Added to the disadvantages which they have suffered in common with other Ethiopian minority communities (such as the Kemant and Agaus, and pagans like the Shangellas), the Falashas have also had to bear the stigma of deicide, the doctrine that their forebears killed Christ. Not only are they reviled for this deed in the liturgy of the Ethiopian Coptic Church, the established religion, but in the Kebra Nagast, the book of the Glory of Kings, the great national epic, they are stigmatised as 'enemies of God and their extermination is foretold. This kind of teaching is scarcely calculated to endear the Jews to their neighbours, despite the strong influence exercised by the Mosaic religion on the monophysite version of Christianity practised in the country and notwithstanding the weight of Hebraic-inspired traditions which colour Ethiopian life and culture.

The Bible is greatly venerated by the Christians and the story of King Solomon and the visit paid to him by the Queen of Sheba has been elaborated and virtually appropriated by them. In Ethiopian tradition it is axiomatic that the Queen of Sheba was an Ethiopian monarch. The Kebra Nagast relates how, by a ruse, King Solomon inveigled the queen into sharing his bed with the result that she bore a son named Menelik, who in due course became king or negus of Ethiopia. The queen was so deeply impressed by her visit to the Holy Land that, according to the Kebra Nagast, she adopted the Jewish religion. When Menelik grew up he visited his royal father and (perhaps in retaliation for the deceit practised on his mother) surreptitiously transferred the Ark of the Covenant from Jerusalem to his capital at Axum. Thereafter the role of the chosen people was assumed by the Ethiopians as, they said, the Jews had forfeited the honour. Such myths, which have all the force of religious dogma, have helped to accentuate the suspicion felt

(1) Budge, The Queen of Sheba and her only son Menyelek, p. 225.