Ethiopia 2003, The Kebra Nagast tells of Menelik I and the Ark of the Covenant

Finding out where a people come from goes a good distance to providing a national identity. Many areas of the world were not writing down history. Ethiopia has such a history, the Kebra Nagast, that ties the history of Ethiopia to ancient Israel and the Old Testament. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

No this stamp doesn’t show Emperor Menelik. It instead shows Menelik’s Bushback, a variety of cape antelope native to Ethiopian highlands. It’s fur is darker than other antelopes and is not endangered. Ethiopia was coming out of a long period of troubles in 2003 and their stamps were taking a recognizable style with a certain font and simple but effective renderings of local subjects. This continuity continues on Ethiopia’s present day issues and much of the credit goes to local stamp designer Bogale Belachew.

Todays stamp is issue A351, a 45 cent stamp issued by Ethiopia on December 12th, 2002. It was a 25 stamp issue in various denominations that showed this rendering of Menelik’s Bushback with different color framing. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents with a postal cancelation.

Ethiopian tradition believes that the country was ruled by the Solomonic Dynasty for  3000 years up until the fall of last Emperor Hailie Selassie in 1974. To back this up, there are many old copies of the  Kebra Nagast written in ancient Ethiopian. The book begins with a debate question for the Fathers of the Ethiopian Orthadox Christian Church. The question is, Of what doth the Glory of Kings consist? The book then retells many stories of the Old Testament but then a new twist that brings Ethiopia into the picture.

It states there was a Royal visit of the Queen of Sheba to ancient Israel at the time of King Solomon and that he tricked her into sleeping with him. She returned to Ethiopia and raised the resulting son Menelik alone. When Menelik was in his twenties, he traveled to Israel to meet his father. King Solomon was overjoyed to meet his prodigal son and begged him to take over and rule Israel. Menelik refused as his true love was Ethiopia. To insure his son’s success, Solomon sent him home with a group of Israelite advisors and the original Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant is thought to contain the stone tablets with the 10 Commandments as given to Moses by God. The book goes on to chronical Ethiopian Emperors through time. The book ends with a prophesy that the power of Ethiopia would eventually eclipse that of Europe.

At the Church of our Lady Mary of Zion in the ancient Ethiopian capital of Axum, they claim to process the Ark of the Covenant. During the reign of Haile Selassie in the 1950s,  Empress Menen had a new Chapel built next to the ancient one to safely house the Ark. She stated that heat giving off from the Ark was cracking the stones under it. The new chapel also allowed in females to pray. The old church by tradition only allowed males in with the exception of Mary herself. They don’t allow anyone to see the Ark but a British soldier claims to have seen it in 1941 when the area was being retaken from the Italians. He claimed it was an empty wooden box that appeared to be of middle ages construction.

Well my drink is empty and the Indiana Jones movies suggest it would be better to leave the Ark alone, whether in Ethiopia or not. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.