that.
What you will find inside
● The complete epic, retold from beginning to end with nothing important left out
● Clear modern English that reads at a natural pace without flattening the weight of the original
● A historical introduction explaining where the text came from, when it was compiled, and why it carries the authority it does
● The full arc of the story: Sheba's journey, Solomon's court, the birth of Menelik, the taking of the Ark, and the founding of the Solomonic line
● Context for the traditions that grew from the text, in Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity and beyond
Who this is for
Readers of ancient and sacred literature. Anyone drawn to the Ark of the Covenant and the questions that surround it. Students of African history who want the sources rather than the summaries. Members of the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition and readers of the diaspora who grew up hearing pieces of this story and want the whole of it. And anyone who has ever wondered what actually happened between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
You do not need any background in theology or ancient history to follow it. The introduction gives you everything you need, and then the story takes over.
An ancient epic, told plainly, exactly as it deserves to be read.
Discover more
About the author
Serena Callahan writes for readers who want the source rather than the summary.
Her work centres on the ancient religious and philosophical texts that shaped entire civilisations and then slipped out of common reading, either because the translations aged badly or because the only available editions were written for specialists. She takes those works and gives them back to ordinary readers: complete, accurate, and written in language a person can actually read on a weeknight.
Her published editions span the wisdom literature of the ancient Near East, the Hermetic and Gnostic traditions, biblical apocrypha, and the sacred chronicles of Ethiopia. Each one follows the same principle. Keep everything that matters. Cut nothing for convenience. Explain the context first, then get out of the way and let the text speak.
She believes that difficulty and depth are not the same thing, and that a reader who has never opened a work of ancient literature deserves the same access as a scholar who has spent a career with it.
