All Roads Lead to Ethiopia: Byzantium in the Solomonic Imagination

Despite the prominent role assigned to “Rome” in the Kǝbrä Nägäs´t, the founding epic of the Solomonic Dynasty of Christian Ethiopia, not a single Solomonic embassy was addressed to the rulers of Byzantium—even as close to a dozen missions were dispatched to the courts of Latin Europe between 1400 and 1530 CE. This article examines how “Rome” functioned in the Solomonic royal imagination of the fifteenth century by looking at texts connected to the Täʾammǝrä Maryam, the Ethiopian Miracles of Mary, translated into Gǝʿǝz around 1400, and at writings composed under King Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob (r. 1434–1468). In these sources, Rome and Constantinople blur into a single miraculous geography; a dream- Byzantine craftsman is conjured to serve an Ethiopian king; and a True Cross relic obtained from Venice is recast as a gift of gratitude from “New Rome.” The article argues that Byzantium, as “Rome,” was instrumental to Solomonic sovereignty precisely because it existed as a concept rather than a real place—a malleable Christian elsewhere to be drawn upon for local political purposes, precluding the need for any engagement with the contemporary polity.