Menelik I

Menelik I is the founder of the Ethiopian royal line in national tradition. The Kebra Nagast, compiled in the early 14th century, says he was the son of King Solomon and Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, conceived during her visit to Jerusalem. Raised in her country, he travelled to Jerusalem as a young man to meet his father.

When he returned home, the book says, the sons of Solomon's nobles who went with him stole the Ark of the Covenant, called Zion, from the Temple and left a copy in its place. Menelik learned of the theft on the road and accepted it as God's will. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church holds that the Ark rests at Aksum in the Chapel of the Tablet.

Tradition places his reign in the tenth century BCE, but there is no evidence for him outside the much later Ethiopian sources, and historians treat him as legendary. His story gave the Solomonic dynasty, which took power in 1270, its claim to rule, a claim that lasted until Haile Selassie was deposed in 1974.