The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, by David Kessler

Today's date is: 5/12/2025
HOME | Cover Page | Contents | Introduction 1| Strangers in the Midst 9 | Legend and History 24| Judaism, Christianity and Islam 58 | The Middle Ages 74 | Resistance and Defeat 94 | Missions and Missionaries 106 | Jacques Faitlovitch 130 | The Struggle for Recognition 147| Postscript 170 | Select Bibliography | Images | Index |


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neighbour in wealth and power they were sometimes a menace. At the time of the twenty-third dynasty, about the middle of the eighth century BC, Egypt was passing through a period of recession and was vulnerable to attack from the south. Border disputes broke into open conflict (like the troubles mentioned by Josephus) and in 730 BC Egypt succumbed to an invasion under King Piankhi which established Meroitic rule over the whole of the country for a little over 100 years and has come to be known as the period of the twenty-fifth (Ethiopian) dynasty. The twenty fourth dynasty consisted of two kings, Tefnakht and Boccoris, who were virtually vassals of the Ethiopians. Boccoris is said to have been burnt alive by Piankhi's nephew and successor Shabaka. The two staates were united under ari Ethiopian monarch, whose capital at that time was at Napata. For a short while Ethiopia became a world power. Josephus's reference to a 'queen of Egypt and Ethiopia' is, therefore, by no means fanciful, more especially as the records show that women played a very important role in the government of the country.

The period of Ethiopian supremacy coincided with the rise of a new and formidable power in the shape of the militant Assyrian Empire sweeping across the desert from the east. The dangers which this development created for the small states of the ancient Near East were reflected in the accounts contained in the Bible. The second Book of Kings and Isaiah illustrate very clearly the predicament of the Kingdom of Judah under King Hezekiah (c. 715-687), caught between the opposing powers of east and west. The kingdom of Israel had already been defeated by Sargon II in 722 and its people deported to Assyria when Hezekiah was attacked by Sennacherib, Sargon's successor, who established his headquarters at Lachish.

Hezekiah had been inclined to seek Egyptian support against the Assyrian invasion and in 701, with the encouragement of the Egyptians, he had joined a revolt of the Philistine cities. The Egyptian leader was Tirhaka, the son of Piankhi, who was to become the fourth Pharaoh of the Ethiopian dynasty, and is designated in the Bible variously as King of Egypt and King of Ethiopia. It was Tirhaka (689-664) who earned the scorn of Sennacherib's Rabshakeh, or chief of staff, when he warned Hezekiah that he was no more than a 'bruised reed ... whereon if a man lean it will go into his hand, and pierce it'. (1) Despite his boasting, Sennacherib's assault against Jerusalem failed thanks to what the Bible called divine intervention in the form of plague

(1) 2 Kings 18:21; Isaiah 36:6.


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