the army would set off the present crisis communicator these are the moments when Ethiopia's kingdom came to an annual in february 1974 the Ethiopian military rose up in Revolt by September they deposed the Emperor Haile Selassie there's a coup that brought to an end one of the world's oldest continuous kingdoms gave it its first written constitution realizing that times must change he has decreed constitutional reforms be made apparently with a view toward making Ethiopia a continent Haile Selassie was the last emperor of a dynasty that claimed it could trace its roots back thousands of years the country is now a democratic republic but Ethiopians haven't forgotten their kingdoms proud past in the capital Addis Ababa this statue of Emperor Menelik ii celebrates Ethiopia's long tradition of Independence at a time when much of Africa was being colonized by European powers menlik the seconds army fought off an Italian attempt at conquest ever since that famous victory Ethiopia has been a beacon of self-determination for black people around the world but I'm here to get back beyond that to the ancient history I've got the other together in the gas the glory of kings the story that tells you of all of those kings those ancient empires and I want to get behind that and find out exactly what made this country the book I'm carrying is a modern translation of the most important text in Ethiopian history the Kebra Nagast was written in the 13th century it sets out the lineage of Ethiopia's emperors it makes some grand claims it says the dynasty began in 950 BC and at the first Emperor Menelik the first was the son of illustrious parents solomon king of israel and queen Makeda better known as the legendary queen of sheba the link to the old testament gave a legitimacy to the ethiopian empire but is there any truth in it is there really a connection between solomon and sheba and the Ethiopians that's what I want to find out I can't speak to an emperor but I do have an audience with Ethiopia's most important spiritual leader the head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church as with most ancient kingdoms the Ethiopian emperors claim their power came from God church and state were inextricably linked so evidence of the origins of the church might throw some light on the history and origins of the Ethiopian kingdom could you tell me something about the history or the origins of the Ethiopian church 1000 years before Christianity Ethiopians have accepted officially the Old Testament order and they have followed for 1,000 years so we accepted Judaism then we have subtittles gentie now it is a 3,000 years old all together according to the patriarch Ethiopia's judeo-christian tradition does date from the beginning of the Ethiopian kingdom he says that the faith and the Emperor's came together the foundation of this belief lies in the astonishing claim that the very basis of Judaism is actually here in Ethiopia he tells me that the Ark of the Covenant containing the Ten Commandments was brought here from Jerusalem by menlik the son of Solomon they are called the Covenant and the Solomonic descent comes together the Ark of the Covenant is with us in a joke can that really be true if the ark is in Ethiopia it would be powerful evidence of a link between Ethiopia founding Emperor and the people of the Old Testament but there's a problem the Ark is deemed so holy a relic that no one is allowed to see it and there's no historical evidence that men licked the first was the son of Solomon and Sheba get faith in this legend is still strong I want to find out why attenders and discover whether it's true I'm gonna look for continuities that might appear in the centrist in religious traditions in language and in Ethiopia's of buildings I want to see if I can connect them to Salomon and Toshiba my journey would take me from Addis to some of the most important historical sites in Ethiopia going further and further into the past to see if I can reach the time of the Old Testament my guide here is half Tarly mama we've come to one of Ethiopia's most important cities and it's something of a surprise to me so this is an the old city yeah this is one of the five main gates of heart right the legend of Ethiopia's unbroken judeo-christian history isn't that straightforward RR is a Muslim city and it confounds my expectations in other ways too Ethiopia's modern history has been blighted by drought and famine but in places unaffected by shortages like Harrah's market trade is brisk historically the Ethiopian highlands are one of nature's storehouses more crop species are found here than in any other part of the continent frankincense used in churches and temples for centuries grows wild here oh that's gorgeous what do I do with this incense and it smells beautiful as it is but how do I make it even more powerful yes and it's messy good for the caucus mm-hmm thank you very much thank you what should I be saying to her I'm just second and I'm a second madam yeah second nerado I apologize for being so English about it for at least 2000 years Ethiopians have traded frankincense north to the eastern Mediterranean along with a lively trade in other goods coffee was first cultivated here in the ninth century but it isn't most popular item for sale this is chat this there is a standard and there's this stuff that they need what is it good for you is it what does it do the chat it's very good it may get away it's just a stimulant to makes you strong it is completely it's to make me as well as its secular uses chat is used here by Muslim mystics to help them on their spiritual journey but perhaps it's not a surprise that there should be such a strong Muslim population here after all it's only a short hop across the Red Sea to Yemen and Saudi Arabia but what is remarkable is the role the Muslim population played in maintaining Ethiopia's independence shoring up the relationship between Ethiopian Christianity and royal legitimacy back in the 17th century ethiopian muslims made common cause with ethiopian christians in a deal brokered by emperor fasilides I'm heading to his capital to find out more about him and the Ethiopian kingdom he ruled over I'm traveling to ganda across Lake Tana on the ancient trade route which avoids the mountains the unlikely alliance of Christians and Muslims came about as a reaction against foreign interference during the sixteenth century the Portuguese arrived with two purposes in mind one was to take over the Muslim trade routes the other was to find a mythical Christian ruler called presto John they traveled right down the west coast of Africa in search of him and then when the boat technology improved they came up the East Coast and it was here here in Ethiopia that they thought that they found him Prester John turned out to be a figment of European imagination instead the Portuguese found a really theo peon christian kingdom and whilst they enjoyed some success in converting the local population to catholicism their attempts angered many a foreign imported version of christianity united he Theo panned Christian and Muslim alike under the banner of emperor fasilides they expelled the Portuguese and executed their Jesuit priests Ethiopian traditions were again free from outside influence some seemed unchanged to this day papyrus canoes like this one have been used here for thousands of years can you ask him if he's caught anything today I know someone so much gas boom work so you can invite a fish you can buy the first how much sure though anyone out of you yet on a shadow right what can I have fishes this cannot yeah till I feel you know just giving him the money what's that gotta let go thanks very much back again to the north of Lake Tana lies ganda Ethiopia's 17th century capital it's dominated by an impressive castle the city was built by emperor fasilides in 1635 the man who brought Christian and Muslim together in common cause I've arranged to meet the curator here get she eggs on hello gasps you're well lovely to meet you this is so spectacular so what am I looking at if you'll see a real African cast this is really the first place black people who live in a castle meet palace in Ghana and in Morocco and Tunisia such castle this is the first and only guest the man who built it was determined to defend Ethiopia's independence Goetsch tells me that m professor das was a strong leader in control of a significant capital yeah because I'm gonna at that time there was about 60,000 in habitat you can imagine that was 400 years ago it so we haven't imagined about you're so cunning very visionary man very wise man that's why he builds such I made it is an impressive cancer facile artist wasn't just displaying his power with this building there are telling clues he was also asserting his legitimacy by reminding people of the link to King Solomon and the people of the Old Testament up here I can see that that as a Star of David right right right that is the set of dead because the previous Ethiopian kingdoms believed that their families comes from the Solomonic descendant yeah they're from the same family flatty Landis was one of them that's why he put yourself and connection to Solomon what was that I mean is it is it is it a legend or is this an actual real this is the reincarnation I knew that it would be difficult to separate fact from myth here it seems impossible of course the star of david' is only one hint that the Emperor's claimed to be descended from Solomon I'm wondering whether there is anything else in this castle the points back to the world of the Old Testament for me the best way of getting a real sense of the building is to sit down to spend a few quiet minutes just sketching I suspect that facile artists may have been more influenced by outsiders than he would have cared to admit battlements look Portuguese to me the domes look east towards perhaps India but I can also see what looks like a curious technique in the way the long wooden beams have been used in the stone building I'm particularly interested in how the architect has used this beam to support the masonry and it's a wooden beam it's quite unusual for that to be that long the beams are necessarily long for its function my hunch is the design may be a throwback to an earlier time it's almost like an architectural quote to see it here in this site where they've absorbed influences from all over the neighboring regions is absolutely fascinating details like the beam suggest that while there were some outside influences on the kingdom local heritage and traditions were fundamental and the execution of the Portuguese Jesuit shows the Emperor's determination to defend the distinctive role of the Ethiopian church just as in Western Europe many of the oldest buildings still standing in Ethiopia are churches and I feel sure these buildings can tell me about the relationship between the Emperor's their faith and their history this church was built by Emperor Yasu a close successor to facilities in the 17th century this astonishing painting is completely different to anything I've seen in European churches or in missionary churches elsewhere in Africa I spend so much of my time trying to rationalize and explain beautiful things but very occasionally I'm just completely knocked sideways by something and coming in here to this particular church and seeing a lot of the Christian tradition that I was brought up with depicted in a completely new way with a level of intensity that I've never seen before it's just absolutely astounding the paintings have been completed on cloth which has been glued to the mud plaster walls Emperor Yasu seems to have been reassuring his subjects that he could look after them he commissioned artists to paint angels on the ceilings as if protecting the worshippers below it's a stunning example of the individuality that the Emperor's was so determined to preserve and I can't help wondering whether other telling traces of the past still survived with in Ethiopia's ancient churches it's Sunday morning and I'm going to a service at a church far into the highlands of East Gondo did you get away Bible passages are being read and get has the ancient language of the Ethiopian kingdom it's related to Arabic and also significantly to Hebrew the language of the Old Testament and King Solomon himself have Tom who says that no one speaks it now for Ethiopians it's like the Latin Mass but this isn't the main event the crowds are outside a cave and it's this cave that has the real significance here ah this place contains beehives which are regarded as holy by the congregation that's how they make their tiny from the ceiling of our amazing and why it's considered deserted disappointed honey because there are in the trade date in the church and nobody brought examples of guys and so they came by themselves the Lahani which is taken from this is given to the people that considered palpable feeling anything in this place just come it's making contact oh yes yes are getting you're not you get no good news fellow planning is a staple of Ethiopian religious and everyday life what does it mean you are indeed one house from the honey the Ethiopians make a kind of meat which is called tej it is both the national drink and the communion wine this honey is believed to have healing palace the cure for everything from minor ailments to major ones like leprosy honey has long had a special place in other cultures in Africa and the Middle East what's unique to Ethiopia is its connection to one of the kingdom's greatest rulers it's said that a swarm of bees prophesized his future greatness when he was a baby that he was named after the bees humming sound his name was Lalibela the city build which today bears his name is a place which has no parallel with anywhere else on earth I've traveled East from ganda now I'm heading to one of the most important places in Ethiopian history Lalibela not much I could prepare you for that it's just astonishing this is one of the churches of lalibela they've been sculpted out of the mountain each one carved from solid rock you get a sense of just what a huge amount of energy it must have taken to excavate this hole and to do it with such incredible precision every single one of those angles is just so precise you can still see the subtle incline of the hill on the roof but the actual body of the church and if you designed it made it in concrete with moulds you can make it more precise it's just astonishing the man responsible for commanding the building of 11 of these incredible structures was Emperor Lalibela but according to the Kebra Nagast which was written more than a century after these churches were built Lalibela was an interloper a member of a rival dynasty which could not claim Solomonic descent however lalibela claimed god commanded him to build these churches and in so doing he attempted to claim the Ditmas ii as an emperor because he was doing god's work a legend grew over centuries that the buildings were completed at superhuman speed but recent research by a team of French archaeologists led by Francois Xavier Pharrell suggests otherwise usual story of Nellie Bella says that that the whole the whole church has been built at the same time yes doing a very short period of time and whether it was three nights for three days or 24 years but basically this is the same story and now we are starting to expand the sequence yes and which covers now a number of centuries we have we have occupations here human occupation centuries before the the such in century and and the architectural program of Lalibela develops on two or three centuries here from the twelve to the to the fifty to the fifteenth century at least we can go inside here there's still a great deal that historians don't know about Lalibela it's unlike any other archaeological site and that it's almost a case of archeology in Reverse so in that way it's very it is not an archaeological site and it is and you have to do to do to wash your mind but all this kind of all these kind of previous way of thinking about about architecture and archaeology instead of having successive deposits you have you have just successive removals - of stone and instead of having this deposit accumulating and giving you information about the successive occupiers of the place you have people who the more they removed a more the more they erased traces of people that came that the to him before the French investigations are expected to go on for at least four years Emperor Lalibela left an intriguing legacy one which underlines the uniqueness of his kingdom down here outside well you don't actually just have the light radiating straight down onto it that you can begin to see just the intensity of the color of the rock and it almost glows it just blows you away because it's completely unlike anything I've seen before and that isn't just in terms of the design but it's just thinking about what does it take to do something like this it's a breathtaking display of the Emperor's power to be able to command his people to excavate thousands of tons of rock without any form of mechanization and it speaks of the cosmopolitanism of this part of Africa at the time they've brought images influences from all over Christendom and beyond I look at the influences I'm just amazed that there's two-headed Eagle that you might see in Constantinople there's a Star of David and in the center of the Star of David is a cross and in the freezes above the arch are what looked like Greek icons it's an astounding coming together of different cultural influences to create something which certainly aesthetically works but also sends a signal about this being a new center of religious thinking a New Jerusalem this is a scale and quality of architecture on a par with many of the achievements of medieval Europe and it's fascinating to see this cosmopolitan approach in a place which many medieval Europeans considered the extreme fringe of Christendom thousands of pilgrims made the journey here to worship and 700 years later they still do people come here to the 11 churches of lalibela from all over Ethiopia and milk a terrible American well it's we heard that it is totally different from other churches and religion wise we are told that if a person go to a level and see if you make a pilgrim you will be righteous and from generation to generation so that's why we lightly come here and there's no doubt that Emperor Lalibela left the kingdom something lasting and significant it might also provide me with another clue that takes me further back into the past in my search for the kingdom's origins the architectural features are very distinctive these shapes are thought to represent the Rising Sun and the lower windows have a variety of cross designs it's a double cross so that you can actually see it both as across and then also extruded and then at the very top is this shape that you see everywhere one of the things I beginning to think about this building is just looking at these windows you are forced to ask the question why why these shapes but also why go to this length of bother to create something quite so complex but more intriguing than the windows are the blocks at each corner they look almost like beams but the way these churches have been created means that their architectural er necessary this building is completely made from solid rock so there will be no need to have any supporting structures inside it and yet it has some of those sorts of supports running all the way along the length of this building the use of apparently structural features as pure decoration tells me that they've been copied from buildings that already existed architectural quotations if you like it also suggests that those earlier buildings may have been important to the people who built Lalibela remember according to the Kebra Nagast lalibela was not descended from solomon so perhaps in copying an architectural style he was emphasizing his claim to be the heir of earlier rules maybe in this architecture lies Lally Bella's claim to Royal adit a'mma see the biblical descend and to greatness but I don't know how old the buildings that inspired Lalibela might be or whether they lead to a connection between the Kingdom and Solomon and Sheba to find out I going to head even further into Ethiopia's past this is one of the oldest inhabited places in the world archaeologists have discovered signs of the earliest human development here from over 4 million years ago even things that appear recent at ancient these terraces in Tigre prophets are believed to have been plowed for 3,000 years in pre-colonial times Ethiopia was the only sub-saharan country to use the ox-drawn plough a crucial step away from the pastoralist culture of the rest of the continent further to the south the terraces rise from the bottom of the valleys to the mountain peaks and they all have to be plowed in time for the rains in a few weeks time I want to try my hand at a 3000 year old skill I mean I out there there is a serious point to all of this and it's that this method of Agriculture is unique to these highlands it doesn't appear to have spread quickly to surrounding areas it underlines the isolation separateness of life and you don't like it must be about 90 degrees out here ah I admit I really wouldn't what this is a job he's just as bad at steering as I I might have to give him a few tips I think with 10,000 feet above sea level here and visitors to towns like this are unusual I wonder whether isolation like this is why Ethiopia's tradition seemed to have lasted so long they could develop independently and free from outside interference but there are few places in the world more self-consciously cut off than my next destination in the far north of Ethiopia lies Deborah dam one of the most important sites in the country Deborah Dharma is one of the oldest buildings in Ethiopia let's it's on top of this imposing table melt it Sam honesty dating back to the 6th century and its famed isolation is justified the only way to get to it is by climbing a rope made of goat skin at the steep cliff I'm hopefully doing a quick prayer for us as well I need all the help I can get good luck half of it thank you it seems like a good idea to send her Tommy up first he can show me how it's done oh no he's fine well done here Tommy ok safety on this is a work for thousands of years I mean Who am I to to doubt it and even if my stomach is they're absolutely full of batter flies and doesn't seem completely convinced and the sort of person who gets them vertigo for I stand up too quickly Victor I really want to see Deborah Dawa so I think all of this is really worth it oh-oh-oh I probably wasn't very dignified okay just look at this view all right on the top of the world coming up here getting up here I wouldn't have missed this for the world just amazing when the monastry was first established it's believed that up to a thousand monks lived up here today there are around 300 it's said to be one of the oldest permanently occupied Christian communities in the world and it's at least 500 years older than Anabella it was built thanks to another Ethiopian Emperor gabbro Maskell he ordered the construction of a colossal ramp to help get building materials up onto the plateau once the monastery was completed the ramp was demolished and Deborah Dharma was isolated once more and the months continued to take their separation seriously so they don't allow women up here that is bright I know no women at all and that's ever they were never any women around up hips that's the church in fact ever since the 6th century they haven't even allowed female animals to be brought up from the valley floor the fact that Deborah damo has been so cut off for so long could be useful in my search for how this kingdoms traditions of echoed through the ages I need to see the most important building here tomorrow I'm going to join the monks at a special service inside the 6th century church so we're gonna try and get a little bit of shut-eye and then be up with the Sun because that's when the monks get up like every religious ceremony I've seen in Ethiopia their unique approach to Christianity is evident but is it just a service that's catching my eye it's the building it's being held in to see some of the features that I saw earlier in my trip but just structurally you begin to get a sense more families Dre that was being affirmed by the architects flattered bella and Conda it's literally holding up this structure this was what they were then going here are the square ended beams I saw on the corners of the windows at Lalibela zerach churches the Rising Sun window designs here too and I last saw these distinctive long wooden beams in the castle of ganda where the architecture struck me as being from an older local tradition and here it is in a 6th century Church made from small and even stones it's only these kind of beams that could hold up walls like these and another feature literally stands out different shaped beings which extend beyond the walls these are called monkey heads I'm just trying to spend a few minutes just thinking about how this monkeyhead technology was actually put together and what I think is that these heads that present the end of a sort of dumbbell like piece of wood that sat across a beam and basically because the ends were wider than the body of these structures it actually meant that the pressure from above helped to keep the building taut this actually meant that you can actually build more than one story on these buildings here is a distinct continuity of architectural styles which it's almost certain were developed indigenously over nearly 2,000 years if this continuity stretches back even further to pre-christian times perhaps there is evidence somewhere of the connection to King Solomon into the Queen of Sheba Debra Dahmer deliberately cut itself off from the world my next destination was once the busiest the most important city in Africa Axl the interesting thing is is that at the time that Deborah Damo was being founded Paxson was a huge thriving City and I'm just reading this book which is about Aksum and its height about it being a huge ivory market and people coming from all about to trade with this enormous Empire the book is the perilous of the era 3nc a first century travel guide which describes Axl as a thriving bustling city in fact other documents of the time ranked Aksum alongside Rome Persia and China as one of the four great world powers given its significance I think it's remarkable we know so little about its history after all Aksum has a considerable claim to fame this according to Ethiopians and their Orthodox Church is where the son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon actually brought the Ark of the Covenant 3,000 years ago Ethiopian Christians believe that beyond these walls is one of the foundations of the judeo-christian tradition the Ark containing the ten commandments until 1974 that Ark was the cornerstone of the legitimacy of the kingdom itself the existence of the Ark here would go a long way to prove that the Ethiopian dynasty of emperors was founded by King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba it would confirm the legends that have lasted for centuries but the Ark is deemed so holy that no one is allowed anywhere near it I can't go beyond this point here because in that chapel there is where the park of the Covenant is said to be held security is tight and it must be kept that way to maintain the faith in the foundations of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church by extension the legitimacy of centuries of kings if the Ark is not inside this building then the foundations of the church and the Ethiopian royal line would be destroyed but the Ark is not the only potential evidence of this kingdoms ancient heritage my search for Ethiopia's Pass continues right next to the Ark's purpose-built resting place and now that building may be very new but I'm gonna have a look over here down here is something very very old this is the remains of a building which is 4th century said to have been built a king Azana Azana archaeologists believe was responsible for Ethiopia's First Christian Church he was the first Ethiopian Emperor to convert to Christianity archaeologists know this for certain because coins minted during his rule show almost the moment of the zionist conversion one coin has a Christian cross in its design but another earlier coin shows the pre-christian religious symbol of the crescent moon and the Sun this is hugely significant it means that there was a continuity of ruler before and after Ethiopia became a Christian country the judeo-christian tradition here does seem to be unbroken the coins confirm another fact by the 4th century this was a significant well established Kingdom this was the only place in sub-saharan Africa at that time known to have issued currency the coins aren't the only objects in Axton that show the power this place had at the beginning of the Christian era these are the grave markers or stella of the emperors of Exel they were made from solid granite and some date back to the first and second centuries they are thought to be the largest pieces of stone ever to come out of a quarry in the ancient world the tallest stood at over 30 meters and weighed around 500 tons I think there is impressive as any monument I've seen in Athens or Rome my guide here your golem for shahe is showing me their amazing carvings which are still beautifully clear almost 2,000 years after they were made they depict the great buildings it was believed the Emperor's would inhabit in the afterlife skyscrapers to immortality this architecture was the architecture of the Aksumite people it is an architecture of a building yes multi-story house I see master storey house these are the wooden beams they represent you know the end of the wooden beams when the axis we are practicing this architecture for us they start to see the wood so we have the windows so we have the wooden beams then we have another so this in general is multi-story house building I've seen this before this is the architecture used at Deborah da mo around five hundred years later and over a thousand years later it appears to inspire the stonework of the churches of lalibela at the top is a symbol of the Rising Sun once more you just a very quiet epiphany moment when this journey has begun to really make sense I mean this still had a single piece of rock holds many of the elements that I've seen on my journey up until now but here configured in a way that gives them a kind of sense gives them a continuous historical matter which I suppose is the history of Ethiopia the features on these stellar marking the ancient burial places of Ethiopian emperors 2,000 years ago have been consciously echoed down the years by the Emperor's that followed them what I'm seeing at Aksum a continuous traditions taking the story of the Ethiopian kingdom back to the beginning of Christianity but I still want to find evidence that the kingdom might go back even further to the days of Solomon and Sheba via gallon has one more ancient artifact to show me what's this here we have a memorial stone inscription which was written in the beginning of the 4th century by King Azana while first Christian king of Aksumite kingdom so what what what's inscribed on it the message of the inscription is more about his military victories and more about his political power it's a proclamation a kind of tourist information sign telling visitors to Aksum about the might of the Emperor and it's multilingual the inscriptions in the local gars language still used in church traditions it's in the international language of the day ancient Greek and it's in a language called surveyor sabayon was spoken only for a brief time and only in this part of Africa and southern Arabia historians think it died out around the eighth century but it first appeared around a thousand BC is the language of Sabah the part of Yemen where the Queen of Sheba is said to have come from this stone is from the 4th century AD 1,400 years after the Queen of Sheba is supposed to have reigned it's not the Ark of the Covenant but it does point me deeper into the past in my search for the kingdom's origins it's thought that the kingdom of Aksum was a continuation of a civilization which had existed nearby that's where I'm headed now just 20 miles away is a town of yaho it could be the old testament world I've been looking for in this ancient town is a pre-christian temple there were worshippers here when the Old Testament prophets were writing over here there would have been an altar it's quite a deep well beneath the altar because there would have been ritual sacrifice here this would have been a place in which the blood would have been allowed to drain an important part of Old Testament Judaism was making offerings in the form of slaughtered sheep and goats and this may well have been a bars where people would have come to cleanse themselves in this building suggest all sorts of things not much is known about the people who built this temple but archaeologists believe this is the oldest surviving building in Ethiopia it predates everything that we've seen up until now and the quality of this brickwork it just belies the fact that this building is 500 BC that means it's older than the Parthenon in Greece and centuries older than Rome's Coliseum it echoes the Judaism of the Old Testament the faith that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims was adopted here a thousand years before Christ and it echoes what the patriarch told me at the start of my journey so we have Septon Judaism then we accepted this gently now it is a 3,000 years old all together but the most exciting thing about this temple is a collection of artifacts found inside it they're now kept nearby in this small Christian Church and I think they might offer a final clue about Solomon the Queen of Sheba and the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia Chris g'day thank you I didn't know it would be like this there are crosses and scriptures spanning many years of Christianity thank you and there's an incense burner which doesn't belong in any Church it's been carved with the pre Christian symbol of the crescent moon and the Sun archaeologists think it dates from the 5th century BC and from the same era as the burner are these stones inscribed in the language of the queen of sheba Sabean these are almost certainly objects from the time of the Old Testament and they show an ancient link between Ethiopia and Saba the home of the queen of sheba this takes us back to well to the very beginning I mean a lot of people talked about the Queen of Sheba and here you're showing me a stone inscription which may well mean that all of that is true it's pre-christian evidence of the queen of sheba's language in the heart of ancient ethiopia it means it's just possible that the legend of her son founding Ethiopia's kingdom is based in fact I wanted to find out whether there was a truth in the legend of Ethiopia's kingdom being founded by the son of king solomon and the queen of sheba in ethiopia seperating legend from fact is difficult the stones in the church inscribed with the Serbian characters are estimated to be two-and-a-half thousand years old not quite the 3,000 years the church claims for its connection to the Old Testament but not far off and whilst there might not be proof of a blood connection to Solomon there is a striking cultural connection to the world of the Old Testament it's also striking that faith in this legend has lasted for centuries closely tied to the unique traditions of the Ethiopian church I think it's endure because of Ethiopia's determination to resist the influence of outsiders and to remain independent Ethiopia's emperors may have died out but the kingdom in many senses still survives and the language in the people in the history in the traditions it's an extraordinary history a proud history one that deserves to be better known you
