Introduction In 1870 (?) Francis Prætorius published,9 with a Latin translation, the Ethiopic text of Chapters xix to xxxii of the Këbra Nagast edited from the manuscript at Berlin (Orient. 395), which Lepsius acquired from Domingo Lorda, and sent to the Königliche Bibliothek in 1843. To the Berlin text he added the variant readings supplied from the MSS. Orient. 818 and 819 in the British Museum by Professor W. Wright of Cambridge. In 1877 Wright published a full description of the MS. of the Këbra Nagast in the Ma˚dalâ Collection in the British Museum. The work of Praetorius made known for the first time the exact form of the Ethiopian legend that makes the King of Ethiopia to be a descendant of Solomon, King of Israel, by Mâkëdâ, the Queen of ≤Azêb, who is better known as the “Queen of Sheba.” In August, 1868, the great collection of Ethiopic manuscripts, which the British Army brought away from Ma˚dalâ after the defeat and suicide of King Theodore, was brought to the British Museum, and among them were two fine copies of the Këbra Nagast. Later these were numbered Oriental 818 and Oriental 819 respectively, and were described very fully and carefully by Wright in his Catalogue of the Ethiopic MSS. in the British Museum, London, 1877,10 No. cccxci, p. 297, and in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenl÷ndischen Gesellschaft, Bd. xxiv, pp. 614–615. It was the fate of Oriental 819, a fine manuscript which was written in the reign of ≤Îyâsû I, A. D. 1682–1706, to return to Abyssinia, and this came about in the following manner. On 10 Aug., 1872, Prince Kasa, who was subsequently crowned as King John IV, 9
Fabula de Regina Sabaea apud Æthiopes. Dissertatio inauguralis. Halle (No date). 10 A description of the very ancient copy of the Këbra Nagast in the Bibliothèque Nationale, which Zotenberg assigned to the thirteenth century, was published by him in his Catalogue des MSS. Éthiopiens, Paris, 1877, No. 5, p. 6.
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