Menelik I

Menelik I (called Bäynä Ləḥkəm in the Kebra Nagast; also named Ebna la-Hakim, Arabic: Ibn Al-Hakim, "Son of the Wise"), first Solomonic Emperor of Ethiopia, is traditionally believed to be the son of King Solomon of ancient Israel and Makeda, ancient Queen of Sheba. He is alleged to have ruled around 950 BC, according to traditional sources. Tradition credits him with bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Ethiopia, following a visit to Jerusalem to meet his father upon reaching adulthood.

According to the Kebra Nagast, King Solomon had intended on sending one son of each of his nobles and one son of each temple priest with Menelik upon his return to his mother's kingdom. He is supposed to have had a replica made of the Ark for them to take with them. Upon the death of Queen Makeda, Menelik assumed the throne with the new title of Emperor and King of Kings of Ethiopia.

According to legend, he founded the Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopia that ruled Ethiopia with few interruptions for close to three thousand years (and 225 generations later ended with the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974).

A counterpoint to this legend is that kings of Ethiopia are only attested in record from the 8th century BC, when there was a kingdom named D'mt located in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia that existed during the late 8th to 5th centuries BC. Few inscriptions by or about this kingdom exist. As a result, it is not known whether Dʿmt ended as a civilization before the Kingdom of Axum was established on the Red Sea coast in the 5th century BC, evolved into the Aksumite state, or was one of the smaller states united in the Aksumite kingdom possibly around the beginning of the 1st century AD.

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