Commentaria in III Regum
The son born of her has in the books kept in the church of Axum several names, namely Bainelehequem, Ebnaalehaquem, Ebnehaguem, Menilehec, which last name is more frequently heard among the common people of the Ethiopians. And it has the same force in the ancient language and is likened to it: the other names mean the same, namely, son of the wise man. When he had grown up he often asked his mother about his father, and at length, in his 22nd year, when the matter was made known, he obtained from her by prayers the leave to go to Solomon, and, led by that merchant Tamarin, came with a great retinue and equipment to Jerusalem, and there, received by his father, was acknowledged to be his son.
When he wished to return to his mother, Solomon ordered him to be duly inaugurated king of Ethiopia with the customary insignia, and accordingly he was brought into the temple by the priests Sadoc and Joas, and anointed by the hand of the son of the chief prince of Solomon, and was called David after the name of his grandfather, and, the whole people acclaiming, “Long live the king,” he was led through the city, riding on the royal mule. After this he departed to his mother, loaded with gifts received from his father, and took with him the son of the priest Sadoc, Zacharias by name: into his house he introduced all the offices which were in use in the house of Solomon, some of which those Emperors still retain.
The Ethiopians feign that he carried away with him together with the aforesaid Zacharias even the ark of the Lord itself, which they call Sion; unless you say that another ark, like that of Moses and Solomon, was made and given to him.
Received by his mother, he was raised to the kingship, and thence the custom was introduced of making the sons of the king kings, whereas before only virgins who had always remained unmarried used to be made queens, such as after Christ was queen Candace, Acts chapter 8, verse 27.
All this is related by Father Emmanuel Paz of our Society, who lived many years in Ethiopia, and lately converted its Emperor to the orthodox faith, in his history of Ethiopia, which he wrote with diligence and exactness, and who adds that the queen of Saba was born in the kingdom of Tigre, which is the chief one in Abyssinia, and that she is called queen of the South. I had this history in his own hand at Rome from the Reverend Father Assistant for the Portuguese.
The same things are related by the historians of Ethiopian affairs, such as Damian de Goes, Victorius, Francis Alvarez, Barrius, Abraham Ortelius, and Genebrard in his Chronology, year of the world 3150, and Maluenda On Antichrist, book 5, chapter 13; although Thomas Bozius, book 21 On the Signs of the Church, chapter 1, and Pineda, book 5 On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter 14, number 46, judge it fabulous. It may be that the Ethiopians have added many fabulous things to this history, but yet the thing itself, namely that the Abyssinian Emperors descend from Solomon and the queen of Saba, received and certain among the Ethiopians by the continuous tradition of so many centuries, as orthodox Abyssinian priests assured me at Rome, it is hard to deny, especially since Solomon had three hundred concubines and seven hundred wives, to whom, if this one queen of Saba be inserted or added, what inconvenience will there be? For he could have taken her to wife like the rest, that through her and through her and his descendants he might introduce and establish among the Ethiopians the faith and worship of the one true God; for through a spurious son this could not be done rightly and effectively. It favours this that for the arms of the Abyssinian Emperor there is “a standing lion holding in its hand an erect cross”: for the lion was the arms of David and of the tribe of Juda, Genesis 49:9; the cross is the arms of Christ and of Christians. Finally, Prester John, or the Abyssinian Emperor, assumes these titles, which Ortelius in the Theatrum, map 68, recounts from the ancient monuments of the Ethiopians, and they are these:
David, supreme of my kingdoms, uniquely beloved of God, Pillar of the faith, sprung from the stock of Juda, Son of David, son of Solomon, son of the pillar of Sion, Son of the seed of Jacob, great son of Mary, Son of Nahu according to the flesh, Son of the holy Peter and Paul according to grace, Emperor of Upper and Greater Ethiopia, And of most ample jurisdictions and lands;
King of Goa, Caffates, Fatigar, Angote, Daru, Baliguanze, Adee, Vangue, Goiama, Where are the sources of the Nile, Amare, Biguamedri, Ambea, Vagunci, Tigremahon, Sgbaim the native land of the queen of Saba, Barnagasso, and lord as far as Nubia, which extends into Egypt.
Finally, from Solomon through the queen of Saba the Abyssinians received circumcision and other Jewish rites, which they still practise together with Baptism.
The time favours it: for the queen of Saba came to Solomon in the 24th year of his reign, as is plain from verse 10; when Solomon, already inclined to women, was multiplying wives for himself, and seeing this queen endowed with so many gifts of nature and converted to Judaism, might wish to be joined to her in marriage, that from it he might beget honoured, wise and faithful offspring: as Justin writes, book 12, of Thalestris queen of the Amazons, that she met Alexander with three hundred thousand women, after a journey of twenty-five days among most hostile nations, to seek children from the king: after thirty days, therefore, she departed with child.
14. NOW THE WEIGHT OF THE GOLD THAT WAS BROUGHT TO SOLOMON (from Ophir, Tharsis and elsewhere than from tributes, for these are presently excepted) EVERY YEAR, WAS SIX HUNDRED SIXTY-SIX TALENTS OF GOLD,—which make eight millions of French gold crowns, except eight thousand of them: now eight millions of French crowns make 24 millions of Belgian florins; for one French crown is worth three Brabant, or Belgian, florins: for although at first only 420 talents were brought to Solomon from Ophir, as was said in chapter 9, 28, yet gradually, as care and the number of diggers increased, more were brought. Nay, Villalpandus, vol. 2, book 5, chapter 46, and Pineda, book 4, chapter 6, at the end, think that for the immense expenses of building the temple, palaces and cities, Solomon sent a threefold fleet, each of which returned every third year when its course was finished; yet one returned every year, and the first fleet brought four hundred and twenty talents of gold, the second four hundred and fifty, the third, as men’s industry grew, and the multitude of diggers, and also the desire of gold, brought back six hundred and more talents, as is here said, for 450 talents of the second fleet are mentioned in 2 Paralipomenon 8:18, as 420 talents are assigned to the first fleet in 3 Kings 9:28. Anastasius Sinaita favours it, book 10 Hexameron, saying that the fleet of Solomon returned every year from Tharsis.
15. BESIDES THAT WHICH THE DEPUTIES OF DIVERS MEN BROUGHT.—The Septuagint: without the tributes of the subjects and of the merchants who traded. Hence it is plain that the tributes and taxes of Solomon are excluded from the six hundred sixty-six talents just mentioned; and therefore that these were brought to him from Ophir and Tharsis, etc. So Salianus. Moreover these tributes were enormous, so that on account of them the people rebelled against Roboam, as we shall hear in chapter 12.
AND THE MERCHANTS,—whom Solomon sent to buy and procure gold, or who paid part of the gold procured by them to Solomon as tribute.
AND ALL THAT SOLD SMALL WARES (so it must be read with the Roman text, not “shields” as Lyranus, Abulensis, Hugh and others read),—who sold not only old things but also new, by retail, by the ell and by the pound, whom the French call les merciers, that is, mercers, who sell any wares piecemeal. That is, from the trade of the spice-sellers, as if to say: Solomon gathered tribute even from the smallest wares and shopkeepers, such as are spice-sellers. For, as the Emperor Vespasian said: “Gain from any thing, however sordid, smells well,” because “sweet is the smell of gain.”
AND ALL THE KINGS OF ARABIA, AND THE GOVERNORS OF THE COUNTRY,—that is, “the satraps of the lands,” as is said in 2 Paralipomenon 9:14. Namely the princes and prefects of the lands neighbouring Judea.
From all these it is plain how great and immense were the riches of Solomon; for God seemed to heap gold and silver into his bosom from every side: and he himself by his wisdom devised a thousand ways of heaping it up. See Pineda, book 4 On Solomon, chapter 19, and Villalpandus, vol. 2, book 5, chapter 44 to chapter 51, where he teaches that the riches of Solomon were greater than those of the Emperors of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, Greeks, Romans and all the rest.