We came with Solomon. Zogo, the son of the Queen of Sheba's servant, is the father of the Zagwes. We came after Jeremiah. We came under Solomon; we came by Sennar and from there to Axum. Undoubtedly, we came under Solomon.

It is noteworthy that this reply was made before Western contacts had begun to influence the thinking of the Falasha leaders. It represents, therefore, the pure Falasha tradition which can still be found in the outlying villages. Although it may be difficult to reconcile Abba Ishaq's statement that 'we came after Jeremiah' with his insistence that 'we came under Solomon', it is significant that there is no suggestion of an Arabian point of origin and that entry to Ethiopia was believed to have been made from Sennar on the Blue Nile. Luzzatto himself rejected the historicity of the Solomon-Sheba story of the Falashas' origin but considered that the post-Jeremiah tradition was entirely valid. He reached the conclusion that the Falashas were Hellenised Jews who travelled from Egypt to Abyssinia by way of Meroe about the middle of the third century BC at the time of Ptolemy III, Euergetes I (246-221), when ptolemaic power was at its zenith. The proof, he said, was to be found in the Falasha religion. The Elephantine papyri had not been discovered in his day but he cited the pre-rabbinate religious practices of the Jews at their second-century BC temple at Leontopolis, near modern Cairo, where, as at Elephantine, they also offered sacrifices, in support of his contention. Although he accepted what is now called the migration theory of history, Luzzatto came closer to solving the problem of the origin of the Falashas than many subsequent scholars - mesmerised, it seems, by the attraction of the Arabian school of thought.

Besides receiving answers to a number of questions about their religious practices - which have been largely confirmed by writers such as Leslau - Luzzatto was also informed categorically that the Falashas had no books in Hebrew, which he was also told by a Jewish doctor from Aleppo who had visited Ethiopia and whom he interviewed on his return. Luzzatto was deeply conscious of the Falashas' yearning to make contact with western Jews - 'We beg you to send us someone,' they demanded - and he was anxious to secure publicity for these brave and deserving people. It was their strict observance of the Law, the Falashas said, which prevented them from travelling by sea 'to find distant brothers; for how